Collect! Collect! Collect! - The 12th Tradition Collection Competition has closed

On 11 April 2025, the Museum of Ethnography once again hosted the awards ceremony and professional training of the 12th Tradition Competition, where the Hungarian Ethnographical Society's Section of Ethnographic Collectors celebrated the work of volunteer collectors, true to tradition. The aim of the event was to recognise the work of volunteer collectors in a dignified way and to create an opportunity for learning and inspiration. The morning of the professional day started with welcoming speeches hosted by Dr. Péter Granasztói, Deputy Director General for Collections of the Museum of Ethnography, and Dr. Zsuzsanna Paál, President of the Ethnographic Collecting Section of the Hungarian Ethnographical Society. Afterwards, Dr. Ildikó Landgraf (Institute of Ethnography, HUN-REN BTK) presented one of the recommended topics for the coming year: the exploration of the memories of emigrants to the New World in the light of family archives.

The series of professional presentations was opened by Dr. Marianna Berényi, Head of the Communication Department of the Museum of Ethnography, with a methodological presentation entitled How to collect authentic digital information about yourself, during which the volunteer collectors were introduced to the database of the Museum of Ethnography and other major domestic and international online databases.

The second speaker was Pál Géza Balogh, assistant professor of the Department of Ethnography - Cultural Anthropology of the University of Szeged, who introduced the audience to the ethnographic research related to the Öregház in Kosspallag. As the last speaker, Zsolt Nagy, researcher of the Institute of Ethnography of the HUN-REN Faculty of Humanities, outlined the basics of ethnobotanical collecting, its methodology and research possibilities, as a kind of a teaser for the volunteer collectors.

At the award ceremony, 55 certificates were handed out, with 19 good, 19 very good and 17 excellent entries. The entries, together with the application forms and the peer reviews, will all be deposited in the Manuscript Collection of the Ethnological Archives of the Museum of Ethnography, where they will be made available for future research.

The 12th Tradition Competition announced three major themes. In A closer look at the recent past the Ethnographic Collecting Section has identified research on the decades of socialism as a priority theme, e.g. the transformation of village life after collectivisation; innovations and forced solutions that influenced everyday life in the period; changes in holiday culture; folklore phenomena driven by cultural policy - because research on the recent past is often thought to be neglected, with a sense of familiarity surrounding everyday life in the last 50-60 years.  

Unfortunately, no entries were received for the topic of Objects in folklore, but it is commendable that there were entries on objects and craftsmen who made objects.

A large number of entries were received for the Let's Remember competition, with 17 essays analysing family and personal memory, written documents available in the family and wider community, such as diaries, letters and autobiographies. We were pleased to see that many people took the plunge to capture family memories and to examine documents that sometimes remain in the family for decades. 3 candidates wrote about family history, 5 candidates wrote about individual life stories, several essays also dealt with the everyday life of grandparents as children and young people, and 4 candidates focused on war, prisoner of war, the memories of the 1950s and military history. In addition to family memories, many candidates drew on their personal memories. Their deep local knowledge, their direct experience of decades of change and their vivid memories enable them to preserve for the future data that would surely be lost without them.

The highest number of manuscripts (26) was received for the optional ethnographic topic paper, which was announced alongside the priority topics. Papers on material culture, crafts, folklore, lifestyle, religion, folklore, human life cycles and linguistics were also included, as well as papers with both a historical approach and a present focus. To illustrate the diversity of topics and approaches, we would like to mention a few entries. Kamill Varga, Messages and their mediums. Graffiti, scribbles on walls, public art, urban art in Gyöngyösön. Viktor Kömlei A lost craft. The culture of lime burning, Józsefné Kulcsár Funeral customs in Szentsimon. As we can see from the titles listed above, from the art of contemporary subcultures to the rarely researched topic of funerals, from the explanation of calamities to the theme of lost crafts, a wide range of issues have captured the attention of the applicants this year.  

The highlights of the results announcement and professional training were undoubtedly the curatorial guided tours in the new Collection Exhibition of the Ethnographic Museum. Dr. György Szeljak, museologist, introduced the volunteer collectors to the behind-the-scenes secrets and fieldwork of the ‘The Life of Objects’ section. At the end of the day, Zsuzsanna Tasnádi, Head of the Department of Ethnological Archives, took over the baton from him and told the participants the story of the wonderful objects in the 'Folk Art Repeated' section.

Author: Kinga Horváth, Evelin Kovács