The Porous Museum
The Politics of Art, Rupture and Recycling in Modern Romania
Published on 23. January 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
224 pages
978-1-350-40008-5 (ISBN)
Description
The Porous Museum examines questions of museum practice, aesthetics and politics through a focused study of The National Museum of the Romanian Peasant in Bucharest. The museum has functioned successively as a museum of art, a communist museum, the headquarters of the communist secret police, and a museum of folk art. Gabriela Nicolescu traces the museum's spectacular biography and follows the transformation of its practices and aesthetics through three very different political regimes in the 20th and early 21st century: monarchist, socialist and post-socialist.
Nicolescu's fascinating study starts with a focus on a dumped and smashed statue of the revolutionary figureheads Marx, Engels and Lenin in the museum's rear yard as an expression of the complicated journey of modern Romania. She considers questions of recycling and rupture, with some exhibits and practices carried over from one regime to another, whilst others have been discarded in favour of the completely new. Through this process, the museum can been seen as a microcosm of the wider nation state and the ways in which the past is remembered or rejected.
The interdependency of politics, ethics and aesthetics that Nicolescu terms 'porosity' is an attribute of museums all over the world. Applying original anthropological research to key ethnographic museums in Romania and elsewhere in Europe, the book moves beyond regional and media stereotypes by arguing for the influence of local oral histories on national history.
Nicolescu's fascinating study starts with a focus on a dumped and smashed statue of the revolutionary figureheads Marx, Engels and Lenin in the museum's rear yard as an expression of the complicated journey of modern Romania. She considers questions of recycling and rupture, with some exhibits and practices carried over from one regime to another, whilst others have been discarded in favour of the completely new. Through this process, the museum can been seen as a microcosm of the wider nation state and the ways in which the past is remembered or rejected.
The interdependency of politics, ethics and aesthetics that Nicolescu terms 'porosity' is an attribute of museums all over the world. Applying original anthropological research to key ethnographic museums in Romania and elsewhere in Europe, the book moves beyond regional and media stereotypes by arguing for the influence of local oral histories on national history.
Reviews / Votes
Nicolescu's scholarship throws light on what happens to a globally significant collection through decades of social and political transformation. Her thinking on the power of objects, styles and collections will galvanise students of culture everywhere. * Adam Drazin, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University College London, UK * Masterfully examines aesthetics, ethics, and politics in the turbulent monarchist, socialist, and post-socialist biography of the Museum of the Romanian Peasant. Nicolescu's analysis of the museum as a vital, porous actor within society is engaging and original. * Margaret H. Beissinger, Research Scholar, Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures, Princeton University, USA * [Nicolescu's] apt choice of an object of study to explore museums' constitutive porousness and make this book a capstone for further studies of NMRP. * Slavonic & East European Review *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
80 bw illus
Dimensions
Height: 230 mm
Width: 150 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
Weight
340 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-350-40008-5 (9781350400085)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
07/2023
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Visual Arts
€31.99
Available for download
E-Book
07/2023
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Visual Arts
€31.99
Available for download
Person
Gabriela Nicolescu is an Exhibition Maker, a Writer and a Post-Doctoral Researcher with the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford, UK. She has published in Critique of Anthropology, the Journal of Design History, the Journal of Material Culture, World Art, East Central Europe and Anthropology & Aging.
Content
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 naive 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
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 naive 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