A file from the history of a museum - temporary exhibition
Dec-18
The Mureș County Museum is preparing a special exhibition for December 2025 at the History and Archaeology Section in the Citadel, inviting visitors to discover the history of the city’s museums through a surprising visual approach.
The temporary exhibition, “A File from the History of a Museum: Examples from Târgu Mureș,” explores the role that museum institutions played in shaping national identities in the 19th and 20th centuries, through a series of reconstructions based on historical documents and images.
The project brings together seven thematic modules, plus a final one, each recreating fragments of the permanent exhibitions that operated in the city over time: academic and private collections from the 19th century, the Industrial Museum of the Székely Land (1886), the Bernády Art Gallery (1913), Aurel Filimon’s ethnographic exhibition (1936), archaeological research from the Roman site at Cristești, and the permanent exhibitions of the communist period (1957 and 1970).
Each room functions as an “exhibition within an exhibition,” with objects displayed in the atmosphere of their original era and accompanied by two layers of interpretation: texts retrieved from contemporary documents and modern texts explaining today’s curatorial perspective.
The final room gathers a symbolic object from each module, repositioned in a contemporary setting, to show how the passage of time and evolving ideas reshape the meanings of objects.
The exhibition invites a necessary discussion about museums, memory, and ideology, encouraging the public to reflect on how cultural institutions influence the way we relate to the past.
The opening will take place on December 18, 2025, at the History and Archaeology Section in the Citadel. The event is open to the public, and the exhibition will be on display throughout 2026.
The temporary exhibition, “A File from the History of a Museum: Examples from Târgu Mureș,” explores the role that museum institutions played in shaping national identities in the 19th and 20th centuries, through a series of reconstructions based on historical documents and images.
The project brings together seven thematic modules, plus a final one, each recreating fragments of the permanent exhibitions that operated in the city over time: academic and private collections from the 19th century, the Industrial Museum of the Székely Land (1886), the Bernády Art Gallery (1913), Aurel Filimon’s ethnographic exhibition (1936), archaeological research from the Roman site at Cristești, and the permanent exhibitions of the communist period (1957 and 1970).
Each room functions as an “exhibition within an exhibition,” with objects displayed in the atmosphere of their original era and accompanied by two layers of interpretation: texts retrieved from contemporary documents and modern texts explaining today’s curatorial perspective.
The final room gathers a symbolic object from each module, repositioned in a contemporary setting, to show how the passage of time and evolving ideas reshape the meanings of objects.
The exhibition invites a necessary discussion about museums, memory, and ideology, encouraging the public to reflect on how cultural institutions influence the way we relate to the past.
The opening will take place on December 18, 2025, at the History and Archaeology Section in the Citadel. The event is open to the public, and the exhibition will be on display throughout 2026.
