Historical Village Museum

On the shores of Lake Herastrau, right in the middle of Romania's capital, visitors from all over the world have the joy of encountering a real "village", with monuments and artifacts from the 17th century to the early 20th century. Representative buildings from important ethnographic areas have been given a second life at the National Village Museum "Dimitrie Guști".

The idea of an open-air museum in Romania has been around since the second half of the 19th century. In 1867 Alexandru Odobescu, an eminent man of culture, proposed the presentation of monuments of popular architecture in a specially designed pavilion at the Universal Exhibition in Paris. Sometime later, the scholar Alexandru Țzigara Samurcaș was to envisage bringing to the Ethnographic Museum of National Art, Decorative Art and Industrial Art in Bucharest, founded by him in 1906, some "authentic and complete households from all the most significant regions inhabited by Romanians", a project that materialized in 1909, with the exhibition in this museum of a peasant house from Gorj county.

In the 1930s, there were only two open-air museums in Europe: Skansen Museum in Stockholm (Sweden, 1891) and the Bygdoy Museum in Lillehamer (Norway). In our country, at that time, the Ethnographic Museum of Transylvania in "Hoia" Park of Cluj, founded in 1929 by Professor Romulus Vuia, with regional specificity, and the Romanian Village Museum (today the National Village Museum "Dimitrie Guști") in Bucharest, since 1936, with a national character.

The creation of the Village Museum is the result of intense and sustained theoretical and field research, of museographic experiments, for over a decade, coordinated by Professor Dimitrie Gusti, founder of the Sociological School in Bucharest. As head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Bucharest, Gusti organized between 1925-1935, with specialists from various fields (sociologists, ethnographers, folklorists, geographers, statisticians, physicians) and his students, monographic research campaigns of an interdisciplinary nature in a relatively large number of villages (Fundu Moldovei - Suceava county, Nereju - Vrancea county Dragus - Brasov county, Dragomiresti - Maramures county, Clopotiva - Hunedoara county, Runcu - Gorj county, Rusetu - Buzau county etc.).

On the basis of these experiences, of a hard work of conception and of the moral and material support of the Royal Foundation "Prince Charles", in March 1936, in only two months, it was possible to build an exceptional museographic work. In this short period of time, the teams of specialists and students (the same ones who had participated in the field campaigns), led by Professors D. Gusti and H. H. Stahl, acquired peasant buildings (houses, outbuildings, churches, technical installations) and interior objects (furniture, ceramics, fabrics, tools, etc.) from the villages surveyed, which were considered representative of their places of origin.

In accordance with the criteria of authenticity and respect for local building traditions, which are still in force today, the construction of the museum was reassembled under the careful supervision of specialists, primarily Henry H. Stahl and Victor Ion Popa, craftsmen brought from the villages where the monuments originated.

The official opening of the Village Museum took place on 10 May 1936, in the presence of King Charles II, and a week later, on 17 May 1936.

In its early stages, between 1936 and 1940, the Village Museum had 4.5 ha of land. On this land there are 33 authentic complexes, transferred from the researched villages: houses with annexes, a church (from Dragomirești, Maramures county), troughs, technical installations, fountains and a spire. Their layout was based on a plan drawn up by the playwright and set designer V. I. Popa.

Conceiving the Romanian Village Museum as a sociological museum, Professor D. Gusti and his collaborators considered that its mission was to show visitors the reality, the life of the village, as it was lived by the Romanian peasant. That is why, periodically, peasant families from the villages of origin of the monuments will live in the houses of the museum, at first even the former owners. These "inhabitants" came to Bucharest with everything they needed to live, including birds and animals.

The great merits of the Sociological School led by the scholar Dimitrie Gusti can never be disputed, but equally true are the situations that led to the deterioration of monuments and museum objects, through their intensive use in conditions where, at the time, there were no appropriate treatments for the conservation and restoration of heritage.

In 1940, following the incorporation of Bessarabia, part of Bukovina and Herzegovina into the Soviet Union, the Bucharest municipality decided to house families of refugees from Bukovina and Bessarabia in some of the households in the museum. The fact that, subsequently, no other solution could be found meant that they remained in the museum until 1948. Under these conditions, the museum was put in a situation where it could no longer continue its activity. In addition, the improper use of the monuments, through their occupation, led to the destruction of a significant number of household inventory. In the chapter of losses we should also mention the monuments dismantled in 1937 (six windmills from Bessarabia, a Macedonian house, a dwelling from Caliacra, a floating mill and a cherhana), as a result of the opening of construction site for the construction of the Elizabeth Palace.

