The Ethnographic Museum in Lupsa
The village of Lupsa is home to one of the ethnographic gems of the area: the Pamfil Albu Ethnographic Museum
România Internațional, 04.10.2014, 14:05
Situated in the Aries Valley, in the region known as the Moti Land, in the Western Carpathian Mountains, the village of Lupsa is home to one of the ethnographic gems of the area: the “Pamfil Albu” Ethnographic Museum. The result of teacher Pamfil Albu’s life-long work, the museum’s collections are representative for the trades specific to the area, namely mining and farming, but they also illustrate people’s everyday life in the past. Currently, the curator of the museum in Lupsa is Pamfil Albu’s daughter, Monica Rotaru, who told us more about the edifice:
“ My father was a teacher in Lupsa, and his father-in-law was a also a teacher and priest. My grandfather, Sebastian Ceapa, was very much interested in making a monograph of the commune and needed documents. That is why he asked my father to search those documents. Traveling here and around, my father noticed that some old objects had been simply thrown away and neglected by villagers. This is how he got idea of bringing them together and making a collection for school. This is how my father started collecting items for the ethnographic museum. Visiting people’s houses he saw many things that he knew that would be extremely valuable in the future. In just a few years, from 1937 until 1950, he managed to gather over 2500 items of all sorts, made of wood, stone or textile materials, ceramics and actually everything that can be found in a community. He displayed the items in two rooms in an old school, but they soon became too small. It was then that he decided to establish a museum and got support to do that. Near the church in the centre of the village there was a building built in 1872 which belonged to the church and he asked for that space. The church donated the building to the state, and later became home to my father’s collection. In 1950, when the collection was quite large, my father donated it to the state. He understood that by doing that Lupsa could become a representative place for the Moti Land, and even more, for the entire area of the Western Carpathian Mountains. “
Therefore, the museum started being organized as such after 1950, and Pamfil Albu was helped by the then director of the Ethnographic Museum of Transylvania, based in Cluj-Napoca. Pamfil Albu died in 1990. During his life he taught his daughter how to recognize and assess quality objects, passing on to her the collector’s spirit. Today Monica Rotaru knows all about the museum’s heritage and continues to collect old objects from the people of Lupsa. Monica Rotaru:
“The collection is quiet varied. It includes objects related to the locals’ occupations starting with the secondary ones: fishing, bee growing and hunting. Then there are the objects related to primary occupations such as farming and animal breeding. We have a room with objects specific to a sheepfold. The museum also includes an area where my father tried to present, in chronological order, all the grinding systems used to grind wheat after the harvest. On the first floor, for instance, visitors will discover tools specific to wood working and wood bucket making. As of 1980 we have run out of funds for acquisitions but I used my own resources, because the locals continued to bring me various objects for the museum. This is how I managed to gather tens of objects, mainly wooden ones.”
Today the museum, located in the main street in Lupsa, which links with the main road crossing the Moti Land and leads to traditional mining settlements such as Rosia Montana, is admired by both Romanian and foreign tourists who are happy to discover there objects that they thought had been lost for ever.
