Six Romanian museums participate in an exhibition in New York with a selection of 60 prehistoric and protohistoric artifacts from the Neolithic, the Bronze Age and up to the second Iron Age, representing the exceptional testimonies of some of the first agricultural communities established in Europe.

According to a press statement released by the National History Museum of Romania (MNIR), it is about the international exhibition Ritual and Memory: The Ancient Balkans and Beyond, a cultural event in New York, at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World of New York University.

This exhibition, part of the international exhibition project "The First Kings of Europe," is open from September 21, 2022 to February 19, 2023.

The international cultural project "The First Kings of Europe", organised in two cities in the USA - New York and Chicago, as well as one in Canada - Gatineau is initiated by the Field Museum of Chicago, the US in collaboration with more than 20 other museums from South-East and Central Europe.

The exhibition, mounted for the first time in North American museums, brings together over 750 important cultural assets from museum collections from Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and Hungary.

For Romania, the coordinator of the exhibition project is the National History Museum of Romania, which collaborates with five other museums: the National History Museum of Transylvania (Cluj), the Neamt National Museum Complex (Piatra Neamt), the Gumelnita Civilisation Museum (Oltenita), the Oltenia Museum (Craiova) and the Buzau County Museum.

Displayed in the Ritual and Memory: The Ancient Balkans and Beyond together with other exceptional exhibits from other museum collections from the mentioned countries, is a selection of 60 prehistoric and protohistoric artefacts, dating back to the Neolithic, Bronze Age and until the second Iron Age, coming from the collections of the said Romanian museums.

Featuring loans from eleven different countries, Ritual and Memory presents an exciting opportunity for audiences to experience archaeological artefacts from the region that stretches from the Balkan Mountains through the Carpathian Basin. Although many American museums have entire galleries filled with works from the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and the ancient Near and Far East, as well as from other cultures, artifacts from ancient southeastern Europe are unfamiliar and rarely exhibited reads a MNIR press statement.

According to the quoted source, the artefacts on display are the exceptional testimonies of some of the first agricultural communities established in Europe and then of the various populations from the Metal Age who lived in the said geographical area, revealing their important artistic and technological achievements, as well as spiritual beliefs and ritual practices of these ancient civilizations.

The exhibition and the international project "The First Kings of Europe" of which it is a part, mark a special moment of cultural co-operation between the US, Canada and South-Eastern Europe, in a contemporary time of unprecedented opportunities to explore new perspectives on the beginnings of history in this part of the world, says MNIR. AGERPRES (RO - author: Eusebi Manolache, editor: Catalin Alexandru; EN - author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu, editor: Adina Panaitescu)

Photo source: Muzeul Național de Istorie a României / facebook.com