Contributions to ethnographic museography: the scholar Petre Ștefănucă

One of the main figures of the Romanian ethnographic museography of the interwar period was Petre Ștefănucă, the first Bessarabian who developed the concept of an ethnographic museum and for the first time expressed the idea of organizing a Bessarabian ethnographic museum in Chișinău. The author makes an analysis of the concept elaborated by P. Ștefănucă, concluding that the scientist defined an ethnographic museum as: – a means of saving and researching the ethnographic heritage and as a real living school of knowledge of the Romanian people between the Prut and the Dniester; – a scientific institution discussing a broad issue, that of integrating ethnology into history and, in its light, the relationship between a historical museum and an ethnographic museum; – a general museum, whose collections are based on a large typological diversity of cultural values, but with an emphasis on folk architecture and traditional techniques; – a repository of intangible heritage, suggesting that elements of this heritage be collected from peasants who are keepers of old beliefs and customs. P. Ștefănucă believed that the developed concept can be implemented only when the necessity and usefulness of the ethnographic museum for Bessarabia is realized by the whole society.