A museum "poses some problems", as Bernea claims in his turn. It supposes "an action which goes way beyond the physical limit of the exposed object" (Bernea, 1996:13). The "testimony" to which Bernea refers does not expose the object in order to have its "definition" planted inside the visitor's mind, but it somehow hides it from being seen, in order to open it to the inner eye. It shows it as "spirit," as Bernea would call it--and thus, we might add in our turn, as "mystery."  But this mystery constantly carries the testimony of a deep sense, of a meaning. What Blaga saw as "theory of knowledge," Bernea interprets as "mystical aesthetics."

Bernea's "testifying museography" has a second complementary foundation, in Orthodox spirituality: the organic. We must consider, he says, "the importance that Orthodoxy gives to the organic and to organicity" (idem: 7).  "Orthodoxy," Bernea goes on, "rejects a feeling without a concrete support (...), a feeling that does not ?heal,? through which the very matter is not transfigured. Which is the actual result of Incarnation? What is the use in glorifying and praising Incarnation, if not to discover the Spirit which animates and transfigures the object?" (idem: 8). Again, this dimension that became a museographic faith comes from a long tradition of modern Romanian thinking, from Eminescu to Mircea Eliade.

This Orthodox cult of organicity results in a certain "immediate trait," in a "strong material structure" of the museographic discourse. It's the faith that "it's good to have a least mediated contact with the object." From a strictly aesthetic point of view, this goes back to a graphic trait, to the constant care for matters and textures, to tactile challenges, the most non-mediated of all. Museographic discourse is thus a deeply object-related and visual one, and the exhibits are not covered in words, as words do not occur between them and the visitors.

There where these "principles" meet (even if Bernea stubbornly refused to speak about principles in his activity as a director of the museum), we find the central "solution" of the museum: "I put at the center of this museum ?the peasant's icon?"- Bernea said many times (Bernea, 1996:10). "Here, the Romanian peasant is not an idol, he is not idolized. Here we meet with his icon"--this underlines Andrei Plesu, in his turn, in the dialogue of "Cotidianul."  The icon, seen in it?s deeply and complex Orthodox sense, becomes an aesthetic precept. Objects are not "representations" of "a social or professional world," but "presentations" (presences) of a "spirit" about which they testify beyond their physical limits.