#Exhibit of the Month

The Roman bronze situla comes from a collection of archaeological artifacts confiscated at customs and transferred to the holdings of the National Museum of History of Moldova in 2009. Its place of discovery remains unknown.

A situla (Latin for "bucket") is a metal vessel-usually made of bronze-shaped like a pail and equipped with two movable handles at the top, traditionally used for mixing wine with water. The handles are attached to the vessel via two decorated ears that are welded to the rim.

The body of the situla is truncated-conical in shape and features two decorative bands with small circular patterns formed by hammering, located just below the rim.

Its base is double-layered: the inner bottom is hemispherical and hammered, while the outer bottom is flat and lathe-made. The outer base is welded to the inner bottom, serving as the vessel's foot-support.

This object was crafted using a combination of casting, hammering, and partial lathe-finishing. Dimensions: Maximum height - 31.7 cm; Maximum diameter - 22.8 cm; Base diameter - 13.5 cm

Situlae of this type originated in the Roman Empire and were later adopted by various ancient peoples, including those from the northwestern Pontic region.

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The photo-documentary exhibition “Childhood in the Gulag” on the agenda of the national program “Timișoara – European capital of culture in 2023”

April 21, 2023

On April 21, 2023, at the invitation of colleagues from the Memorial of Revolution in Timișoara (Romania), took place the vernissage "Childhood in the Gulag" (curator Ludmila D. Cojocaru), organized within the National Cultural Program "Timișoara - European Capital of Cultures in the year 2023".

The exhibition presents photo-documentary images about the life of Bessarabian children condemned by the totalitarian-communist regime of the Moldavian SSR to deportation, starvation, Russification, indoctrination, forced excision from their own families, during the years 1940-1941 and 1944-1953.

The exhibition approach brings together about 180 photo-documentary images, accompanied by memories and archival documents from the collections of the National Museum of History of Moldova, the Edineț County Museum, the Museum of History and Ethnography from Soroca, the INIS ProMemoria Archive of the MSU, as well as from the archives of the communities memory and of the survivors of the totalitarian-communist regime in the Moldavian SSR.

The Opening started by the presentation of the Director of the Memorial of Revolution in Timișoara, Mr. Gino Rado, who mentioned the importance of carrying out joint cultural projects on historical knowledge regarding the phenomenon of totalitarianism, on both banks of the Prut River. The concept of the exhibition was presented by Dr. Ludmila D. Cojocaru and Dr. Virgiliu Bîrlădeanu, relating on the actuality of the recovering, documentation and historical investigation of the testimonies of the victims of the totalitarian-communist regime in Bessarabia. In his speech, Mr. Cosmin A. Tabără, the deputy mayor of Timișoara, reiterated the existence of dramatic pages of common history, on which we have the duty to reflect in order not to allow their repetition.

The opening of the photo-documentary exhibition "Childhood in the Gulag" at the Memorial of Revolution in Timișoara is a tribute to the memory of children who went through the atrocities of the totalitarian communist regime in the USSR, as well as a commemoration of the recent victims among children in the context of the Russian Federation war on the territory of Ukraine.

The photo-documentary exhibition "Childhood in the Gulag" can be visited between April 21 and May 18, 2023, at the headquarters of the Memorial of Revolution in Timișoara (str. Oituz, no. 2B, Timișoara municipality, Romania).