When I started writing this review about “All Our Todays. Contemporary Art from the Museum of Recent Art,” curated by Flavia Frigeri and Ioana Iuna Șerban, I was reminded of Gilda Williams’ teachings in How to Write About Contemporary Art.

Williams points out that we, the cultural workers (curators, art historians, critics, specialists), have developed a mirror language in which we only talk to each other. We have built a specialised code, filled with opaque terms, cumbersome analogies, and jargon that says a lot and yet almost nothing. We write more for our own ego or for the artist’s validation than for the reader. 

Perhaps it is not our fault: we read, we saw, but we were harshly criticised and never paid properly… Our more talented sisters went into branding or copyright. But nothing grows out of contempt and arrogance: neither love for art nor real interest from the public.

For me, the written word and literature are places of seduction. We should write about art as if we were trying to seduce someone: with charm, emotion, and vivid vocabulary. That is what I have attempted to do in the paragraphs below.

The temporary exhibition “All Our Todays” is, in this sense, a tour de force. Over 50 international artists and 60 works from the museum’s collection are brought together in an eclectic, well-structured, and carefully curated selection. Big names such as Giorgio de Chirico, Lucio Fontana, Bridget Riley, Hermann Nitsch, and Antony Gormley (and one of my favorites – Olafur Eliasson) are brought together in a journey that oscillates between the abstract and the figurative, between introspection and collective memory, between gesture and narrative.

“All Our Todays” shows us that contemporary art is not univocal, so a single way of looking at it is not enough; we must be willing to accept and interact with multiple and divergent forms of contemporaneity in order to understand the present in its multiplicity,” Flavia Frigeri explains.

This openness to multiplicity is also reflected in the collaborative nature of the curatorship. Here we have a professional tandem, two female voices weaving together a single narrative – coherent, layered, empathetic. It is not just about selection, but about montage, about the red thread they build together, like a personalised myth of Ariadne, the central character in the work of de Chirico, one of the artists around whom the concept of the exhibition grew. The same goes for the curators: they help us find our way out of our own cultural labyrinths, offering anchor points in an otherwise dense and complex visual discourse.

Much like Ioana Iuna Șerban, I noticed that abstraction dominates this selection, especially in the international section. The exhibition is well structured: abstraction creates mental space, while figurative art highlights the human aspect, emphasising storytelling and intimacy. This creates a subtle balance between contemplation and empathy. And the enjoyable, human, and surprisingly natural part was provided by the guided tours: long enough to outline an issue, short enough to keep the interest alive.

This is what stays with me after absorbing the exhibition as an experience: that we need more storytelling, less pretentiousness, more courage to express things simply and beautifully. “All Our Todays” is a visual exhibition, but also a deeply narrative one – it doesn’t impose itself on you, but invites you to think about whether you like it, and whether this complex and complicated art is sometimes catered to you too.

“All Our Todays” [Museum of Recent Art, București, 13.02–18.08.2025]. Artists: Magdalena Abakanowicz; Tomma Abts; Etel Adnan; Harold Ancart; Karel Appel; Imre Bak; Max Bill; Daniel Buren; André Butzer; Huguette Caland; Giorgio de Chirico; Edith Dekyndt; Olafur Eliasson; Valie EXPORT; Helmut Federle; Lucio Fontana; Günther Förg; Bernard Frize; Antony Gormley; Katharina Grosse; Marcia Hafif; Peter Halley; Hans Hartung; Christian Jankowski; Hans Josephsohn; Martha Jungwirth; Martin Kippenberger; Imi Knoebel; Jannis Kounellis; Sol LeWitt; Richard Long;Markus Lüpertz; Marco Maggi; Georges Mathieu; Roberto Matta; François Morellet; Hermann Nitsch; Kenneth Noland; A.R. Penck; Marina Perez Simão; Michelangelo Pistoletto; Fiona Rae; Raša Todosijević; Arnulf Rainer; Daniel Richter; Bridget Riley; Gerwald Rockenschaub; Sean Scully; Richard Serra; Chiharu Shiota; Henryk Stażewski; Franciszka Themerson; Mark Tobey; Erwin Wurm. Interactive installation: Cătălin Crețu. Curators: Flavia Frigeri, Ioana Iuna Șerban.