Szatmári Museum

In the city of Mátészalka in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg County, the Szatmár Museum was opened in 1974.

Background

In the former Szatmár County, the antiquities uncovered mainly during earthworks initially entered the collections created by a few prestigious schools, such as the Szatmár Reformed Gymnasium, the Nagykároly Piarist Gymnasium, and the Nagybánya State Gymnasium libraries. Some finds, however, were sent directly to the Debrecen Reformed College. This practice partly continued until 1955, although after the founding of the Déri Museum in 1938, the Szatmár finds increasingly went there.

History

The foundations of the Szatmár Museum were laid by Márton Árpád, a high school teacher, and his students from 1956. As a result of their intensive collecting work, the growing material was initially housed in the basement of the gymnasium.

In 1963 the Museum Department of the Ministry of Culture declared the collection a regional museum under the name Szatmár Museum. However, the museum had no building, could not store its material, let alone exhibit it.

In 1973 the museum received the former ispán’s residence building, and on July 1, 1974, József Farkas was appointed museum director. From 1992 László Cservenyák has been the museum director.

Collections

The spacious courtyard, built in the Szatmár type with half-timbered structures and colors, provided space for storing and exhibiting transportation devices (wagons, sleds, sledges, agricultural tools, etc.).

The collection of wagon carts and sleds, now numbering nearly 100 items, is the largest in Central Europe; it richly illustrates folk freight transport and the transportation means for civil and noble passenger conveyance.

The exhibition's outstanding pieces are the Szatmár shooting range wheels with "snake ironing", sand runners and special wagons: carriage, Károlyi carriage, society hunting carriage, fire brigade carriage, butcher's carriage, Kölber half-covered carriage, the Victoria carriage from the Grassalkovich family, Cziráky carriage, carved Baroque funerary carriage.

The permanent exhibition also shows the Cégénydányád blacksmith workshop, the tools of village farming (hoes, winnowing baskets, threshing boards, grain separators, grinders, grain cutters, scales, etc.), wheel‑making workshop, and a display of the peasant beekeeping and viticulture equipment.

In the main building there are permanent exhibitions presenting Szatmár‑Beregi woodcarvings, Szatmár footwear production, folk decorative art and interior furnishing. In addition, a display can be seen from the Mátészalka press archives.

The museum also regularly organizes temporary exhibitions. In 2021 they opened a rich exhibition of works by Hungarian photo artists who had been in China.

The former Mátészalka synagogue building is also under the care of the Szatmár Museum, which has so far been renovated only on the outside; the key to its interior can be requested in the museum's main building.

The Szatmár‑Schwartz House

In the 2010s the residential house of the town's notable industrial family, the Schwartz family, later Magyarized to the Szatmár family, was renovated; electricity was introduced there in 1888, the first in the country. The house of the family that fell victim to the Holocaust was taken over by the museum, and three permanent exhibitions were created there: a memorial room of the family's son, Tony Curtis, an exhibition on the history of electrification, reflecting the town's pioneering traditions in this field, and a baby exhibition.