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Why a Romanian Museum
in Chicago, USA?
The City of Chicago has many ethnic groups, and many of them have
a Museum or a Cultural Center. There are over 100.000 Romanians in Chicago,
several Romanian Churches, restaurants, business, but there is no Romanian
Museum.
Romania as a country is often misrepresented in certain movies, and
by bits of news, usually negative. The Romanian Museum will present
the real Romania
People interested in a Romanian Museum are Americans of Romanian heritage,
families who adopted children from Romania, people interested in folk
art in general, and people specifically interested in Romanian culture.
Why A Recreation
of a Transylvanian Peasant Household?
A museum, in order to present a country, must expose either tens of
thousands of items covering many aspects of art, architecture, customs,
and history. Or, a museum could concentrate on presenting in great detail
one particular aspect or event. We decided on the latter; specifically
we want to present an authentic recreation of a 1910 Transylvanian peasant
household for the following reasons
We are very familiar with the topic. Almost all members of our families,
on both my mother's and father's side, were artisans. Besides the daily
chores and work in the field, women spun wool, wove, sewed clothes,
knitted, or embroidered; men worked in leather or wood.
We already have the artifacts. We inherited many old clothes,
old peasant style furniture, and household items; we also collected
old folk pieces for many years.
We want to recreate one of our great-grandparents houses, which was
built in the early 1800. The house is real, the house is authentic,
I grew up in that house, and thus I know all the details of a Transylvanian
peasant household.
What We Want to Present
and What We Want To
The museum will have two parts. The permanent collection will
consist of four rooms, which will recreate the Transylvanian peasant
household: the big room, the kitchen, the storage room, and the porch.
The permanent exhibit will be a "walk-in" and "hands-on"
museum. The visitors will not just enter a museum; the visitors will
be guests of a Transylvanian peasant.
The Museum Gallery will be used to present temporary, special collections
of items from our inventory of rugs, ceramics, textile, folk costumes,
lace, tools, and furniture. We will also host exhibits of local artists,
or we will invite other museums (from The United States or from Romania)
or organizations to display their collections.
We will tour, as we already did, and make presentations in libraries,
schools, or private parties with some of our exhibits.
lThe museum will have a gift shop and a bookstore.
The museum will publish B00KS about its collections. For the beginning,
we plan on publishing a book on Romanian rugs. Related to our collection
of furniture (cradle, child-walker, child high-chair, child-low-chair)
we will produce a CD of Romanian Lullabies & Children Songs
The Unique Way We
Want to Present the Objects in the Museum
The Romanian Museum in Chicago will present objects from Romania in
a very unique way. For example, we will present, among other things,
a folk costume from the village of Besenova. We will also display the
picture of the woman who made the costume, we will show the spindle,
the distaff, the spinning wheel, and the loom, which were used to make
that costume, and we will explain the process and the details. When
we show a silk apron, we will show also the papers, the spoon, and the
bucket used to extract the silk from the silk worm; and we also explain
the process. In the kitchen we will show the utensils (forged iron tripods,
pots, etc.) and how were they used. Each object in the museum will have
its own story. Many objects will look common, but everything will help
create a picture of real Romania.
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