May 25–October 1, 2023
The Palace of Parliament, Wing E4
2–4 Izvor St.
050563 Bucharest
Romania
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday 11am–7pm
The National Museum of Contemporary Art—MNAC Bucharest is pleased to announce the opening of the new exhibition season. With a strong international presence both in the temporary shows and in the new cultural mediation program MNAC International Academy, the event demonstrates, once again, the effervescence of the art scene in Romania and the opportunity for international dialogue.
MNAC International Academy is a hybrid format of content sharing, combining artist talks, curatorial practice discourses, critical analysis, travel reports, etc. MNAC IA brings together in a 90 minutes power session a fixed number of three speakers, each from another discipline, generation, and country, each invited to make a topical presentation of their respective practice. The format was inaugurated in March 2023, with guest speakers Frances Morris (UK), Ana Maria Micu (Romania) and Zoran Erić (Serbia). The second edition will feature Mara Rațiu (Romania), Decebal Scriba (France/Romania) and János Sugár (Hungary).
Exhibitions
The main space of the museum features the recently inaugurated 2022 Art Acquisitions exhibition, PULS 22. A visual account of an extremely complex selection process, carried out by the MNAC team with the invaluable involvement of an international jury, PULS 22 is constructed along a series of vectors that contribute to the (re)definition of the museum’s collection, being also a cross-section of visual culture in post-war Romania.
Leviathan (opened May 26, 2022) remains available to the public, displaying the museum’s art collection storages, in a multi-disciplinary project unique in Romania. Conceived by Călin Dan (Director of MNAC) and curated by Irina Radu (Chief of Art Collections), it is one of MNAC’s most complex enterprises, giving our visitors the unique opportunity to (literally) roam through the guts of the museum, in a place reserved usually only to specialists. MNAC made this curatorial move believing that both the Museum and its public have reached a maturity that makes all appreciate the intellectual, aesthetic, historical and moral value of this mass of art material.
In MNAC’s entrance hall, Klaas Kloosterboer, one of the renowned artists active in the Netherlands, builds an installation-space, Rephrase, Revise, Replace, starting from his reflections on the intersections of painting and language. The exhibition is curated by Maria Rus Bojan and benefits from the support of The Mondriaan Fund for Visual Art and Cultural Heritage (Netherlands), MB Art Agency Amsterdam (Netherlands), Ellen de Bruijne Projects Amsterdam (Netherlands).
In the emblematic Marble Hall we inaugurate, as part of the Art Encounters Biennial 2023, the installation Black Cloud, by Mexican artist Carlos Amorales—a new proposal of confronting, through artistic means, this historically charged exhibition space. This event marks the inauguration of the strategic cooperation between MNAC and Timișoara Art Encounters.
The third floor hosts a retrospective show by Ecaterina Vrana (1969–2019), curated by Simona Vilău, a unique presentation, built on the principle of the protective space and supported by rich material from the artist’s archives.
On the fourth floor, the Cypriot artist Theodoulos Gregoriou presents in the exhibition Mental Geography—Constellations a selection of emblematic and representative works from his career since his art studies in Bucharest in the 1980s, as well as a site-specific installation created especially for the presentation at MNAC. Curated by Alexandru Oberländer-Târnoveanu, Catherine Louis Nikita and organised in collaboration with the Deputy Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Cyprus.
MNAC fosters an open space for dialogue with the young generations of artists, engaging art students and alumni in its programmes, currently through the group shows: Pixels From a Future Past (ITPMA Master’s at UNATC) and Corp Flora (UNArte Bucharest).
MNAC Sponsors: BRD Groupe Société Générale, Greentek & DARA Lighting, Crama Oprișor, Policolor România, Grup Transilvae, Molotow, ProfiArt, UniCredit Bank, Vitamin Aqua & Pop Cola
Info & press: info [at] mnac.ro
