What to do this weekend

At a loose end? BR brings you the best of Bucharest’s cultural highlights for the weekend ahead.

OUTDOOR

“The Big Picnic” Shortsup Movies

July 13, from 20.00

Botanical Garden

Eleven short films with themes such as escapes, travel or butterflies in the stomach will be projected in the beautiful Botanical Garden, to emphasize with the holiday atmosphere: The Business Trip, Curious Conjunction of Coincidences, Love at First Sight, Watching, Fear of Flying, Arrêt demandé, True Beauty This Night, The New Tenents, Dik, Mobile, Paul Rondin est… Paul Rondin.

Caragiale’s Bucharest Festival

Until September 15

Old City, Children’s World Park, Conu’ Iancu’s restaurant

Until September 15, the State Jewish Theater, Tandarica Theater, Comedy Theater, Metropolis Theater, Masca Theater, Nottara Theater, National University of Theater and Film and Hyperion University presents the second edition of Caragiale’s Bucharest Festival. The event will include comedy, classical, modern theater and music hall performances, but also various-genre music, which can be seen in Old City, Children’s World Park and Conu’ Iancu’s restaurant at Hala Traian.

In terms of music, the festival’s organizers prepared fanfare music, Romanian traditional folk music sung by the famous Maria Tanase, operreta and opera music.

The admission is free of charge. The entire program of the festival can be seen here, in Romanian language only.

MUSEUM

The Museum of Art Collections Bucharest

July 13

The Museum of Art Collections Bucharest is organizing free guided tours on July 13 dedicated to “Jewelry and silverware from the Beatrice and Hrandt Avakian collection”. The museum, a unique presence in the Romanian cultural landscape, joins a series of valuable collections of various art objects donated over time by Romanian collectors, cultural personalities. Beatrice and Hrandt Avakian gathered the items that made the collection, however both showing a propensity for Oriental art explained by the family hailing from Syria.

DISCOVER BUCHAREST

Architectural tour in Dacia – Eminescu – Polona historic area, Bucharest

July 13, 15.30-18.00

Reservations: v.mandache@gmail.com / 0040 (0)728.323.272

Tour available in Romanian and English, RON 35

The tour offers a guide through this distinguished Bucharest quarter, packed with high quality architecture, especially Neo-Romanian, belonging to its mature (such as the image on the left) and late flamboyant phases, along with Art Deco or Modernist designs. Dacia also encompasses Little Paris and a multitude of mixed style buildings of a powerful personality.

Art Deco and Modernist Bucharest

July 14, 15.30-18.00

Reservations: v.mandache@gmail.com / 0040 (0)728.323.272

Tour available in Romanian and English, RON 35

The Art Deco style, peculiar to the “roaring ’20s” and the 1930s was the first truly global architecture, embraced with gusto by the Bucharest people and the rest of Romania. The city became in those years a veritable Art Deco architectural regional “power“, embellished with high quality edifices in this style, many of which are still around, for us to admire and investigate, despite the terrible historical upheavals of the last eight decades in this part of Europe.

EXHIBITION

Visual Power: 21st Century Native American Artists/ Intellectuals

America 24/7

The National Library

The American Bucharest Corner was inaugurated on June 20 at the National Library and two exhibitions take place: “Visual Power: 21st Century Native American Artists/ Intellectuals.” which shows Native American contributions as scholars, professors, museum curators, and writers as well as makers of traditional fine arts, video and photography to document their cultural heritage and their struggle for sovereignty and a second poster exhibit, “America 24/7”, accompanied by a book, the result of a project by American author and publisher, David Elliot Cohen, and American photographer, Rick Smolan. More than 25,000 digital photographers across the U.S. – including 36 Pulitzer Prize winners – responded to the invitation to take pictures of their towns, families, neighbors and friends for 24 hours a day for seven days. The best photos capturing the diverse authentic America were included in the exhibit. More details, here.

Q.E.D. by Mircea Cantor

The NationalMuseum of Contemporary Art

Until April 2014

More than 1,200 people have attended the opening of the first local solo exhibition of one of the most important young artists to emerge on the international scene over the last decade: Mircea Cantor, winner of the Prix Marcel Duchamp Award 2011. The QED exhibition, the largest survey of the artist’s works to date, comprises 30 pieces. More details here.

The Human Body

AntipaMuseum

Until August 4

One of the most realistic exhibitions in the world, The Human Body, will stop for the first time in Bucharest, at AntipaMuseum, from March 22 to June 30. The exhibition includes more than 200 pieces – human bodies which through dissection of organs and tissue offer a three dimensional perspective of the miracle of the human body. More about this exhibition, here.

“Live tropical butterflies”

AntipaMuseum

Until July 31

Starting on May 1, the AntipaMuseum will host the “Live tropical butterflies”, a temporary exhibition organized in collaboration with the “House of Butterflies” and the Vulticulus Geography Society. Visitors will have the possibility of seeing over 30 species of exotic butterflies flying freely in the special greenhouse set up within the “Antipa” Museum’s garden, but they can also witness the “birth” of butterflies. The exhibition can be visited from May 1 to July 31. Tickets cost RON 10 per child/student and RON 12 per adult/pensioner.

Treasures of China

The NationalMuseum of History

Until July 30

Local culture enthusiasts are now able to enjoy a traveling exhibition of China’s Terracotta Warriors: thousands of life-size terracotta figures from an army prepared for battle. Found by coincidence in 1974, they are now considered one of the greatest archeological discoveries of modern times. The exhibition features 101 rare objects – including the Terracotta Warriors – from one of the largest burial sites ever built, the Terracotta Army of the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. Four is the maximum number of these figures permitted outside China in a single exhibition. More details about the exhibition, here.

Oana Vasiliu

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