Incandescent steel and smoky chimneys. 300 years of industrial history in Mountainous Banat Montan

Incandescent steel and smoky chimneys. 300 years of industrial history in  Mountainous Banat Montan 

Venue: Museum of Contemporary Art, str. Tribunei, no. 6, room no. 2
Duration: 13.07 - 14.08.2022
Opening: Wednesday, July 13, 2022, 3:30 p.m.
Curator: Valentin Trifescu
Speeches:
Prof. univ. dr. Rudolf Gräf, Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca / Director of the Sibiu Institute of Socio-Human Research of the Romanian Academy
 dr. Dacian Rancu, manager of the County Museum and of the Caransebeș Border Regiment
Organizers: Central Museum of the Danube Swabians in Ulm, Germany; Caraş-Severin County Council, County Museum of Ethnography and Border Regiment, Caransebeș; Sibiu Institute of Socio-Human Studies of the Romanian Academy; Banat Mountain Museum, Resita; Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu.

At a time when the old centres on the territory of today’s Romania, comprising the mining or metal processing industry, have become a research topic of industrial archaeology, rather than spaces that will preserve their purpose, this exhibition presents a suite of historical images, which recreates an entire chapter of economic history. From the Austrian conquest of the Mountainous Banat to the present day, through archival documents we are given back drawings, maps, postcards or photographs accounting not only for the variety of metalworking machinery or the evolution of industrial architecture, but also for countless scenes of daily life or work. Beyond their apparent lack of hospitality, the mines, foundries, factories or metal processing halls on the territory of Mountainous Banat Montan acquired, on the occasion of this exhibition, the status of true “places of memory”; they are loaded with a deep human dimension, because people put their passion and love in these places, they worked and lived herein.

Text: Valentin Trifescu.