This small independent museum starts from a family archive, but speaks of a community, of a city and of fundamental human experiences, and does so by a spatial and auditory experience rather than by classical museum means<\/p>\n
Project: Atelier MASS<\/strong> About a year ago, we received the less ordinary challenge of creating an exhibition scenography for a complex story. The space in the not-so-high semi-basement, sporting four concrete pillars in the middle, was a blank page on which anything could be done. But how can you showcase, in an interesting and exciting way, a piece of history reconstructed from relatively few, but very different letters, documents and artefacts? Everybody on the team gathered around Flavia and Dan Craioveanu contributed as well as they could to turn their idea into a very special place – a Cluj Jews’ history museum, started from the founders’ personal inquiry into their families’ past.<\/p>\n It all started with an old closet, where Dan discovered the completely fascinating story of his Jewish family, an archive of documents and objects collected in his parents’ home for over 100 years. Ever since, Flavia has been studying carefully, creating an incredibly rich family history, based on hundreds of letters, documents, memories and photographs. They wanted the story to stay out the bottom of a closet, they wanted it known. This is how they came up with the idea of creating Muzeon, a museum where history has a voice, the voice of the people living it. Now it is the visitors’ turn to experience the same emotion they felt when discovering all those forgotten life stories.<\/p>\n Many obstacles had to be overcome, from idea to final result, and it took a lot of courage and determination for things to take shape. They found a place in downtown Cluj, in the generous semi-basement of a building close to Matthias Corvinus’ house, at 3, Virgil Fulicea St. Next, they had to find the necessary funds to set up and plan, and that took about a year and a half.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n\t
\nText: Camelia Sisak<\/strong>
\nPhoto: Gouwy Lieven<\/strong><\/p>\n