Inauguration of the new location
National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), Bucharest/ Romania
Iosif Kiraly, from the Indirect series, 1991
Wing E4, Palace of the Parliament,
Opening Entrance – Calea 13 Septembrie
Official Opening:
October 29th 2004, 7.00 pm
General Director: Mihai Oroveanu
Artistic Director: Ruxandra Balaci
From the 1st of November
Open daily: 10AM – 18 PM
information: + 0040-21-3111026
info [at] mnac.ro www.mnac.ro
The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest announces the opening of its new venue in Wing E4 of the Palace of the Parliament. This new space devoted to local and international art practices is hosted by what was known during communist times as The House of the People or Ceaucescu’s Palace, the second largest building in the world, carrying the memories of a traumatic history. The need to exorcise the past and rework it into a promising future has been the main motive behind one of the most ambitious architectural conversion projects in Eastern Europe. The museum in progress articulated in this new space will provide the local art community with a much-needed platform for innovative ideas and free, cross-discipline communication.
Exhibitions:
Romanian artists (and not only) love Ceaucescu’s Palace?!
From its inception in the ’80s The House of the People and the major urban displacement it produced have generated a series of metaphors, myths and reactions. These in turn informed a wide range of artworks relating to the building. This exhibition gathers all these artistic and cultural responses to the social, ethical and architectural questions concerning the building which now hosts the Museum. Interrogating the history and symbolism of the edifice, the exhibition engages the viewer-participant in a continuing dialogue about recent history and the post-communist condition.
Artists: Irina Botea, Christoph Buchel, Jordi Colomer, Nicolae Comanescu, Stefan Cosma, Alexandra Croitoru, Constantin Chelba, Josef Dabernig, Calin Dan, Suzana Dan, Euroartist Bucuresti, Casa Gontz, Dumitru Gorzo, Teodor Graur, Ion Grigorescu, Karen Kipphoff, Iosif Kiraly, Peter Jacobi, Dan Mihaltianu, Gianni Motti, Vlad Nanca, Cristian Pogacean, Marilena Preda-Sanc, Cristi Puiu, subREAL, Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor.
Curator: Ruxandra Balaci
Camera
Camera is a traveling exhibition from Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. The collaboration between the two video-artists Jian Wei Wang and Fudong Yang and the architect Yung Ho Chang is a reflection of current art practices in China. Image-producing devices such as the Leica, Nikon, Polaroid and Seagull cameras are reassembled out of metal, wood, plastics or paper and transformed into inhabitable spaces of reflection. In today’s China this alternative to the unplanned construction boom takes the shape of ‘micro-urbanism’ (a term coined by Yung Ho Chang), attuned to the current historical, social and ecological issues stemming out of the relationship between market economy and political power.
Artists: Yung Ho Chang, Jian Wei Wang, Fudong Yang
Curators: Hans Ulrich Obrist, Vivian Rehberg
Stock Zero (Opera)
Stock Zero follows the operatic moves and exchanges between Capital, the art system and political power.
“Our epoch does not lack a political project, but is waiting for the forms to incarnate and materialize it. Because form produces or models meaning, orients it, and reflects it back onto everyday life. Revolutionary culture created and popularized several types of sociality: the assembly (the soviets, the agoras), the sit-in, the demonstration and its processions, the strike and its visual symbols (the bandanna, the manifestos, etc….)
Under what slogan could images parade today? What is their role in the construction of the narrative of ‘reality’? (Nicolas Bourriaud, from the Stock Zero libretto)
Artists: Boris Achour, Mircea Cantor, Plamen Dejanoff, Kendell Geers, Bertrand Lavier, Franck Scurti.
Curator: Nicolas Bourriaud
Under Destruction #1
This is the first episode in a series of site-specific interventions which address the real and symbolic architecture of the House of the People/ Palace of the Parliament.
Artists: Christoph Buchel, Gianni Motti
Curator: Mihnea Mircan
Early Works: Neagu and Bernea
The exhibition looks at a remarkable example of collaborative, experimental practice bringing together two Romanian artists, Paul Neagu and Horia Bernea. It isolates a few works from the ’60s and ’70s, which evince an engagement with the question of artistic freedom in stark contrast to the official production of the epoch, generally confined to a complacent ‘Socialist Surrealism’.
Curator: Mihai Oroveanu
Opening Program:
October 29: Wing E4, the Palace of Parliament, Opening Entrance Calea 13 Septembrie
17.00 Press conference / round table How should a Museum of contemporary art look in the 21st century? organized by MNAC with the support of the Ambassade de France a Bucarest, Institut Francais de Bucarest and AFAA in the presence of curators, invited artists, members of the board and the accredited journalists.
Participants: Rene Block, Nicolas Bourriaud, Heiner Holtappels, Anders Kreuger, Enrico Lunghi, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Suzanne Page, Vivian Rehberg, Laurence Bosse.
19.00 The official opening of MNAC.
21.00 Party night
This project has been realized with the support of:
The Romanian Government, The Ministry of Culture and Religious Communities of Romania, Ambassade de France en Roumanie, AFAA, Forumul Cultural Austriac, ARC / Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris Musees, L’Institut Francais de Bucharest, BRD – Groupe Societe Generale, Hewlett Packard, Raiffeisen Bank, JW Marriott Bucharest Grand Hotel, Parliament Hotel, Crowne Plaza Bucharest, Headvertising, Air France, Ex Aequo, Swiss International Air Lines, Malev Airlines, Microsoft, Master Graphic Media, RNP Directia Silivica Hunedoara ti Buzau, Giotto Advertising, H’Art Gallery Bucharest
