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.

AcknowledgementsAbbreviationsINTRODUCTION: 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 differenceWhere 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-ByzantinismPaper 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 EuropeThe politics of display and peasants out of history Little space for modernity: the missing metal spoon Notes References List of Illustrations Index