The exhibition "The Art of the Top Sleeve Embroidery Folk Blouse" that brings together heritage items from the collections of the Bucharest Village Museum and the National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History in Chisinau opened on Thursday, on the Universal Day of the Romanian Blouse, at the H.H. Stahl Foyer of the 'Dimitrie Gusti' National Village Museum.

"We didn't radically separate the costumes from the Republic of Moldova from the costumes from Romania's region of Moldova - I would say that both are Romanian - from our Moldova, so to say. We cannot even distinguish which are from beyond the Prut and which are from our side of the Prut River (...), because the Prut was never a real border. It was just a transitional border. Otherwise, the Romanian spirituality was at home on both sides of the river," said the manager of the Village Museum, Paula Popoiu.

The exhibition brings together 30 folk costume items handpicked from the 15,000 in the heritage of the Village Museum.

Secretary of State in the Culture Ministry Liviu Bratescu welcomed the shift to another stage of the entire Romanian society, which has put behind the idyllic phase of the "flower bridge across the Prut".

"We have passed to another stage, this time through the collaboration of ethnography experts from the Republic of Moldova and Romania. (...) In this area of tangible heritage things may be sometimes less spectacular, but they are very important to us, because they have to do with our identity and our national specificity. Such an exhibition too can be proof that this post-1990 paradigm that was widespread in the Romanian society, regarding the preservation of the national identity and the affirmation of our place in the European culture can be overcome. I think we all have a cultural reservoir that allows us to equally manifest ourselves," said Bratescu.

Irina Badiuc, head of the Heritage, Archiving and Replenishing Department of the Chisinau National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History, told AGERPRES that the exhibition includes 14 folk costumes "that attempt to ethnographically cover the Republic of Moldova".

"On display are costumes from the north, center and southeast that are part of our museum's highly valuable folk costume collection, which has more than 2,000 storage units, given that the bases of this collection were set at the end of the 19th century and in the early 20th century, when the first custodians were gathering shirts, skirts, belts and headdresses donated by personalities or common people," Irina Badiuc explained.

"They are richly ornamented with symbols, because, in the end, they perpetuate into eternity the emotions of the women who wore them," the museographer explained.

The event was attended by Adrian Dupu, Secretary of State with the Romanian Government's Department for Liasion with the Republic of Moldova, and Emil Jacota, chargé d'affaires at the Embassy of the Republic of Moldova in Bucharest.

The exhibition opened at the Village Museum in collaboration with the Embassy of the Republic of Moldova in Romania promotes the file 'The Art of the Top Sleeve Embroidery Folk Blouse - Ia, a Cultural Identity Element in Romania and the Republic of Moldova' for inducting the 'ia' in the UNESCO Intangible World Heritage List. AGERPRES (RO - author: Daniel Popescu, editor: Mihai Simionescu; EN - editor: Simona Klodnischi)