Re-writing Romanian History

Museum Studies professor will use Connaught Award to explore how museums cope with political pressure

Associate Professor Irina D. Mihalache’s latest research project explores how Romania’s Communist government used the nation’s once-flourishing museum network to impose its political agenda and narratives throughout the country during its 50 years of power. She hopes this work, for which she has received a Connaught Mid-Career Researcher Award, will offer insights and even inspiration to today’s museum and cultural professionals, many of whom now find themselves under attack for their progressive, anti-racist, and social justice work. 

“The un-making of national history and identity through museums was one of the preferred modes of action of the post-1947 Romanian Communist state,” writes Mihalache, who, as a child, witnessed the violence of Romania’s December 1989 revolution. She grew up in the post-Communist country before leaving to attend university in the United States and Canada. She is currently Director of the Faculty of Information’s Master of Museum Studies program. 

Entitled “Re-Writing National History in Romanian Museums, 1850s–1989: Stories from Museum Professionals,” the new project will use archival research, oral history, and creative storytelling, to reveal both the fragility of  institutions under political pressure and the quiet acts of resistance by museum workers who sought to preserve cultural truth. 

It centers on the curators, archivists, and administrators who lived through the country’s ideological shifts. “Professionals found ways to protect collections, reinterpret history, and subtly challenge the official narrative,” Mihalache writes. 

While there have been numerous memory-making projects since the Ceausescu regime fell in 1989, Mihalache’s community-centered research proposes a historical account of Romania’s museology that considers the role of museums during the full range of nation-making moments, from the country’s unification in 1859 to the present. She will carry out the research over the next two years in conversation with Romanian museum professionals. 

“The insights will matter to community-based researchers beyond museum studies interested in thoughtful approaches to outsider-insider work, and working across borders, languages, and cultures,” Mihalache writes.