Romfilatelia, the company specialized in issuing and trading Romanian postage stamps, introduces into the postal network a postal stamp issue dedicated to the National Village Museum”Dimitrie Gusti” that celebrates 70 years since its foundation.
In 1936, in Herastrau Park of Bucharest, one of the first outdoor ethnographic museums of Romania and of the World was created: The Village Museum.
The idea of the type of institution represented by the Village Museum is the materialization of Frederic le Play and his School’s theory about a “social museum”, a “museum village” – as seen by Dimitire Gusti and his disciples – that aggregates the features and the identity of all the villages of Romania. The creation of the Village Museum is the result of intense and sustained theoretical and practical research, as well as of some museographic experiments dating more than a decade ago, coordinated by professor Dimitrie Gusti, founder of the Sociologic School of Bucharest.
Based on these experiments, on an assiduous conception activity and on the moral and material support of the Royal Foundation “Prince Carol II”, starting from March 1936, in only two months time, an exceptional work of museography was achieved: The Village Museum. In this short time interval, the teams of specialists and students managed by professors D. Gusti and H. H. Stahl purchased from the researched villages peasant constructions (houses, household facilities, churches, technical installations) and interior objects (furniture, ceramics, fabrics, tools), considered to be representative of their places of origin. The purchases, which are entirely original, are evidences of the Romanian traditional life, but, at the same time, these illustrate certain conceptions of museography and of preserving the built patrimony; these have been illustrating the road covered since the first researches coordinated by Dimitrie Gusti until now, a road spread with another 18 museums inspire by it.
The official opening of The Village Museum took place on the 10th of May 1936, in the presence of King Carol II and, for the public, one week later (17th of May 1936). Since its foundation, The Village Museum has had a strong impact on the international scientific world. After less than one year since its inauguration, in February 1937, Gusti and his collaborators – who had contributed to the foundation of the museum – were invited to participate, with a selection of objects representative for Romanian popular culture, in the International Exhibition in Paris, in a pavilion reserved for Romania. Moreover, the Romanian specialists were provided with additional space, at Porte Maillot, in an exhibition called “The Rural Lodging”. There, the commissaries of the exhibition, H. H. Stahl and V. I. Popa, rebuilt, out of original pieces, including a monumental Maramures Gate and a house façade, by means of models and dioramas, a corner of a Romanian village. Also, the scale model of The Village Museum was exhibited in order to announce the emergence of a new museum on the world museums map and to arouse the desire of the public to visit it, to get to know it.
Today, the National Village Museum “Dimitire Gusti” exhibits more than 300 buildings (peasant households, outbuildings, churches, etc.) that cover 10 hectares of the 12.5 hectares of the entire surface of the museum space. Due to its size, it has become one of the most significant museums of the kind in Europe, attracting countless Romanian and foreign tourists every year.
As recognition of its international level prestige, the National Village Museum “Dimitrie Gusti” is a member of international bodies and associations, including the European Association of Outdoor Museums, affiliated to U.N.E.S.CO.; I.C.OM.; I.O.V. (International Organization of Popular Art).
