On Friday, April 19, 2024, starting at 11:00, in Iasi, the opening of the “Nicolae Gane” Museum took place, one of the 17 museums in the network of the National Museum of Romanian Literature. The public is invited to discover on Nicolae Gane Street, 22 A, in Iasi, a space dedicated to visual creations, the Iesene Art Gallery.
The museum brings to the public’s attention Nicolae Gane’s great passion, painting. He stated, in various passages in the volume Confessed sins, the following: “I was therefore forced to embrace another career: to throw away the brush and take up the pen, and I don’t know if the change was to my advantage.” Starting from this confession, a better decision could not be made in years to come: Nicolae Gane’s house will become the space of a history of visual arts from Iași.
Before the opening of the event, I invited the writer Lucian Dan Teodorovici, director of MNLR, to a dialogue, who, in his words, reinforces the above. Lucian Dan Teodorovici also reminds us that the museum, in the period 2019-2023, benefited from extensive consolidation and restoration works through the Regional Operational Program (POR) 2014-2020 (No. Priority Axis 5 – Improvement of the urban environment and conservation, protection and sustainable capitalization of cultural heritage). The director of MNLR also tells us about the collaboration with the artist from Iași Felix Aftene, the author of the concept of the permanent exhibition in the premises of the “Nicolae Gane” Museum.
Conceived by the artist Felix Aftene, in collaboration with the team of the National Museum of Romanian Literature Iasi, the Iași Art Gallery at the “Nicolae Gane” Museum presents a perspective on two centuries of plastic evolution, marking the importance of Iași in Romanian culture.
The new museum combines the display of classical art with innovative methods, with installations and elements of modern museum technology. It also brings together exhibition spaces, laboratories and halls for heritage storage. About the story of the Art Gallery inside the “Nicolae Gane” Museum, we learn concrete details from the artist Felix Aftene.
Another voice that I recorded, the other day, before the official opening of the “Nicolae Gane” Museum, is that of Maria Bilashevschi, art critic, who talks to us about the content of the permanent exhibition. Within it, a retrospective of Iași arts is captured over a period of over 150 years, displaying paintings by artists from both the modern and contemporary periods.
The space of the “Nicolae Gane” Museum represents the appropriate setting for the organization of temporary and permanent exhibitions with heritage objects, fine art exhibitions, cultural programs and projects, conferences, communication sessions, museum education activities and workshops, debates on various topics.
The house was built before 1825 and was inhabited, between 1871 and 1916, by the family of Nicolae Gane, magistrate, lawyer, writer, member of the “Junimea” cultural society and the Romanian Academy, politician and mayor of Iasi.
In 1993, the “Nicolae Gane” Museum was inaugurated here, in which exhibitions dedicated to him, the public administration of the city of Iași, writing instruments, as well as the Book and Document Restoration Laboratory of the National Museum of Romanian Literature Iași were held.
The recordings we posted, we follow in a future edition of the show Intercultural dialoguea show that we broadcast every Friday night, between 8:30-9:00 p.m., on all frequencies (1053 KHz/AM, 90.8; 94.5 and 96.3 MHz/FM) Radio Romania Iași.
The shows can be watched online – HERE – http://www.radioiasi.ro/asculta-live/
Text, photo and audio: Dumitru ŞERBAN
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