TO THE READER,

The fourth annual of our museum, as you can see, presents several novelties compared to the editions from the previous years.

First of all, we have to remark the richer content and the unprecedented dimensions of the publication: the number of the works sent by the authors and included in the volume, besides the high professional level of the studies, surpass the previous performances, which serve to the pleasure of the editor - and we hope to that of the reader. This is the reason why after the solitary volume from the last year, we returned to the formula of the edition in two volumes.

Nevertheless, this abundence imposed on us certain unusual solutions - unlike to the traditional editorial proceedings - this time we had to group the material in another way: the shorter wrintings concerning the human and natural science area were grouped in one volume, while the writings also belonging to human but art history area were grouped in another volume. We are convinced that all these will not affect neither the value of utility nor the rank of the annual.

Thirdly, because of editorial consideration - as the title also shows - we present a publication which covers a period of two calendar years: 2007 and 2008, fact which entails more advantages. First of all, the annual synchronizes itself removing the existing contracdiction that a publication, which collects the studies of a certain year, will be published only in the next year. We do not have to say that this thing will offer an advantage to those writers who in the future will include in their bibliographical references their works which have already been published in our annuals.

Related to these, the review of the Museum's activity, which closes the volume, comprises the events of the past two years, fact which fills the void from the previous annual. Along the series of the manifestations organized by the staff of the museum we distinguish especially the exhibitions entitled: "The paintings of Mihály Munkácsy in Transylvania" (2007) and "The Colony of Artists from Baia Mare" (2008), exhibitions which attracted more than ten thousand visitors to the museum, proving the justness of our institutional strategy.

Last but not least, the moment has arrived that our annual to be published not only in "house" issue, but to be published by an acknowledged Transylvanian publishing house, which has a great professional experience. The Annual of the Szekler Museum from Ciuc, which enjoys the support of some well-known specialist from Transylvania and Hungary, being they older or younger, deserves our endeavours - and we are convinced that it will serve as a useful source or as a pleasant reading to the specialist as well as to the interested reader.