The Book and Romanian Exile Museum

The "Museum of the Romanian Book and Exile" constitutes a unique, large-scale project, whose well-defined purpose is the reunification of Romanian culture with the cultural patrimony produced outside the country, from the post-war Romanian exile up to the present day. Its holdings include nearly 40 collections of immense value in terms of their content: The "Academician Basarab Nicolescu" Collection; The "Leonid Mămăligă" Collection; The "Neuilly Circle" Archive Collection; The "Hyperion Association" Archive Collection; The "Mircea Milcovitch and Maria Mesterou" Collection; The "Andrei Șerban" Collection; The "Paul Barbăneagră" Collection; The "Corneliu Șerban Popa" Collection; The "Vintilă Horia" Collection; The "Cicerone Poghirc" Collection; The "Andrei Codrescu" Collection; The "Carmen Firan and Andrei Sângeorzan" Donation; The "Victor Cupșa" Collection; The "Constantza Buzdugan" Donation; The "Bujor Nedelcovici" Collection; The "Cezar Vasiliu" Collection; The "Valeriu Veliman" Donation; The "Mircea Eliade" Collection; The "Emil Cioran" Collection; The "Ileana and Romulus Vulpescu" Collection; The "Șerban Viorel and Rodica Stănoiu" Donation; The "Academician Dan Berindei" Collection; The "Academician Dinu C. Giurescu" Collection; The "Academician Ștefan Ștefănescu" Donation; The "Romanian Institute/Romanian Library in Freiburg" Donation; The "George Banu" Collection; The "Dumitru Milcoveanu" Collection; The "Octav Calleya" Collection; The "Horia-Dinu Nicolaescu" Donation; The "Nicolas Adam" Collection; The "Ion Deaconescu" Donation; The "Aurora Cornu" Collection; The "Miron Kiropol" Collection; The "Grigore Arbore" Collection; The "Theodor Damian" Collection; The "George Roca" Collection; The "Romanian-American Academy of Arts and Sciences" Collection; The "Romanian Exile Memory at the National Romanian Television" Collection. The project emerged from the need to create an overview of Romanian spiritual creations, made beyond the country's borders during the communist regime.

The uniqueness of the Museum's holdings lies within a formidable, remarkable diversity, easily noticeable, especially in terms of the fields represented, ranging from the humanities and social sciences, theology and music, to performing and visual arts, as well as the types of materials that make up each individual collection. When visiting a multitude of museum exhibits, one can observe handwritten dedications in highly valuable books, original manuscripts and documents from the libraries of the personalities represented in the Museum, thousands of pages of correspondence from famous exiled writers, presented for the first time to the Romanian public, as well as unique pieces of visual art in painting, sculpture, drawing, or engraving.

The archives held in the museum's collection serve as a robust testimony, a documentary fresco of the cultural, scientific, and artistic activities undertaken by personalities of the Romanian exile. They also represent an invaluable research tool for all those concerned with the creations and memories of cultural figures who settled around the globe during the era dominated by Romanian communism.

The museum's efforts, therefore, aim to popularize the works signed by prominent names of the Romanian exile which, up to now, have circulated for almost half a century solely outside the country's borders, with only a small portion being published and translated into Romanian.