Novi Sad/Senta, 23 September – President of the AP Vojvodina Assembly, Dr Bálint Juhász, attended today in Senta the formal signing ceremony of a Cooperation Agreement between the Institute for the Culture of Vojvodina Hungarians and the Szentendre Open-Air Ethnographic Museum “Skanzen”.
The Agreement establishes an institutional framework for further strengthening professional cooperation between the two institutions and for promoting joint initiatives in the field of cultural heritage protection, ethnology and museology.
Addressing those present, President Juhász noted that cooperation between the Institute for the Culture of Vojvodina Hungarians and the Szentendre Skanzen did not begin today. Rather, the signing of the agreement provides an institutional framework for the professional work carried out jointly over the previous period and creates a basis for its continuation.
“Since 2008, the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, as a co-founder, has been involved in this work. This is not merely an institutional status, but also a responsibility – the responsibility not simply to regard Vojvodina’s cultural diversity as a value, but to take concrete steps to preserve it,” president Juhász said. He noted that, over the past year and a half, seven local heritage and ethnographic collections, as well as village houses preserving traditional ways of life, have been documented, from Tornjoš to Vojlovica.
Juhász also highlighted that approximately 500 objects in Torda had been documented and photographed, accompanied by detailed professional descriptions, which represented significant numbers, but also small stories behind them about people, families and villages that preserve the memory of an entire community.
“And perhaps this is precisely the true meaning of digitisation: we do not put the past away somewhere for safekeeping; instead, we bring it closer to the future,” Juhász said.
The ceremony underscored the particular importance of research, documentation, preservation and broader presentation of the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of Vojvodina Hungarians, as well as the exchange of professional knowledge and experience and support for individuals and civil society communities engaged in cultural heritage preservation.
The formal signing ceremony and presentation of the signatories’ work were also attended by Árpád Fremond, President of the National Council of the Hungarian National Minority; Györgyi Kormanyos, Director of the Institute for the Culture of Vojvodina Hungarians; Dr Miklós Cseri, Director General of the Szentendre Open-Air Ethnographic Museum “Skanzen”; experts in this sphere and representatives of local self-government.