The Visual Artists’ Union of Romania (U.A.P) Awards 2016

The Visual Artists’ Union of Romania Awards Gala represents a good opportunity to designate excellence in contemporary visual arts and to reward the efforts of Romanian artists with outstanding work in 2016. It is the moment when we can highlight the performance of a segment of contemporary culture that is increasingly active on the Romanian and international scene. The magnitude of the visual phenomenon entitles us to look with great confidence to this rather marginalized field in our culture.

We capitalize this year also on the support of the Ministry of Culture and National Identity, thus being able to ensure the continuity of the project and the consolidation of the tradition. We hope that in the near future we will be able to resize this format by including it in a broader program – a National Exhibition of Contemporary Art, following the model of the Interwar Saloons, organized under the high patronage of the Ministry of Culture.

At the same time, we hope to materialize the promises of the Ministry regarding the furtherance of a package of laws that will help to strengthen the artist’s regulations, to create an adequate National Contemporary Art Fund, to stimulate creativity and to fit up museums with a valuable contemporary art fund.

With an appropriate normative framework and an effort undertaken by the authorities to treasure up contemporary art, the quality and dynamics of artistic life would increase significantly. The artist would benefit from a favourable work environment, entering into a cultural dialogue inside the fellowship and feeling appreciated. The public could get into a deeper contact with the contemporary art phenomenon. Art collectors would have a wider range of credible offers, the museum being a space of consecration. The art investment is a sustainable one. All the people involved would simply gain.

Professor Petru Lucaci, PhD

President of Visual Artists‘ Union of Romania

Director of Revista ARTA