Studii și Materiale de Istorie Contemporană, vol. XXIII, 2024

Cristian VASILE, Istoria şi memoria unei secvenţe biografice: istoricul de artă Radu Bogdan – inspector general în Ministerul Artelor, 1948-1950 [The History and Memory of a Biographical Episode: Art Historian Radu Bogdan – Inspector General at the Ministry of Arts, 1948-1950] 

The full text is available on CEEOL/ Textul integral al studiului poate fi accesat prin CEEOL: https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=1327799   

This article examines the activity of art historian and critic, Radu Bogdan during the first years of the Romanian People’s Republic. At the time, he was a high-ranked official at the Ministry of Arts and Information (inspector general at the Arts Department – Directorate of Museums). My argument relies on two perspectives: the documentary one, based on archival material from the former Ministry of Arts and Information; and, an anamnestic one founded on Radu Bogdan’s recollections shared with his readers in the 1990s through memoirs and testimonies. I analyze Bogdan’s series of articles, A Witness of the Socialist Realism, published between 1995 and 1996 in the cultural magazine „Dilema”. In his historical evocations of the first postwar decade, Radu Bogdan admitted that he was one of the promoters of socialist realism. However, Bogdan insisted that he soon distanced himself from this Soviet ideology, which, after 1989, he categorically condemned. I assess Radu Bogdan’s attempt to come to terms with his communist past – his involvement in the state apparatus that established the cultural dogmas of the new regime. 

Keywords: memory, socialist realism, museums, political biography, Ministry of Arts and Information.