Dr. Zsuzsanna Fodor
Head of the Veszprém County Museum Directorate
MúzeumCafé 9.
“A museum must offer a lasting experience,” asserts Zsuzsanna Fodor, Director of Veszprém County Museums. She significantly reformed the institution, and it is enough to recall that hers was the first provincial museum to employ a cultural manager – one who had studied overseas, at that. “I’m fortunate in that I got to the museum at an extremely exciting time. I became professionally interested in middle-class social history very early on and besides the compulsory exhibitions (connected to anniversaries) I began collecting items relating to Veszprém associations, choirs and societies. “Education focusing on school types during the time of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the period between the two world wars is another of my research areas. “I studied on scholarships at the Museum of Applied Arts, the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, as well as at the Collegium Hungaricum where I gained decisive experience not only about exhibitions but also in relation to professional team work. I was greatly impressed, for example, by the exhibition about the life of Emperor Franz Joseph organised by the Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien and involving several Hungarian museums. Our museum organisation has been lucky in having top-class experts working for us. We have had exhibitions in Tihany, Balatonfüred, Badacsony, Baláca and Nagyvázsony. Many holiday-makers at Lake Balaton go to museums, so it matters what they find there. We wanted to put our services at the tourists’ disposal in the best way. “I not only employed a cultural manager but also a museum educator to attract pupils of Veszprém and its region to the museums in connection with their curriculum. I’ve also involved university students under an arrangement with Pannon University.”