A Veszprém Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei 23. (Veszprém, 2004)

Palágyi Sylvia köszöntése

The picture compiled of her activities would not be complete if her manifold, everyday museum work were left out. Apart from the Baláca Communications, since 2000 she has regularly (previously occasionally) edited Veszprém County Museums Communications. Since 1968 she has organised 27 exhibitions, including the Roman period section of the permanent exhibition in 1985 and 2003. A good proportion of the exhibitions have presented finds from the Baláca excavations or the tumuli, or Baláca itself has been the scene of the presentations, but she has also been happy to take on events elsewhere dealing with local history, jubilees or even presenting new acquisitions. Besides the exhibitions, lectures, and gallery guides, she has also striven to encourage appreciation of ancient culture by a broader audience through video films and several dozen informative articles [Élet és Tudomány (Life and Science), Magyar Nemzet (Hungarian Nation), Veszprémi Napló (local newspaper)]. Several hundred times she has held guided tours of her excavations, and made statements to the local and national media. She has held lectures at national in-service training for Latin teachers, in the Goethe Institute, and since 1996 she has taught art history at the University of Veszprém. So we can be grateful to her that on three occasions she has given lectures on Roman period villas or the imperial tumuli (within the framework of the main lecture course). During the course of her work, she has received several awards. As early as 1972 she received the silver order For Veszprém County, and in 1978 the gold, then in 1981 the silver class of the Work Order. In 1984, she was awarded the Bálint Kuzsinszky Memorial Medal by the Hungarian Archaeology and Art History Society. In 1992 she won the Veszprém City Gisela prize as well as the Veszprém Museum Dezső Laczkó science prize. In 2001 she was decorated with the Pro Comitatu medal, in 2002 with the MTA Veszprém Regional Committee memorial medal (in ELTE Archaeological Institute) and in April 2004 with the Schönvisner prize. This brief retrospective glance (which clearly cannot be a complete, all-encompassing account), at the same time sheds light on the goals which Sylvia Palágyi would still like to achieve. Knowing her ambition, energy, untiring desire to work, incomparable readiness to organise, and time-table punctuality, we can be sure she will enrich our knowledge with many more results, whether on the subject field of Baláca, or its frescoes, or the Roman period chariot interments, or horse trappings and yoke mountings, or even settlement history, and she will present us with many more volumes of journals she has edited. For this purpose, may the good Lord give her health, unchanging enthusiasm, unbroken energy and perseverance. Dénes Gabler 20