Alexander Mihalik

* Košice, 18 February 1900 – † Budapest, 13 January 1969 / art historian, ; doctor of history (1969) ; ; His father, József Mihalik, was an art historian, and his wife, Mária Dutka, was an art historian. He completed his studies at the Budapest University of Science and Technology. He received his doctorate in 1926. Between 1926 and 1928, he conducted research in Italy as a scholarship holder at the Hungarian Historical Institute in Rome, primarily studying the Italian connections of Hungarian applied arts. In 1927, he was elected a member of the Siena Academy of Literature and Arts. In 1950, he became a member of the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest. During his study trip to Berlin in the mid-1930s, he managed to locate and identify numerous relics of medieval Hungarian goldsmithing preserved in Germany. In the second half of the thirties, his first studies dealing with the history of Hungarian ceramic art in the 18th–19th centuries were prepared: elaborations of the early history of the hard clay manufactories of Gács and Regéc. At the same time, he prepared the first summary of the history of tin casting in Pest-Buda. From 1939, he was the director of the Upper Hungarian Museum in Košice, and is credited with establishing the modern stone warehouse and managing the restoration of the city's monuments. He returned to Budapest in 1945. For a year, he was the director of the Museum of Applied Arts, and then from 1946 to 1965, he was the deputy director general of the MNM. In 1954, he edited the autobiography of the Pest goldsmith József Szentpéteri for publication. ; in 1961, his book Old Hungarian Enamel Art was published in German, English and French. Most of his studies published in the sixties discuss the history of hard pottery and stoneware production in Hungary in the 18th–19th centuries. He elaborated on the oeuvre of Sebestyén Hann in his doctoral dissertation. In the second half of the sixties, the compilation and processing of the applied art material of the exhibitions presenting the relics of old Hungarian art (Neuchâtel, 1965, Paris, 1966, London, 1967, Belgrade–Zagreb, 1968) was largely his work. ; ; His main works: ; The Rimaszombati Goldsmiths' Guild, 1919, ; Le coppe ungheresi del Duomo di Rieti Roma, 1928, ; Gioielli di Santa Elisabetta d'Ungheria a Udine ed a Cividal, 1936, ; Pest-Buda Tinsmiths' Memories, 1940, ; Ceramics history lectures, 1951, ; Denkmäler und Schulen des ungarischen Drahtemailes im Ausland, 1958, ; Die ungarischen Beziehungen des Glockenblümenpokals, 1959, ; Zur Geschichte der alten keramischen; Fabriken Siebenbürgens, 1960, ; Data for the history of the old Hungarian ceramic factories, 1960, ; Emailkunst im alten Ungarn, 1961, ; Versuch einer Zentralisierung des Ungarischen Punzierungswesen im XVIII. Jahrhundert, 1961, Problematik der Rekonstruktion der Monomachos–Krone, 1963, ; Hungarian goldsmiths in Sweden, 1968, ; Der Goldschmied Sebastian Hann, 1970.