Juliana Maxim: The Village Museum during the First Communist Decades and the Transformations of Gusti’s Legacy
The Village Museum in the first communist decades and the transformations of the Gusti legacy
The article examines the postwar transformations of one particular legacy of the Bucharest School of Sociology, the Village Museum, now the Dimitrie Gusti National Village Museum. It argues that in new political context of the late 1940s and 1950s, the open-air museum radically changed its mission and approach to the collection and display of folk architecture
and artifacts. The article also explores the relationship between the museum and two central policies of the socialist state: the collectivization of rural property and the construction of vast modern housing districts for the urban population.
Keywords: open-air museum, folk architecture, collectivization, modernization, model village.
