From private to public collections
History of the different galleries in Győr and the current situation
MúzeumCafé 42.
In Győr – as in Szentendre and Pécs – the central museum, which is today named after Flóris Rómer, has been formed from a network of small galleries, though there the process differed from the other two places in a number of respects. In Győr, besides the existing county museum based on a previous private collection, a new museum structure was created. Unlike Szent-endre and Pécs, the initiative began locally and the town gave its blessing. For this a change of political system was required for the town to independently create a small museum network, and it needed a civic initiative. In Győr there was a certain overlap between the latter and the town authority responsible for the infrastructure, since Ernő Kolozsváry, a significant collector of the post-1945 period, tried to ensure the collections and bequests, and as the town’s first mayor of the new political system he could begin establishing the appropriate conditions. Today buildings in different locations house a third museum (with county rights) based on the two earlier ones (the town museum derived from the church one, and the later town one derived from the county one), all of which is a unique story, in that the new museum has absorbed the older and bigger one, though the name remains the same. Today the museum is housed in several fine Baroque buildings of Győr’s historic centre, with the exception of the Apátúr House, which previously served as the county museum’s centre, and which is expected to reopen in its new splendour in 2016 with a revamped permanent exhibition. In 2013 the Town Arts Museum, which opened in 1997, merged with the János Xántus Museum. Eleven exhibitions in nine buildings belong to the new museum, now called the Flóris Rómer Arts and History Museum.