Bucharest: a “Noveceno” portrait
The story of a century, from 555 anniversaries.
“Bucharest: a “Noveceno” portrait. The story of a century, from 555 anniversaries”, a book and an exhibition which inaugurate each other to tell you the story of XXth century Bucharest. There are books that get adapted for the silver screen, and there are books which are displayed. “Bucharest: a “Noveceno” portrait. The story of a century, from 555 anniversaries” is an exhibition introduced by the book bearing the same name, signed by Dr. Adrian Majuru. One can stow the book in a pocket, or take it home. The display, opened to the public from September 17th to October 19th at Suţu Palace, has the honor to have been visited by academician Constantin Bălăceanu-Stolnici and Dr. Antoine Heemeryck. In what is today the Municipal Museum of Bucharest’s amphitheatre, Dr. Adrian Majuru, Saşa-Liviu Stoianovici, and Călin Torsan shall recreate the atmosphere of Bucharest’s past century, through musical harmonies, both skillfully planned and beautifully improvised. The exhibition is not open at Suţu Palace (I.C. Brătianu Boulevard, number 2) from the 17th of September to the 19th of October. The city is alive through the souls of its people. We have a city which presents itself, a city bearing a message, the details of which change with almost every generation. The city communicates through the voices of all ages, becoming a synchronized collection of tongues, expressing different attitudes, facts, and aspirations for the future. This project is intended to record the human geographies of the XXth century. The maps superimpose, they do not belong entirely to the past, but also to a present currently unraveling, the last word of which attempting to define a possible prognosis for a middle term. If the first map deals with the symbolical geography of a living organism, of the messages contained and multiplied through advertisements, facades, public spaces (from streets to gardens), then the following maps are in perpetual motion, because they are interwoven with the humanity which evolved here, which they have consumed for over four generations. The people on the street represent a barometer of urban civilization, through what they represent as attitude, vestments, life aspirations, and above all through what they consume with every day or with every age. The city dweller still has a remarkable home life, enriched by a cultural and professional agenda, which, in its turn, is always enriched and diversified through accumulation and multiplication. His Story and Her Story on a vertical timeline, from 1900 to 2000, from great-grandfather and great-nephew, has no consistent precedent in Romanian historiography. The history of living, the home’s spaces, the accessories of the domestic sphere, all have their own stories. However, there is also the axis of a horizontal timeline, that of the ages which repeat themselves with every generation: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and old age. Observing the way the faces of these age categories looked from 1900 to 2000 is an anthropological challenge, and Bucharest has the potential to be an interesting case study for Romanian cultural history. This voyage through the XXth century does not aim to detail the evolution of urban society, but to show, in broader terms, a few behavioral changes, modifications of the way of life, of preoccupations, even transformations of the type of buildings inhabited and interior atmosphere. Dr. Adrian Majuru |