Din spațiul muzeal pe terenul etnologic și înapoi

The article argues the importance of ethnological field research for contemporary ethnographic museums, stating the premise that the specificity of ethnological heritage consists in its epistemic value and in its intrinsic human (‘living’) dimension. As a central institution of knowledge, any modern ethnographic museum should be connected to the present, studying heritage communities and bearers in order to preserve and safeguard the systemic character of folk cultures, their unique know-how and forms of expression and their creative and affective components. By reassessing the results of the research project „Contemporary Villages in Romania – Openings Towards Europe” which was initiated by the Museum of Ethnography in Brașov in 2005 and implemented in 2006-2007, the knowledge and expertise acquired during ethnological field researches are explored. The project was coordinated by Ligia Fulga Ph. D and aimed to perform an emergency ethnological research in two communes in Brașov county that were to be crossed by the A3 Highway Brașov-Borș, under construction. Teams of Brașov museum researchers and teams of University professors and students from the Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest worked together to identify the representative heritage of communes Mândra and Șercaia. As coordinator of two research teams working in Mândra in 2006 and 2007, the author of the article analyses the collected material focusing upon “traditions of representation” and the marginal status of two exceptional heritage bearers, a Rroma woman – poet and singer and a Romanian woman with exceptional memory and communication skills. Also, the exhibition dedicated to the village Mândra after the end of the project is regarded as a kind of validation of the quality of the research, since villagers who were invited to the Brașov Museum of Ethnography to see and discuss the exhibition actually mirrored themselves in its exhibits. Finally, two more arguments for the necessity of field research as current museum activity are formulated: the constant need for collecting the present because ‘traditional’ culture is meaningful “only when seen in relationship with any other observable aspects of culture” (Christian Feest) and the characteristic ‘interweaving’ of ethnological scholarship (and ethnologues, as a matter of fact) in present heritage regimes and in the making of cultural heritage

Chemistry · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · Museums and Cultural Heritage