EXHIBITION EVENT AT THE TRANSYLVANIAN MUSEUM OF ETHNOGRAPHY ORGANIZED ON THE OCCASION OF THE NATIONAL CULTURE DAY 2022.
The Transylvanian Museum of Ethnography, public cultural institution operating under the authority of the Cluj County Council, invites you on Friday, January 14th 2022, at 1 pm, to the opening of the exhibition “Words and Things”. The drawings of the correspondents to the indirect linguistic surveys of the Romanian Language Museum, opened on the occasion of the National Culture Day 2022.
Exhibition title: “Words and Things”. Drawings of the correspondents to the indirect linguistic surveys of the Romanian Language Museum.
Organized by:
The “Sextil Pușcariu” Institute of Linguistics and Literary History, the Romanian Academy – the Cluj-Napoca Branch
The Transylvanian Museum of Ethnography, Cluj-Napoca
Opening of the exhibition: Friday, January 14th, 2022, at 1 pm.
The Transylvanian Museum of Ethnography, 21, Memorandum Street, the Reduta Hall
Invited guests: Dr. Gheorghe Mândrescu, Dr. Ion Cuceu
Curator: CS III Dr. Cosmina-Maria Berindei
Between 1922-1937, the Romanian Language Museum in Cluj-Napoca, an institution founded in 1919, in addition to the Romanian university in the capital of Transylvania, was sending to intellectuals from the Greater Romania villages, eight questionnaires that constituted the indirect linguistic survey, designed by Sextil Pușcariu for recording the spoken language facts. The topics of these questionnaires were: Questionnaire I. The Horse (1922), Questionnaire II. The House (1926), Questionnaire III. The Thread (1929), Questionnaire IV. Toponyms and personal names (1930), Questionnaire V. Sheepfold, shepherding and milk preparation (1931), Questionnaire VI. Beekeeping (1933), Questionnaire VII. Musical Instruments (1935), Questionnaire VIII. Food and Beverage (1937).
Tributary to the “Wörter und Sachen” methodology, manifested at the beginning of the 20th century, especially in German philology and which argued that the study of words, in order to establish their etymology and history, had to be done in close connection with the study of artefacts and all the cultural aspects they were part of, Sextil Pușcariu encouraged the correspondents participating in the Museum’s surveys to illustrate their answers, offering not only linguistic information, but also drawings, when their artistic skills would allow it. Thus, the survey notebooks brought together graphic representations of the thematic universe of the questionnaires, offering ethnographic evidence from the beginning of the 20th century, unique in their genuine expressiveness.
The exhibition contains drawings from the fund of answers to the questionnaires of the Romanian Language Museum, completed with some drawings from the fund of answers to the questionnaires of the Transylvanian Museum of Ethnography, filled in, to a large extent, by the same correspondents.
The exhibition is organized within the Research Grant made with financial support from the Recurrent Donor Fund, available for the Romanian Academy and managed by the “PATRIMONIU” Foundation GAR-UM-2019-I-1.5-5, the Digital Library of Answers to the Romanian Language Museum Questionnaires. Integrated management and metadata system (BIBLIO - MLRom), Contract number 359C / 15.10.2019.