Romanian catalog for Webpage - Flipbook - Page 15
Looking Anew
and
Beyond
JANE NEAL
Guest Curator
W
Appreciation is a wonderful
thing. It makes what is
excellent in others belong
to us as well.
—Voltaire
Opposite: Mona Vӑtӑmanu and Florin Tudor
Appointment with History (detail), 2007-2014, illustrated page 135
hen Jenny and Nick Taubman arrived in
Romania in 2005 for Nick to begin his
term as U.S. Ambassador, neither could
have predicted how successful and
well regarded some of the artists they
were about to meet would go on to become. The artists
themselves could not have envisioned how dramatically
their lives would change and how much global interest
their artistic practices would generate. The exhibition
Looking Anew and Beyond: Contemporary Romanian Art
from the Collection of the Arthur Taubman Trust, cocurated by Ambassador Nicholas F. Taubman and Eugenia
L. Taubman, therefore aims to achieve two goals. The first
is to introduce Roanoke and wider audiences to work from
some of the most respected, interesting, and intellectually
stimulating Romanian artists practicing today (or who
were active until very recently and are still pertinent and
influential to the Romanian and broader artistic scene).
The second goal is to highlight how the work of the Arthur
Taubman Trust has championed what is truly a worldclass collection. From a global perspective, this exhibition
includes some of the most important artists working today
and documents a collection of truly historical significance.
The artists included in the Collection of the Arthur
Taubman Trust work in different media. A number of them
are painters, but we also find photographers and sculptors,
as well as those working in a more fluid manner, choosing
their medium according to the parameters dictated by each
idea and project. Despite a variety of disciplines, there
are nonetheless common subjects and themes. While
the breadth of the collection is readily apparent, viewers
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