The year 1948, when the Village Museum reopened its doors to the public, and Gheorghe Focșa, a former student of Professor D. Gusti and member of the monographer teams, was appointed as its director, marked the beginning of a second stage in the evolution of the institution. The first task that Gheorghe Focșa undertook, at the beginning of his directorship, was to evacuate the remaining tenants of the museum, in order to stop the process of deterioration of the patrimony. At the same time, his efforts were also directed towards equipping the museum with its own staff of specialists, as before the war the institution had only one administrator.

Beyond the vicissitudes of the communist regime, through which our country has passed and which the museum has felt in full, thanks to the professional capacity of the director Gheorghe Focșa and his refusal to make concessions to the constraints and pressures of the old regime, the museum has managed not only to survive, but also to record important achievements.

The museum development directions were based on multiple criteria: historical (representation of the traditional habitat - and implicitly of popular culture - in its spatial development, between the 17th and 20th centuries), social (today questionable, due to the way in which it was approached, the exhibition is also expected to reflect the situation of the exploited peasant), geographical (grouping of monuments by historical provinces) - this plan, which to a large extent is still valid today, tends to reproduce the map of Romania, by grouping monuments of architecture and popular technique according to the criterion of geographical proximity of the localities of origin, in sectors representing the great historical provinces of the country, economic (typology of the household depending on the occupations and crafts), artistic (the presence of aesthetics as an implicit or explicit value), authenticity and typicality.

On the basis of these criteria, which implicitly led to systematic research and acquisition campaigns, and by eliminating the sociological component, the presence of the peasant alongside the exhibits - objects, the open-air exhibition changes its profile, transforming itself from a "sociological reserve" into an ethnographic museum.

Through its exhibition of architecture and popular techniques, and implicitly, through the specific inventory of ethnographic objects, as well as through the new museographic concept of organization, the museum succeeds in presenting to the public, in a more systematic way than in the past, the image of a village - synthesis of Romania, in its originality, representativeness, unity and diversity. At the same time, the consistent respect and application of the principle of unity in diversity has allowed to capture ethnic differences and interferences between Romanian folk culture and that of other nationalities in Romania, a Szekler household of Bancu, Harghita county being transferred, and another one of Russian-Lypovians from Jurilovca, Tulcea county.

The elaboration of new strategies for the development of heritage, together with the need to increase the exhibition space of museum, led to the expansion of the area dedicated to the display of monuments, from 4.5 ha, as it was in 1936, to 9 ha, and to the growth and diversification of the collections. The heritage in the open-air exhibition is enriched, reaching a total of 62 complexes of folk architecture (compared to 33 in 1936), with 223 buildings (40 houses, 165 outbuildings, 3 churches, 15 technical installations and craft workshops), totalling an inventory of 17.000 objects, among the monuments acquired from the field were households and houses in the areas of Suceava, Vaslui, Vâlcea, Constanța, Alba, Hunedoara, Maramureș, etc.

Other objectives, which the museum specialists have assumed during this period, have been aimed at diversifying the institution's activities, scientific capitalization of the heritage and research results (in the field and in the collections), as well as museographic experiments, the production of periodical publications, as well as cultural and educational activities, focusing on dialogue with different categories of visitors (temporary exhibitions, folklore shows and festivals, presentations of traditional costumes, seminars, catalogues, leaflets, guides, postcards, slides, etc.).), ageing monuments, conservation and restoration problems resulting from microbial attack and inherent natural deterioration have led to the creation of a specialized service for the treatment of heritage assets: “Conservation-restoration laboratory”, in 1978, the Village Museum merged with the Museum of Folk Art of the R.S.R., under the title of the Village and Folk Art Museum. It will operate as such until March 1990.

During the period leading up to the 1989 Revolution, the museum was several times threatened with relocation to another site outside Bucharest, where it was planned to expand the residential area of the communist leadership. It escapes this disaster, but, like all other museums, it will have to suffer, especially at the end of the 8th decade, the harmful consequences of the lack of funds for research, acquisitions and restoration of monuments, and the application of the policy of "self-financing". Despite these dire conditions, museum specialists have managed to find "lines" of funding from ethnographic research contracts carried out in partnership with various cultural and scientific institutions in the country.

With the Revolution of December 1989, the Village Museum regained its individuality by separating from the museum with which it had merged, the current Museum of the Romanian Peasant. To this end, a systematic programme of priorities has been drawn up, relating both to the development of the heritage and the coverage of thematic segments not represented in the permanent outdoor exhibition and in the collections, and to a new orientation and foundation for research, ensuring a scientific basis for all the museum other activities, the initiation and implementation of coherent museum pedagogy projects and interactive forms of communication with the public.

In addition to the heritage in the open-air exhibition and collections, the museum also has a rich documentary collection of inestimable historical and ethnographic value. This collection is made up of manuscripts, studies, sketches, drawings, mapping, boards, glass cliches, films, black and white and colour negatives, photographs, which come both from the field research of the teams of monographers who helped found the Village Museum and from subsequent investigations.

