Katona József Museum of Kecskemét

The Katona József Museum in Kecskemét, the county seat and a city with county rights, is one of the most important cultural institutions of the city. In 2025 it operates at five exhibition sites in the city. The permanent fine arts exhibition and various temporary exhibitions are located in the Cifrapalota, the game history collection is housed in the Szórakaténusz Toy Museum and Workshop building, medical-related memorabilia are in the Museum of the History of Medicine and Pharmacy, the works of naïve artists are in the Bánó House standing in the courtyard of Szórakaténusz, and visitors can view the rich folk art material in the Folk Applied Arts Collection.

In the institution named after the writer Katona József, the chief clerk of Kecskemét, and a great figure of Hungarian drama, one can see collections of fine arts, archaeology, folklore, toys and medical history. The nearly hundred‑thousand‑item archaeological collection includes significant Bronze Age, Avar and Conquest‑period objects, for example the Avar princely gold finds from Kunbábony.

History

The idea of creating a museum in Kecskemét arose already at the end of the 1880s. Mayor Elek Kada (1897–1913) strongly supported this plan and, as a result, in 1898 the city council decided to establish a museum and a library. The collection was placed in the ground‑floor gallery room of the City Hall, under the direction of chief archivist Károly Szilády.

The rapid growth of the archaeological, folklore and fine‑arts collections already from 1911 made the expansion of the museum premises urgent, which was also demanded by the emerging press debate.

The “home‑searching calvary” of the artworks could only end in 1922, when the city purchased and had the Summer Casino building in the Railway Park rebuilt for the museum. For the investment the state contributed only 240,000 crowns instead of the promised 2‑million aid. Chief archivist Szilády Károly already considered the building cramped and its pincer storage dangerous because of moisture. The new museum building and the permanent exhibition were finally handed over to the people of Kecskemét by Culture Minister Klebelsberg Kuno himself on July 6, 1924. Under the direction of Director Szabó Kálmán, the enthusiastic professional staff was able to present an increasingly high‑quality permanent exhibition to the public year after year.

During the Second World War and the subsequent Soviet occupation most of the collections were destroyed; the building was returned to its purpose only in the summer of 1946. The first exhibition could open in May 1947, when about 150 paintings by local artists were displayed. By the summer of 1949 the renovation works were completed, and with the support of the National Planning Office three new exhibition rooms were also created in the basement.

In the 1950s the museum’s activity was permeated by party propaganda. However, a significant exhibition was organized by Director Szentléleky Tihamér in 1953 under the title The Living World of Sand. Also an important event was the county exhibition held in 1957 in honor of the 75th anniversary of Kodály Zoltán. The most characteristic of the era, however, was the 1960 propagandistic exhibition titled The Hungarian People on the Path of Socialism.

In 1962, the county museum organization was also established in Bács-Kiskun County, whose central institution was the Kecskemét museum until 2011. It included all similar institutions of the county, such as the Dunavarsány local history exhibition, the Hajós Baroque castle, the Baja Türr István Museum, the Nagy István Art Gallery, the Éber Memorial House, the Bunyevác Folk House, the Kalocsa Visky Károly Museum, the Kiskunfélegyháza Kiskun Museum, the Kiskunhalas Thorma János Museum and the Szalkszentmárton Petőfi Sándor Memorial Exhibition. In the city of Kecskemét, new collection units were also created, namely the Kecskemét Art Gallery, the Szórakaténusz Toy Museum and Workshop, the Museum of Naïve Arts, the Museum of the History of Medicine and Pharmacy, the School History Museum and the Katona József Memorial House opened in 1970.

In 2013, the Kecskemét Katona József Museum returned to the maintenance of the Kecskemét city municipality as a county-level city museum.

Fine Arts and Applied Arts Collection

It mainly collects and presents 19th–20th century, as well as contemporary Hungarian works, and is one of Hungary's most prestigious art collections.

Its first major material is thanks to the collector and patron Marcell Nemes, who donated a total of 80 pictures to the city of Kecskemét, primarily early‑20th‑century paintings. The collection represents almost every significant school: among the Nagybánya artists, for example, Károly Ferenczy, Oszkár Glatz, András Mikola and János Thorma; from the Solnok artist colony, Pál Jávor, János Ödön Lechner, István Zádor and Lajos Zombory; from Gödöllő, István Zichy; from the Eight, Dezső Czigány, Béla Czóbel, Ödön Márffy, Károly Kernstok and Bertalan Pór. Among painters less easily classified into movements are also Lajos Gulácsy, József Rippl‑Rónai and János Vaszary.

The most significant period of the collection's development began in the 1970s–1980s. It succeeded in acquiring the huge oeuvre of Menyhért Tóth, and then there were numerous smaller and larger acquisition items, primarily related to the Kecskemét artist colony, such as the works of Sándor Gál, Margit Gráber, Lipót Herman, Józsa Járitz, Gyula Metykó, Nándor Lajos Varga.

In 1983 the collection could move to the Cifrapalota on the main square, and the permanent fine arts exhibition opened its doors on October 8. This development was mainly thanks to the arrival in Kecskemét of the so‑called Farkas István–Glücks Ferenc collection, consisting of about 400 pieces. A very significant part of this art‑historically important collection was the result of the collecting activity of painter István Farkas and, above all, his father, collector József Wolfner. It included works by Jenő Barcsay, Miklós Borsos, Endre Domanovszky, Jenő Gadányi, Gyula Hincz, Tibor Vilt, István Nagy, as well as László Mednyánszky. Of course, later the collection also incorporated István Farkas's own paintings.