The Romanian Peasant National Museum is the repository of a long museum tradition dating back to 1875 when, upon Titu Maiorescu's proposal, under the National Antiquities Museum, the first textile art department emerged, with "things made in the countryside: clothes, carpets, cloth, etc", of which the treasure-collections of the museum have preserved several exhibits to this day. Spiru Haret had the idea of founding such a museum, that was established on the 1st of October 1906 as an autonomous folk art museum: the Museum of Ethnography, National Art, Decorative and Industrial Art located in the building of the former Treasury. The outstanding art historian Alexandru Tzigara-Samurc...aş was appointed director. He conferred a prestigious scientific and cultural status to the institution, and changed its name first to the Museum of Ethnography and National Art, and in 1912 to the Museum of National Art. In 1931 the folk art exhibition was inaugurated. In 1953 it moved to the Ştirbei Palace building, in Calea Victoriei, where it functioned for 25 years, under the name of the Museum of Folk Art of the Republic, under the leadership of Tancred Bănăţeanu, a remarkable ethnographer. In 1978 it merged with the Village Museum under the name of the Village and Folk Art Museum. In 1990 the museum, bearing the current name, returned to the former premises. The building, listed as a monument of architecture, sheltering the Romanian Peasant Museum, was built by the arhitect Nicolae Ghika-Budeşti, a brilliant representative of the Romanian architecture school. The museum presents costumes, pottery, furniture, wooden and glass icons, xylographs, religious items, fabrics, carpets, tools, as well as an important collection of foreign folk art, emerged due to the endeavours of the ethnographer Tancred Bănăţeanu. All the collections include about 90,000 items, 70,000 artefacts from the old collection and 20,000 acquired after 1990. The display of the permanent exhibition is innovative and original. After 1990 six wooden churches in danger from the Arad and Hunedoara counties were acquired, four of them conserved "in situ", and two, in the museum precinct. The museum owns goods listed in the National Cultural Heritage Treasure.
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