The Museum of Childhood

Coming into the world. From spirits to the Spirit

The first exhibition, the first room

14 March – 15 April 2012, the Irina Nicolau Room

The National Museum of the Romanian Peasant

The Childhood: Remains and Heritage/Copilăria: Rămășițe și patrimoniu European project, co-ordinated by the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant, offers you the rare opportunity to follow – and even contribute to, with your ideas, objects and stories – the creation of a virtual museum of childhood. After almost a year of research and fieldwork, now we begin! We remind those interested in the subject that our ambition is to present in the museum not only rural but also urban traditions, not only the distant but also the recent past, as well as the fast-changing present, hoping thereby to highlight not only local differences, but also perceptions of childhood that are shared by different times and places.

We begin with the opening of the first future museum room, named Coming into the world: From spirits to the Spirit. From the question “Where do children come from?” to “What happens to them after they die?”, from magical rituals of welcome and destiny to the rite of baptism, from exciting quests (e.g. for the rural equivalent of the nursing bottle) to unexpected discoveries (e.g. old accounts of urban boyar baptismal ceremonies), the exhibition will be a fascinating journey both for children (who will also be able to take part in a surprise workshop) and for parents, educators, ethnologists, and grandparents.