Csornai Múzeum

The Csornai Museum is a collection presenting the historical and ethnographic values of the Rábaköz region. It was housed in 1969 within the centuries‑old walls of the Csornai Premontrei Prépostship building in Csorna. The first manor house was built around 1180, and its present late Baroque style was acquired between 1802 and 1808, when it was rebuilt after a fire.

The museum’s predecessors

The Rábaköz region was omitted from the museum‑founding waves of the second half of the 19th century. Decades later, between the two world wars, as a local manifestation of the cultural policy associated with Kunó Klebelsberg, the initiative came from József Fekete, drawing teacher at the Csornai State Civil Boys’ School, who, with the involvement of students, collected, organized and exhibited ethnographic objects, thereby creating a valuable school collection. At the school exhibition held from 17 to 29 June 1928, the collection was presented in three rooms. In addition to the ethnographic items, student works and paintings by József Fekete were displayed in the small exhibition. No inventory of the collection has survived; based on the list published in the school bulletin, its number of items could have been 160–170. The collection was significant and exemplary for the later museum not only because of its (estimated) size and the level suggested by the items listed in the bulletin, but also because of the ideas behind it and the enthusiasm accompanying its organization, which we can picture from József Fekete’s 1928 bulletin announcement: “What shall we leave to our descendants, so that they may proudly remember us?... We have no gold, no silver. The blessed soil of Rábaköz does not hide rock, it contains workable stone… But the diligent Hungarian people living here have created treasures from wood and hemp. From wood and love, from the past and the eternal… What we can still call our own, however, is only a dying wreck. The timber‑framed house crumbles, the master beam rots, the tulip‑patterned chest, the four‑poster bed, the chest, the corner bench… because the understanding is lacking that could give them new life. We want to save the vanishing treasures. Not for ourselves, but for posterity, which will surely understand their beauty and significance.”

The collection, scattered after World War II, had its carved wooden objects preserved by the first director of the gymnasium that emerged from this school after nationalization, Iván Király, who later handed them over to the collection operating as a branch of the János Xántusz Museum, and they also entered the museum from his estate.

History of the museum

In 1948, with the support of Csornai judge János Király, municipal chief clerk György Czinder, and Sopron deputy county head Antal Pozsgay, a request was written to Minister Gyula Ortutay for the establishment of the Rábaközi Regional Museum. The administration wanted to use as a museum one 60 m² tower room of the “new” parish church built between 1932‑38 with a western tower pair. Minister Gyula Ortutay appointed the folk‑costume and embroidery‑culture specialist museum curator Gertrúda Palotay to organize the collection and the museum. After Gertrúda Palotay’s death in 1951, the coordination tasks were transferred to the county‑center museum. Between 1963‑68 Imre Németh, the folklore researcher of the XJM, was behind the project, which, under his direction—and thanks to the work of Csornai teachers, primarily Antal Beősze—realized the establishment of the institution.

A characteristic tendency of the period was that rural folk‑culture clubs organized their collections and wanted to place them in more formal frameworks, often strongly violating basic museological professional standards, because the main driving force behind the organization and systematization of these collections was isolated enthusiasm, frequently accompanied by amateurism. In Csorna, in contrast, under the direction of retired teacher Antal Beősze, systematic, careful material collections, “expeditions” were carried out, resulting in the creation of our core collection.

The organization of the material awaited Szalontay Judit, who was appointed as a collection manager to Csorna by county director Dávid Lajos in 1969. On June 22, 1969, the first permanent exhibition opened on the ground floor of the northern wing of the former Premontre convent (then a district council). The exhibition was inaugurated by Pödör Pál, who two years later, on the occasion of the city’s elevation, commemorated it as the first councilor and as one of the pillars of municipal life. The classically arranged exhibition underwent several significant changes and its area continuously expanded. Szalontay Judit became museum director, then museum manager, and also a folklorist specialist museologist. She developed the small filial collection into a museum by 1990 – in cooperation with the county professional and sponsoring bodies and the Premontre convent, which returned in 1989.

Museum life was lively; besides the permanent exhibition, 3–4 independent and hosted temporary exhibitions were organized each year, they participated in nationally initiated museum programmes, organized professional conferences, and also published an independent series of publications (Csornai Museum Booklets 1‑4).

The permanent folklore exhibition opened in 1990 received a quality award, the collection earned the title of landscape museum, and in 2000 it became the ministerial special prize winner of the Museum of the Year competition.

The national museological crisis was also felt in Csorna: the institution became a collection in 2005 and then an exhibition space in 2007, a process that meant a massive professional‑organizational decline. The staff reduction was 36% in 2005, a further 33% in 2007, and before the sponsorship change, in the year of the county museum directorate’s dissolution, only 2 part‑time custodians remained. This period was the low point in the museum’s history.

In this process, the county museum network was discontinued in 2012, and the institution's sponsor became the City Municipality of Csorna in 2013. At that time, the institution's director was taken over by Szalayné Galambosi Tímea, who had also been the director of the Csorna City Cultural Center and Library since 2008.