The Romanian state can exert preemptive rights on buying Brancusi’s sculpture Cumintenia Pamantului (The Wisdom of the Earth) each time the piece goes on sale, said Ionut Vulpescu, the culture and national identity minister, quoted by Mediafax.

The minister’s declarations come after the Parliament rejected an ordinance issued by the Dacian Ciolos government that granted an additional amount from the state budget to reach the EUR 11 million needed for buying the Brancusi sculpture. The Ciolos cabinet hoped to buy the EUR 11 million piece by allotting only EUR 5 million from the state budget for the acquisition and hoping to raise the remaining EUR 6 million via a public fundraising campaign. The campaign only raised some EUR 1.2 million.

The Budget Commission of the Chamber of Deputies rejected at the end of January the emergency ordinance and adopted an amendment stipulating that donors in the fundraising campaign can recover their money.

Bernard Blistene, the director of the Modern Art Museum at the Pompidou Center in Paris, said efforts to buy the sculpture should be restarted, Agerpres reported. The Pompidou Center hosts Brancusi’s workshop, which the sculptor endowed to the French state.

“Of course, Brancusi’s work is central for us. I do not want to shy away from saying that, obviously, he is the greatest sculptor of the 20^th century. I am not ambiguous about that, I’m not afraid of making this statement. After he died, he left us his workshop, compelling us to rebuild it. […] We have this mission of keeping this space as it was when Brancusi died,” said Blistene, who was in Romania to receive the Doctor Honoris Causa title from the Cluj Art and Design University.

Also on the topic of the Wisdom of the Earth acquisition, the culture minister said that he does not know how the price of the work went up to EUR 11 million. “There were two evaluations which came up with EUR 5 million. I left in December 2015. I don’t know what happened on the art market that, between December and February, it [e.n. the price] went from EUR 5 million to EUR 11 million,” the minister said.

However, Bogdan Grabowski, the lawyer representing the sculpture's owners told News.ro that the declaration of the culture minister “doesn’t hold” and that the owners are waiting for a written answer from the Grindeanu government so that the procedure is finalized and an auction can be organized. “Both Mr. Grindeanu and Mr. Vulpescu were part of the commission which voted, in September, the amendment regarding the payment by the Romanian state of the remaining sum, up to EUR 11 million. That amendment was unanimously voted, so including by them,” Grabowski told News.ro.

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editor@romania-insider.com