Folk Museum Plans Big Projects With EU Funding

The contract on the funding for the Skanzen Cultural Heritage Programme was signed at a ceremony on Friday by Minister of Education and Culture István Hiller, Minster of Local Government and Regional Development Gordon Bajnai, Open-air Ethnography Museum director Miklós Cseri and head of the Regional Development Directorate Tamás Lukovich. The application was supported by the National Development Directorate, the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Central Hungary Regional Development Council.

 

"The Open-air Ethnography Museum is one of the country's best known and best loved museums, where the public can learn and be entertained at the same time," Hiller said. Skanzen innovatively shows traditions and the past together with the future.

 

He added that a quarter of a million visitors came to Skanzen last year.

 

Hiller said the museum, which has become part of the country's profile, can continue to count on the Ministry of Education and Culture for support.

 

The aims of the Skanzen Cultural Heritage Programme are to develop the museum's "living" presence and to create the conditions for an active and entertaining learning experience. The programme comprises four big investments, together costing HUF 2.22 billion. EU development funds will cover HUF 2bn of the cost and the Hungarian state will provide the rest. The projects will start this April and finish by March 31, 2010.

 

For the first of the four projects, the museum will build a new village section representing the folk traditions and crafts of the area of Northern Hungary between the Ipoly and Hernád rivers. The area will become the eighth distinct ethnographic region represented at the museum.

 

In the second project, the museum will get a new entrance building based on the original plans for a village train station. The interior of the building, however, will have all of the most modern amenities, including a changing room for infants.

 

The construction of a 2.4-kilometre-long narrow-gauge railway, complete with five stops, will be the third project. And the fourth project will be the establishment of an Open Museologist's Workshop that will offer visitors a behind-the-scene look at how a museum operates.

Photo: Tibor Illyés