On the one hand, Bernea's founding act deeply affected the conservatism (and not the conservative thought!) of the "priests" of our ethnographic patrimony, while his gesture was unconsciously perceived as treason--therefore, even harder to forgive. With their deep knowledge and love of and for the peasant world, Bernea and his team at the museum were in a way, "of them;" they only assigned their knowledge and love a different significance, therefore ruining the very legitimate character of knowledge and love practiced by the "priests" of the patrimony. The authenticity of Bernea's gesture aims at the norm of "traditional" life, and not at the reality of habitual life, often mistaken by ethnographs. As we have seen, Bernea's exhibition was founded neither on an empirical-ethnographic knowledge of the "peasant", nor on a national dimension of the "Romanian people," which is precisely the foundation of the legitimate national ethnography and of its adjacent museography. However, it was not foreign matter, it wasn't something different, an imported notion of post-modernist anthropology, for instance. It wasn't a case of ignorance or lack of patriotism, either. It was the worst of it: heresy! Therefore, right after Bernea's death (followed by that of Irina Nicolau), there followed, almost naturally, a restoration period, which had almost nothing to do with communism and its resentments: it was only the annulment of the heresy itself and a forceful come-back of the prodigal son within the true, eternal national ethnology, which is still at the heart of the Romanian national identity. This restoration tendency which still goes on and will do so is not (only) a problem of petty individual games, but a fundamentally strategic one, pertaining to the nation's identity - therefore, to the legitimate nature of its defenders!

On the other hand, without wanting it or knowing it, Bernea offered a conservative vision which is beautiful, if we may say so. It's not a faithful representation of the social life we have here or elsewhere, but a presentation of what Ioan Stanomir calls in his paper dedicated to conservative consciousness, "the marks of traditional normality" (Stanomir, op.cit.203). Therefore, it is no wonder that a large group of intellectual elites in Romania, who are very sensitive to conservative values, have gladly found themselves inside Bernea's museum, while this museum was actually foreshadowing that which couldn't manifest itself as solid contemporary conservative thought.[9] 

[8]Anca Manolescu - another important collaborator of the Romanian Peasant Museum team, embraces this perspective when she writes in a recent issue of the cultural journal Dilema veche: "Postmodern thinkers are cautious when thinking about Plato and the tradition he created. They resent the conviction that there is an essence of realities that is superior to concrete manifestations, that founds them. Seen as ?essentialism,? this view is accused of metaphysical authoritarianism, of lack of respect towards the living diversity of the world which seem humiliated on the field of ideas. They also resent Plato's ?axiological monism,? which regroups values in a transcendent unity; they resent his political elitism, seen as an enemy of democracy, of an open society, which would legitimate, who knows, even the totalitarian state" . We can easily read between the lines the "disease" of which post-modernity suffers in this respect.

[9]Such a political thought and opinion seem to take shape, lately. In a recent article in Dilema Veche, for instance, Sever Voinescu would round them up: "I don't want to elude the meaning of this article (...). I want to transmit to all those who share conservative values that they are more than they imagine and that Romania needs them and their abilities, and, most of all, their moral sense." Obviously, we are dealing with the "true conservatives," not those of Voiculescu's; party, we are talking about "people of the conservative electing group" who "have their favorite authors, as Mr Baconski and Patapievici, as well as a political project that I look upon with some hope."