The Literary and Musical Museum focuses on the documentation of the literary and musical culture of the Banská Bystrica region
Important personalities of Slovak national culture and art are connected to the Banská Bystrica region: the 18th-century polyhistorian Matej Bel, the baroque music composer Ján Francisci working in Germany and the instrument maker Michal Búľovský (Bulyowsky), representatives of 19th-century Slovak literature and music Ján Chalupka, Samo Chalupka, Andrej Sládkovič, Ján Botto and Ján Levoslav Bella, writers of the 20th century Terézia Vansová, Jozef-Gregor Tajovský, Ľudo Mistrík-Ondrejov, František Švantner, Peter Karvaš, Mikuláš Kováč, Štefan Žary, literary scholar Alexander Matuška, composer Viliam Figuš- Bystrý, Ján Cikker, Andrej Očenáš, Šimon Jurovský, Tibor Andrašovan, Svetozár Stračina and many others.
Museum staff publicise the collection fund through expositions, thematic and monographic exhibitions, conferences and seminars, lectures, concerts, meetings with artists, scientific research tasks, articles in daily and specialist press, and publications. They also prepare specialised programs for schools, themed audio-visual channels, and video screenings. They provide collection items on request to interested parties for study and scientific purposes. The museum collection fund is diverse. It includes almost 60,000 pieces of collection items and documents.
The Literary and Musical Museum in Banská Bystrica was established by the District National Committee in Banská Bystrica on March 1, 1969, with the prospective location of the museum in the building where the writer Ján Botto lived, worked and died, on Lazovná street no. 11. The proposal for establishment was based on the rich literary and musical traditions of the region, in which important personalities, associations, institutions and bodies of literary, musical and theatrical culture were born, formed, lived, and worked. These facts led to the determination of the specialisation of the Literary and Musical Museum and its inclusion among the specialised museums in the museum network in Slovakia.
The creation of the museum was supported by several personalities of cultural life – writer Ján Bodenek, historian Július Alberty, literary scholars Ivan Plintovič and Zdenko Kasáč, music educators and scientists Eduard Gábor, Alexander Melicher, Tibor Sedlický, Vladimír Gajdoš, piano virtuoso Zita Strnadová-Paráková, the first director of the Literary and music museum Tomáš Machan and others.
