Art Safari

What to do on a beautiful but far too hot Sunday? Lots of things to do. I did something I hadn't done in a long time. I visited an exhibition, but not just any exhibition...

_{For months, I've been seeing ads for this exhibition}

I visited a special exhibition, a modern concept, probably imported from abroad, called Art Safari!

_{For months, I've been seeing ads for this exhibition}

Art Safari specializes in organizing exhibition pavilions. It collaborates with museums in Romania and abroad as well as with collectors and organizes every year at least one big exhibition. This year it will organize three, two have been held so far, I visited the second one, which is closing in ten days.

The exhibits are different from the normal museum exhibits. Each major exhibition is housed in special, sometimes unconventional places, such as airport buildings or underground stations.

_{For months, I've been seeing ads for this exhibition}

This year a palace in the centre of Bucharest was chosen to host the event. The Dacia-Romania Palace is a beautiful building built at the end of the 19th century.

The exhibitions are thematic and obviously unique. No repetition.

There have been ten editions so far and I haven't managed to visit any of them. I've been reluctant. I felt that they were things done primarily for money. I thought they were a business. This is also because the entrance ticket was and is expensive if you compare it to the cost of tickets for other museums. Generally, there are four different sections in an exhibit, and admission to all of them, good for a full day, is $25.

_{There are some undecided but low ticket prices for pensioners are paying off}

As I said, the desire to do something special on a very hot Sunday and the possibility to pay only half of the ticket price, because we (my wife and I) were in the discounted category, i.e. pupils, students, and pensioners, and the curiosity and desire to see something beautiful, made us go to this exhibition.

_{Even the sponsors' ads look like works of art.}

From the beginning I must say that we did not regret at all the choice we made and even more, we liked it very much. We even regretted not having visited the other exhibitions of the past years.

_{We could be that pair. They look like us... but they're not us.}

This year Art Safary had a special theme, it was: Art Safari - Love Edition. There were 4 big sections, i.e. 4 exhibitions:

• Constantin Artechino

• Ion Alin Gheorghiu

• Nymphs and Zombies ( Ondine's Hope and Baraka's Despair )

• Love Stories

Plus a big surprise, for ten days it was possible to see one of Brancusi's most famous and valuable sculptures, called "The Kiss"!

It was the only section where we had to stand in line...

The value of Brancusi's small sculpture, $22 million, meant that access to the room where it was exhibited was strictly supervised and the number of visitors in a series was 10-12 people.

I want to say that I was impressed by the exhibition venue. The Dacia-Romania Palace is a specific construction for the beginning of the twentieth century, with French-inspired architecture. Before I started viewing the exhibits, I was also a visitor to this palace, which I passed by many times without having had the opportunity to enter.

At the entrance we received hearts. That we stick somewhere on our clothes...

... so that at the end of the visit we can answer the question "Who would you go to a desert island with?" and write the answer on the heart and stick it on the wall.

Entering the palace lobby, I was left open-mouthed looking at the stained glass ceiling. Beautiful, very beautiful, it would have been even more beautiful if the windows had been cleaned...

... but it's probably not such an easy thing to do.

The unusualness, beauty, and strangeness of the palace and this exhibition were also given by the lighting of the spaces.

The whole thing looks more like a theatre set than a museum.

We started our visit to the exhibitions with a... break. Also to get a better view of the ceiling.

... or for a last message sent to a friend

Two kids have found a special but dangerous place for the same phone that's taking our minds.

On this occasion, I saw a saying meant to encourage us to be active and creative. Let's do it ourselves.

Not everyone can, or rather, few do!

Glad to have learned something else that is now useless to me but sounds very good and can certainly be useful to young people, I decided that the long-awaited time had come. The start of exploring all the exhibitions in the Art Safari-Love Edition.

This exhibition should be viewed quietly, calmly, and carefully.

Also in this way, I hope to be able to show it here in the next posts in the series: Art Safari 2023-Love Edition.