Ilya Rabinovich
Museutopia :National museums in Moldova project 2008
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My Ongoing Museutopia project investigates and documents the representation and shaping of national identity narratives through National Museum exhibitions. In its first chapter, which took place in 2008, I concentrated on Moldovan National museums.
My research consisted of photographing the on-display collections at the Moldovan museums and then juxtaposing my photographs with found footage from archives of those museums. Furthermore, I have searched for written information that could shed light on the changes that those institutes were going through after the Independence of the Moldovan Republic in 1989. Specifically, I focused on The National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History, the National Museum of History and Archeology, The National Museum of Fine Arts, The Pedagogical Museum, The Military Museum, The Union of the Writers Museum, and The Union of the Public Transport Workers Museum. I also photographed former buildings of other museums directly connected to the former regime. Obviously, those institutes ceased to exist after Moldavia’s independence.