The farmer and his world

Agriculture has always been the main occupation for the people inhabiting the territory of Slovakia. At its core, it provided food, but the consequences of this activity were reflected in the appearance of the surrounding landscape, human settlements and influenced the peasants’ way of life. The exhibition The Peasant and his World runs from 18 December 2024 to 31 January 2026.

The material, social and spiritual manifestations of the way of life, the relationship to nature, the organization of the family and the community, as well as the value orientations of the people – all of this was strongly influenced by the peasant basis of life. In historical and socio-economic conditions, agrarian culture and way of life is the optimal use of man, land and agricultural tools. It thus formed a harmonious combination of work, consumption and experience.

The Slovak National Museum in cooperation with the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences presents the agrarian culture that reflected the world of peasants and its scientific research. The exhibition project develops this theme along two lines. The first aims to present the world of the peasant in the form of a contemporary peasant homestead from the 1920s-1930s, which was the basic social space in the life of a peasant family.

The exhibition depicts the dwelling of a medium-wealth peasant family from Turiec at a scale of 1:1 and represents a household consisting of a room, a pit, a pantry and a black kitchen. A barn is placed next to the dwelling house in order to present three-dimensional objects from agrarian culture. The collection objects are divided into typological collections – for example, hoes, ploughing, harvesting and threshing tools, etc. Photographs by prominent photographers and ethnographers (Karol Plicka, Pavel Socháň, Ján Dérer and others) complement the description of agricultural work that employed peasants from early spring to winter. From an early age, children were also involved in household and farm chores. Even the youngest visitors can get to know their work and duties, for whom interesting activities have been prepared.

The second line of the exhibition presents the historical development of scientific interest in the work of the peasant, his culture, as well as the cultural and historical circumstances of the time that conditioned it. The visitor will get acquainted with important personalities of Slovak science and literature who brought not only the artistic image of traditional peasant culture, but also valuable ethnographic and historical knowledge as a basis for contemporary ethnography as a scientific discipline with its pendant in Slovak museology. The exhibition traces and vividly documents this line of development through contemporary objects, publications, expressed ideas and opinions of contemporaries. In addition to the countryside, intellectual interest in the world of the peasant also came from the urban environment. One of the characteristic representatives was Turčiansky St. Martin, where important cultural and scientific institutions such as the Slovak Museum Society, the Slovak Matica and the Slovak National Museum were located. Large-scale photography of the town, text-and-image panels and authentic furnishings of the study immerse the visitor in the life of a Martin intellectual from the 1920s-1930s.