The Porous Museum: The Politics of Art, Rupture and Recycling in Modern Romania

The Porous Museum explores the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant in Bucharest, tracing its transformation through three political regimes and examining the interdependency of politics, ethics, and aesthetics.

Format: Hardback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 24 August 2023
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

The Porous Museum delves into profound inquiries into museum practice, aesthetics, and politics by examining the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant in Bucharest. This museum has undergone a remarkable transformation, serving as a museum of art, a communist museum, the headquarters of the communist secret police, and a museum of folk art. Gabriela Nicolescu, in her captivating study, traces the museum's extraordinary journey, exploring the shifts in its practices and aesthetics across three distinct political regimes in the 20th and early 21st centuries: monarchist, socialist, and post-socialist.

Nicolescu's research begins with a poignant observation—a discarded and damaged statue of revolutionary figures Marx, Engels, and Lenin in the museum's rear yard, symbolizing the complex history of modern Romania. She delves into themes of recycling and rupture, observing how certain exhibits and practices have been carried over from one regime to another, while others have been discarded in favor of entirely new approaches. Through this process, the museum emerges as a microcosm of the broader nation-state, reflecting the ways in which the past is remembered or rejected.

What sets Nicolescu's work apart is her exploration of the interdependency of politics, ethics, and aesthetics, which she refers to as "porosity." This concept is universal in museums across the world, as they are spaces that foster the exchange of ideas and experiences. By applying original anthropological research to key ethnographic museums in Romania and other parts of Europe, Nicolescu challenges regional and media stereotypes by arguing for the profound influence of local oral histories on national history.

The Porous Museum is a groundbreaking contribution to the field of museum studies, offering a fresh perspective on the complex relationship between history, culture, and power. Through its meticulous analysis of the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant and its exploration of the broader political context, Nicolescu provides a valuable insight into the ways in which museums shape our understanding of the past and influence our collective memory. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in museums, history, and the power of cultural representation.

Weight: 500g
Dimension: 240 x 161 x 13 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781350196636