Connections: Objects in Relation and Context

This exhibition helped me trace the different biographies and histories of objects in the very different stores of the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant and contrast them with the a-temporal way in which folk art had usually been exhibited by all the three political regimes: pre-communist, communist, and post-communist. This exercise was instrumental in opening up the critique of ethno-sciences in Eastern Europe, in understanding the contingent nature of folk art, and in viewing museums as porous entities. For more information on this exhibition and conflicting ways of staging recent history in Romania please read the article: The museum’s lexis: Driving objects into ideas.