The Diplomat
The exhibition La camisa. La elegancia de la vestimenta can be visited at the Museo de Arte y Tradiciones Populares de Madrid (Centro Cultural La Corala, C. de Carlos Arniches, 3,5) from next Monday until 24 June.
The ASTRA National Museum Complex in Sibiu is presenting this emblematic exhibition, which brings together 138 exceptional pieces of Romanian national heritage, 130 of which are classified in the Treasure and Fonds categories.
The heritage exhibition is made possible thanks to the collaboration between the Museum Complex, the Museum of Art and Popular Traditions of Madrid and the Instituto Rumano de Cultura of Madrid, under the auspices of the Romanian Embassy, with the patronage of the Romanian Ministry of Culture.
The inauguration will take place on Monday at 6.30 p.m., in the presence of representatives of the Spanish museum – the rector of the Autonomous University of Madrid, Miguel Manso Silván, and the museum’s curator Ana Isabel Díaz-Plaza Varón -, representatives of the Madrid City Council, the Chargé d’Affaires a.i. of the Romanian Embassy, the Romanian Embassy of Romania, Miguel Manso Silván, and the curator of the museum, Ana Isabel Díaz-Plaza Varón, as well as representatives of the Madrid City Council. of the Romanian Embassy, Raluca Mihăilă, the director of the ICR Madrid, Maria Floarea Pop, and the representatives of the ASTRA Museum, Mirela Crețu, director of collections management, Iulia Teodorescu, Elena Găvan and Camelia Ștefan, who will give lectures and offer a guided tour of the exhibition.
The exhibition brings together shirts from the collections of the ASTRA Museum in Sibiu, exhibited individually or in sets of traditional costumes, belonging to the Transylvanian multi-ethnic space in dialogue with shirts from neighbouring areas, from the late 19th to the 20th century. The heritage status of traditional costume begins to be recognised in this period, in the political-cultural context of the search for and definition of national identity. The costumes chosen highlight the importance of the dress of those who wore them, with similar elements of tailoring but treated differently from one region to another. The emphasis is on the elegance of the costume and the importance of the social status of the wearer at a particular time in his or her life. They become non-verbal codes with a strong visual impact.
There will be nine spectacular costumes for girls and wives from the Sibiu area, Marginimea Sibiului (Rășinari, Săliște), the Olt Country (Săcădate, Avrig), the Rupea area (Paloș), the Hârtibaci Valley (Săsăuș) and two male costumes from Marginimea Sibiului (Săliște) and the Hârtibaci Valley (Săsăuș). The exhibition will be completed with shirts from Sibiu, the Apuseni Mountains and Țara Bârsei, festive head cloths from Avrig, Jina and Sibiu with unpublished samples of embroidery and three sheets from the Minerva Cosma Album (35 samples of embroidery) and 14 more representative samples of shirt stitching.
Visitors will be invited to discover the Transylvanian world of the first half of the 20th century through watercolours and photographs from the documentary archive of the ASTRA Museum, and to discover the patterns of local shirts made by the ethnographer and sensitive watercolourist Iuliana Fabritius-Dancu.
