The History of Romania in One Object / Ceaușescu's Personality Cult in Paintings

With the strident personality cult that accompanied Nicolae Ceaușescu’s grip to power, our history saga arrives at one of its most dramatic milestones: the last decades of the communist dictatorship, when the descent into economic malaise, moral decay and diplomatic isolation was masked by a grotesque glorification of the country’s supreme leaders, Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu, who in a matter of days in December 1989 would trade this engineered adulation for the bullets of a firing squad.

Video presentation and text by historian Cornel Ilie, Deputy Director of the National History Museum of Romania.

Follow the event on our Blog.

Historian Cornel Ilie is currently Deputy Director of The National History Museum of Romania in Bucharest. Dr. Ilie published several books among which Între Bellu și Montparnasse. Români celebri în fața morții / Between Bellu and Montparnasse. Famous Romanians in Face of Death; Cealaltă față a comuniștilor / The Other Face of the Communists; Regimul comunist și muzeele de istorie din România / The Communist Regime and the History Museums in Romania. Throughout his career he curated many successful exhibitions such as The Romanians and the Great War, 1989. Thirty Years After… and Imagining the Balkans. Dr. Ilie coordinated the publication of over 30 exhibition catalogs.

Our online series THE HISTORY OF ROMANIA IN ONE OBJECT, developed in partnership with the The National History Museum of Romania, evokes decisive epochs in Romanian past starting from an artifact or vestige with powerful symbolic, representative value. In the following weeks the history of Romania will be revealed object by object, from prehistoric figurines and ancient jewelry to Medieval battle flags, modern symbols of power and makeshift machines for printing anti-communist manifestos.