Reestablished on February 5th 1990, the Romanian Peasant Museum is the continuator of a long museological tradition. In 1906 the first autonomous museum for peasant art was established. Lucky circumstances brought the art historian Alexandru Tzigara-Samurcaş as its first director. He renamed the institution the Ethnography and National Art Museum and from 1912 on, the National Art Museum. During the 40 years of Tzigara Samurcaş’ leadership the museum was in the avant-garde of European museology.

The so-called “liberation” of 1944 led to the “liberation” of the museum from its own home and its replacement with the Lenin-Stalin Museum.The National Art Museum moved, as a tenant, in Ştirbei Palace on Calea Victoriei, for 25 years and under a new name: the Popular Art Museum of the Romanian Popular/Socialist Republic. During this period, the museographers were forced to “forget” exhibiting some valuable collection pieces, especially the religious ones. However, they succeeded in increasing the heritage of the museum with three times as much objects of peasant art.

In 1978, the Popular Art Museum and the Village Museum are united in one institution. The unification mainly meant that most of collections of the Popular Art museum remained hidden in a long and unhealthy sleep until 1990 when the museum was reestablished and brought back to its home on Kiseleff no.3.