A multi-purpose building, inaugurated in November 2002, was the solution to the problem of the spaces for housing the collections of heritage objects, the library, the documentary collections and the specific activities of the museum. Spaces were created, with modern equipment, for conservation-restoration laboratories and for cultural and educational activities: thematic exhibitions and various forms of "animation" of the heritage or use of the living treasures of the Romanian village.

Cerinţele actuale legate de dezvoltarea colecţiilor, de acoperirea unor segmente patrimoniale insuficient sau nesistematic tratate, de problemele create de schimbările ce au loc în societatea rurală contemporană, de necesitatea investigării tradiţiilor din perspectivă unei abordări identitare, de stabilire a asemănărilor şi diferenţelor la nivel regional, naţional, european ca şi al zonelor de coabitare etnică, interconfesională etc., au impus noi direcţii în cercetare şi au dus la reevaluarea obiectivelor etnologiei de urgentă. De aici, programele de cercetare consacrate studiului relaţiilor interetnice din zonele în care comunităţile rurale româneşti coabitează cu alte etnii (în cadrul arealului ţării şi înafara lui), al spaţiilor de interculturalitate etc. Un număr însemnat de proiecte de cercetare s-au finalizat sau sunt în curs de desfăşurare în cadrul unor finanţări sau parteneriate cu instituţii de profil sau ministere. Anual, Muzeul Naţional al Satului „Dimitrie Gusti” editează publicaţii cu caracter ştiinţific. Activitatea editorială a muzeului s-a îndreptat în direcţia publicării unor cărţi de specialitate şi a fondurilor de arhivă ale instituţiei.

Programele de pedagogie muzeală şi toate activităţile cu publicul certifică împlinirea şi exercitarea vocaţiei Muzeului Naţional al Satului „Dimitrie Gusti”de „museum vivum”, de muzeu ce valorifică într-o manieră dinamică tot ceea ce este autentic şi reprezentativ în cultura noastră populară. Intrate în tradiţia muzeului, Târgul meşterilor populari, Tabăra de creaţie „Vara pe uliţă”, Festivalul obiceiurilor de iarnă „Florile dalbe”, Zilele zonelor etnografice, a Zilelor Culturii diferitelor popoare, susţinute de Ambasadele ţărilor respective etc. atrag un număr mare de vizitatori şi contribuie, cu fiecare an, la creşterea publicului Muzeului Naţional al Satului. Printr-o diversitate de publicaţii, difuzate prin librăria muzeului: ghiduri, pliante, albume, cărţi poştale, diapozitive, CD-uri, casete video şi audio etc., publicul este invitat să descopere muzeul şi valorile sale şi, implicit, pe cele ale creaţiei populare, să le cunoască şi să le preţuiască. Obiectele de artă populară, creaţii ale meşterilor contemporani, puse la dispoziţia vizitatorilor prin magazinul muzeului, au nu numai semnificaţia de obiecte-amintiri, ci şi rolul de a contribui la educarea publicului pe linia bunului gust, a discernerii valorilor, de non-valori, a ceea ce este autentic de ceea ce este kitsch.

Less present before 1989 in international scientific and museum life, the museum has succeeded in recent years in being an active partner in relations with various institutions with a similar vocation to its own, in Europe and elsewhere. Proof of this is the presence of foreign specialists at international colloquia organized by the National Village Museum "Dimitrie Guști", at the sessions of the Association of Open Air Museums, as well as the participation of researchers and museographers of the institution at scientific events organized by institutions of the field in other countries, as well as research collaborations with various European partners.

We also cannot overlook the fact that, over the years, the National Village Museum "Dimitrie Guști" has provided support for the organization of new museums and ethnographic sections in the country (the ethnographic section of the Museum of Alexandria, of the Museum of Unification in Alba Iulia, etc.). He also played a fundamental role in the development of the network of open-air museums in Romania and in the creation of the first museum of the same profile in the Republic of Moldova (Chisinau).

Unfortunately, the recent history of the museum has also recorded two dramatic events: the fires of 5 September 1997 (Transylvania sector) and 20 February 2002 (Moldova and Dobrogea sector), which damaged a number of monuments and related inventory objects. Thanks to the efforts of the entire museum staff, the support of several museums in the country and the financial support of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, as well as some sponsors, the restoration works carried out on the buildings that suffered from the disaster was completed in a relatively short period of time and the monuments were restored to the visitor circuit.

The recent changes in the organizational structure of the National Village Museum "Dimitrie Guști", through the creation of new directorates and departments, ensure a balance between all the activities of the institution and an efficiency of them.