The Porous Museum

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations

INTRODUCTION: POROUS MUSEUMS
Museums as expandable
Museums as garbage and concealing
Museums as continuities of practice
Synopsis of Chapters

1. TWO DIFFERENT DOORS: BUREAUCRACY AND PLAYFULNESS
Living among stereotypes
Closed rooms
'Socialist' white and tidy
'Anti-communist' colour and bricolage
Negotiating a white gown
In search of creativity: the EMYA prize
Conclusion

2. THE STAGING OF HISTORY: ETHNOGRAPHY IN MUSEUM'S WAVERING ARCHIVES
Why silencing the socialist past?
Golden archives: aristocrats and peasants in the capital city
Finding inspiration in Stockholm and Oslo
Partial archives: partial truths
1950's relocations
Bucharest 1957 exhibition: the difficulty of inscribing difference
Where are the peasants? Replies from a photo archive
Conclusion

3. SOCIALIST MULTIPLICATION AND THE USE OF THE FUTURE TENSE
Multiplication of employees and the school of seriality
Work as a gift: the art of bureaucracy and numbers
1960s: Marathon of exhibitions and events and technocrat dispersion
The secret police searches the soul of Tancred Bana?eanu
Socialism goes global: Travelling folk art exhibitions to Austria, Belgium, China, Mexico, Switzerland and Vietnam
Endless multiplication of collections: the storage fever puts the museum to a halt

4. A QUESTION OF (IN)VISIBILITY
The 1977 earthquake: new visibility and the media
Socialist artizanat, art naïve and the mix of values
Back to the stores: what museums do not need
1980s: Eating at the Museum of the Communist Party
Hunger and collapse

5. WHAT IS LEFT AFTER A REVOLUTION... FRAGMENTS
Priests in the museum: a story of exorcism and sacralisation
1990s' Neo-Byzantinism
Paper clips: fragmentation and assemblage
'Alive' museography: 'when museums disrupt and heal'
Conclusion

6. THREE FACES OF COMMUNISM
Anger: Communism as the Plague
Practice: The Continuity of Stores
Irony and playfulness: The Art of Bricolage
Conclusion

7. CONCLUDING CHAPTER
The porous museums: tales of continuity and rupture in central and eastern Europe
The politics of display and peasants out of history
Little space for modernity: the missing metal spoon

Notes
References
List of Illustrations
Index