The Art Safari New Museum
The Art Safari Pavilion has inaugurated its first season of 2026 in its new headquarters in Piața Amzei, in the very heart of the capital.
Eugen Cojocariu, 30.05.2026, 14:00
Until 19 July, visitors may explore at the Art Safari New Museum a series of significant exhibitions devoted to both Romanian and international art, housed within a space entirely reimagined to accommodate contemporary cultural experiences. This new season brings to the forefront essential figures of Romanian culture, from the national poet Mihai Eminescu to the painter and engraver Nicolae Vermont, establishing a dialogue between heritage, modernity, and artistic reinterpretation. The new “Art Safari New Museum” headquarters marks an important milestone for the pavilion, transforming it into a vibrant urban museum dedicated to the interplay between art, the public, and the city.
General Director Ioana Ciocan offers further insight into the Art Safari New Museum: “We have moved to Piața Amzei no. 13, into a space completely redesigned by architect Diana Nicolae. We are deeply pleased that the Sector 1 City Hall had the courage to return to the public a building abandoned for 11 years and, indeed, the courage to transform it into a museum. It includes the Museum Pavilion, the Historical Pavilion, and the Contemporary Pavilion, alongside the International Pavilion. These create a historical journey, beginning with Vermont, descending one level to Mihai Eminescu, and descending once more into the heart of contemporary art, where we encounter Felix Aftene.
Vermont’s story is particularly compelling, and curator Maria Munteanu has succeeded, through a partnership with the Library of the Romanian Academy, in bringing forth highly significant documents that illuminate the life of the great artist. His biography is fascinating, and its echoes can be traced throughout his works. It is, in a sense, a visual journal of his complex life in Romania, presented in the Historical Pavilion.
We rediscover Mihai Eminescu. The exhibition is structured into four chapters. The first is dedicated to exceptionally important documents that have never been displayed publicly in 160 years, drawn from the Library of the Romanian Academy, alongside contemporary artworks, some created especially for Art Safari, such as a mosaic by Daniel Codrescu dedicated to Eminescu. Descending another level, we reach the Contemporary Pavilion, where Felix Aftene presents no fewer than thirty years of artistic creation. The International Pavilion includes the Czech Center and the Goethe-Institut. Two invited artists will also hold workshops here at Art Safari. We are delighted that the Czech Center is collaborating with us for the first time, and equally pleased that the Goethe-Institut continues its annual partnership, bringing contemporary art to the Romanian public.”
One of the central exhibitions of the season at the Art Safari New Museum is “R:Eminescu. The Rational Poet” housed in the Historical Pavilion and dedicated to Mihai Eminescu (1850–1889), regarded as the national poet and the most influential figure in Romanian literature. The exhibition is curated by Monica Dumitru, with the support of art historian Erwin Kessler and researcher Valentin Coșereanu, a consultant with the “George Călinescu” Institute of the Romanian Academy. The project proposes a renewed perspective on the national poet, exploring his intellectual and lucid dimension, beyond the familiar romanticized image. Through documents, installations, and contemporary visual interpretations, the exhibition seeks to reconstruct the figure of an Eminescu deeply attuned to the ideas and tensions of his age.
Art historian Erwin Kessler speaks about the exhibition: “R:Eminescu. The Rational Poet is an inventory exhibition. It represents a first attempt to catalogue the visual representations of Eminescu in Romanian art. Eminescu appears in music, in theatre, in dance, he is omnipresent, but here we have focused on the visual arts. We begin with his earliest representations, which were from the outset the subject of a marketing campaign by photographers of the era in Iași, who circulated his photograph taken at age nineteen in Prague. We present a journey of 400 works, a selection drawn, as I mentioned, from what are likely tens of thousands of pieces that constitute the greatest visual myth of Romanian culture: Eminescu.”
Erwin Kessler also gave us details on how the is exhibition structured: “There are four chapters, each placed under the sign of a verse by Eminescu. They are arranged chronologically, beginning with the formation of this visual vocabulary. At the end of the 19th century, the romantic image of the poet emerges – sentimental, deeply tied to lyrical poetry. After the First World War and throughout the interwar period, a darker, more troubled, more complex genius appears. Eminescu scholarship also begins – literary historical research. After the Second World War, we encounter yet another Eminescu, one shaped by communist ideology in a social and national direction, with excessive emphasis on The Emperor and the Proletarian and the few poems that might be construed as socially engaged. After 1989, a wholly different direction arises: criticism, subversion, reinterpretation, and often deconstruction of the Eminescu myth by contemporary critical art.”
Erwin Kessler talks about the contemporary image of Mihai Eminescu, an image at risk of being excessively overused in the public sphere: “This is what happened with Eminescu immediately after his death. This form of marketing, of excessive and over intensified exposure of his image… That – and only that – has come to represent the figure of genius in Romanian culture. And that genius is Eminescu. Any attempt at defining him in such terms has resulted in overdefinition through overexposure. (…)” (EE)
