The exhibition “Behaviour Patterns in the 18th Century”, available for visitors during December 5 – April 19 in the Stirbei Corps of Romania’s National Art Museum (MNAR) in Bucharest, will be officially opened on Thursday, starting at 6:30 pm.
According to a press release issued by Mediafax, the curator of the exhibition is Malina Contu, an expert of the European Art and Decorative Arts Bureau of MNAR. The exhibition includes 157 works from the patrimony of Romania’s National Art Museum, exhibited for the first time and explored in an interdisciplinary perspective that defined the Illuminist age. Most of the works are etchings and are revealing for the etiquette of the public and domestic space of the 18th century and, to some extent, for the present educational context.
The appearance and the development of the public space during the Age of Lights created a rising interest of moralists for behaviour patterns. These ideas represented, after the French Revolution of 1789, the foundation of the French education system that became a model for all modern school schedules.
Beside the educational message that is frequently moralistic, the works presented in the exhibition are also distinguished by the quality of execution and representative for the time the stamp creating techniques developed to the fullest. The etchings reflect a thorough interest in arts and most of them reproduce famous paintings by great artists of the time, such Jean-Honore Fragonard, Francois Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, Jean-Baptiste Huet and William Hogarth.
The exhibition “Behaviour Patterns in the 18th Century” is divided in four sections: “Education of the Child”, “Social Behaviour Patterns”, “Adolescence and Love” and “Classical Cultural Patterns”.
The first sections refer to the essential stages of education – childhood and adolescence – from the perspective of restrictions and permissiveness, according to recommendations published in the etiquette books of the time (especially the pedagogic novel “Emile Or On Education” by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
The last section is dedicated to classical literary patterns of that time, responsible for creating ideas about etiquette.
The access to the opening is made exclusively by invitation. The exhibition may be visited from Wednesday to Sunday, during 10.00 am – 6.00 pm.
The price of a ticket is RON 10 and access is free in the first Wednesday of each month.
