Should you take a stroll through Bucharest, the Museum of the Romanian Peasant, located in the north of the city, is a ‘not to be missed’ attraction.
The building’s cornerstone was set in 1912, based on the decree signed by King Carol I in 1906, but it is only in 1941 that the edifice located in Victoria Square, in the vicinity of the ‘Grigore Antipa’ Natural History Museum and the Geology Museum will be completed. The director of the museum in that time, ethnographer Alexandru Tzigara — Samurcas, instructed architect Nicolae Ghika—Budesti to erect a ‘palace of earthly art’, with a layout that is reminiscent of monastic precincts.
The building illustrates the neo-Romanian style, with Brancovan elements of architecture — red brick facade, large windows paired under rounded arches, the balustrade tracery. A central office wing was erected in the ?60s behind the building, featuring a large mosaic paying tribute to the values of the communist age.
At first the museum was called “The Museum of Ethnography and National Art”; in connection with the old name — “The Museum of Ethnography, National, Decorative and Industrial Art” Alexandru Tzigara-Samurcas remarked that it was ‘unnecessarily complicated’. Subsequently, the museum changed its name again, becoming the “Carol I National Art Museum.”
The changes brought about by WW II also left their mark on the museum. Just narrowly avoiding to become a Soviet army barracks, the building was converted in 1953 into the Lenin — Stalin Museum, and then into the Museum of the Romanian Communist Party.
For some time, the collections were accommodated in the Stirbey Palace on the Victoriei Avenue, under the generic name of the ‘Folk Art Museum of the Socialist Republic of Romania’, and were next moved to warehouses of the Village Museum.
On February 15, 1990 painter Horia Bernea was appointed at the helm of the new Museum of the Romanian Peasant.
This is not an ethnographic display venue in the classic sense of the word, it is not a ‘society museum’, faithfully depicting the life and creation of peasant communities in particular areas of the country and particular periods, but provides an image of what ethnologist Irina Nicolau called the ‘traditional man’ and philosopher Gabriel Liiceanu — ‘the human-type universality the peasant stands for’, it is the is the museum of a somewhat timeless spirituality.
This universalist vision earned the museum the EMYA Award in 1996 for Best European Museum of the Year.
The Museum of the Romanian Peasant owns nearly 90,000 items, the largest collection of peasant objects in Romania — ceramics, costumes, wood objects and hardware, religious objects and interior fabrics. The ceramic items of the museum’s collection are representative of Romania’s nearly 200 pottery centres, including Horezu, Vama, Curtea de Arges, Leheceni, Barsa, Marginea, Fagaras and Radauti. The oldest piece of pottery is dated 1746.
Great Romanian personalities and collectors have donated to the museum folk costumes, genuine masterpieces of peasant craft, but also unique items such as the flute of the emblematic unity activist and globetrotter Badea Cartan, on which he played at the International Paris Exhibition in 1900, or the house and the gate crafted by woodworker Antonie Mogos from Ceauru (Oltenia), brought by Alexandru Tzigara — Samurcas in 1907 and put on display in the museum as evidence of the mastery and ingenuity of the Romanian peasant.AGERPRES
