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A visit to the Molnár István Museum
Visit to the Molnár István Museum
Local history and culture
In Harghita County, museums play an important role in preserving traditional values and organising cultural activities. We visited the Molnár István Museum in Székelykerestúr. This cultural institution depends on the local council. We were welcomed by the archaeologist István Vári, who showed us the different exhibits in a very pleasant way. This museum presents the history of the surroundings of the village since the Neolithic period. The entire collection consists of approximately 100,000 objects.
The history of the museum began in 1946 when Molnár István (1910-1997), a graduate in history, geography and ethnography, was a primary school teacher at the Székelykeresztúr Unitary Gymnasium and decided to create a school museum, together with his colleagues and students, which would house objects related to history, life in the town and its surroundings. This later became the local museum. In 1950 it moved to a building on the main square where the first archaeological and historical exhibits were installed. Later, in 1953, the museum moved to the building it now occupies in the facilities in the old casino of the town.The institution focused mainly on preserving the tools of the trade, folk traditions, folk medicine and folk art that began to be lost with the modernity that changed the lifestyle of the farmers. For him it was important to draw the attention of young people to the importance of folk culture in order to reinforce local identity.
We invite you to take a tour of the exhibits with us:
Arriving at the entrance of the museum we go up the stairs to the entrance hall, on the left is the archaeological exhibition.In these rooms it is possible to see objects from the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age. We also find Dacian treasures, we can learn about the Romans’ passage through the region and we discover that Germanic tribes were also here from the remains of a Gothic burial site and the Sekler culture, present in the objects that belonged to people who lived in the region in the 19th century. The museum also has a collection of photographs, a legacy of the photographer Béla Nagy. From these pictures we can see what Sékelykerestúr was like in the 20th century.
After the first exhibition we go to the garden where there is a stone with inscriptions that served as the base of the statue of the Roman emperor Hadrian and which was found in the foundations of a house. From there we can see a sekler gate leading to the ethnographic collection. There are two traditional houses, one built in 1853 and the other in 1780, and some agricultural buildings, where the way they used to live and the objects used daily by the ancestors of the people who inhabited the region are recreated. Many of these objects were obtained from farmers in the area.There is currently an exhibition of traditional clothing from the Seklerland.
In the backyard you can also see a traditional blacksmith’s workshop and a horsehair sieve workshop which was very important in this area but was discontinued after the Second World War and the museum workers recreated the technique from photographs. It is the only one of its kind in Transylvania.
Outside there is also the old casino bowling alley transformed into an exhibition on traditional industries where we can see working objects, oil presses, waterwheels and stone mills among many other objects that allow us to learn about the ingenuity and local technology of the past.
In the basement there is an exhibition on agricultural history. Here you can see a repository of pottery from the museum’s ethnographic collection, as well as elements of animal husbandry, agriculture and viticulture which is quite unique to this part of Transylvania.
To finish our tour we go to the upper floor of the museum where we can find the art gallery with a permanent exhibition as well as temporary exhibitions.
The gallery “László Ipó” was established with the support of local artists, and is named after a donation of about thirty oil paintings by this artist.
We really enjoyed this visit, which allowed us to learn more about the local culture. Many people have been involved throughout the history of the creation of this museum and we consider this museum to be very important for the identity of the village and for foreigners to get an insight into the rural traditions of Transylvania.
If this story sparked your interest towards finding out more about Rural Transylvania and possible ways to experience it, you are welcome to contact us.
· Youth Association from Transylvania at office.ata@gmail.com
· Farmers Association from the Cristuru Secuiesc Area at office.aacs@gmail.com
