Women’s lives in the 20th century at a “parallel” exhibition in Odorheiu Secuiesc
MúzeumCafé 50.
An unusual exhibition for Sekler Land museums opened at the HaázRezső Museum in OdorheiuSecuiesc in the spring of 2015. Anna – a Woman’s Life in the 20th Century recalls the last century through one woman’s two paths of life, and does so by displaying ethnographic items which are still used in Sekler Land today. Visitors get an insight in the life of an average retired woman, who lived alone in Sekler Land. The exhibition opened on 22 May and has attracted more than 3000 visitors so far. Billboards with a poster advertising the exhibition can be seen by the side of many busy roads in OdorheiuSecuiesc, and on entering the museum courtyard the same poster greets you. The exhibition is staged upstairs above the permanent exhibitions. The idea goes back to 2010 when young Transylvanian ethnographers, including ZoltánMiklós the director of the OdorheiuSecuiesc museum, were thinking about how their institutes could present themselves in a manner different from the past. A team was formed in 2013 and last year was spent on working out the concept and acquiring the objects, which was followed by staging the exhibition. The exhibition presents the life story of a woman who was born in a village in 1920, the year of the Trianon Treaty, up to the changes of 1989–90. Besides objects of personal use and pieces of furniture, there are video installations, sound recordings and narrations. The unusual exhibition in the HaázRezső Museum is primarily ethnographic, but it raises many questions that could give rise to university sociological and historical studies. Visitors view the 20th century and can experience what their mothers or grandmothers must have gone through. Anna’s life could have been shared by all, should they have been born a woman in the early 20th century.