Gov’t considers extending deadline for Brancusi fundraising campaign

PM Dacian Ciolos announced on Friday, on the last day of the fundraising campaign for Brancusi’s ‘Wisdom of the Earth’, that the national subscription procedure might be extended, informing that over 20,000 SMS have been sent and a total of over EUR 100,000 donated over EUR 1 M.

In a video message posted on the Government website, the premier says that the subscription campaign might be extended considering that for the first time in Romania such an important sum of money has been raised in just 4 months for a cultural project. Ciolos said that the Government would provide further details on the campaign extension in the upcoming days.

“I want to thank to those more than 100,000 Romanians who got involved in the national subscription campaign dedicated to Constantin Brancusi’s <Wisdom of the Earth> and who donated over EUR 1 M in just four months. I want to thank first to the opinion leaders, journalists, athletes, artists, youngsters who got pro-actively involved in this process (…) I also want to thank the Romanians from Diaspora who actively participated and proved that roots are never forgotten and who understood very well the value of this project, beyond the purchase itself. Considering the impressive number of donations in the past days, we consider extending the subscription period,” Ciolos argued.

He added that, besides recovering a work of the national cultural patrimony, “the campaign is about individual assuming of some national values” and about the Romanians’ unity and solidarity as a people around these values.

September 30 was the last day of the fundraising campaign to buy Brancusi’s famous sculpture from its current owners, which was rated for EUR 11 M. The Romanian Gov’t pledged to pay EUR 5 M and launched a public subscription campaign to raise the rest of EUR 6 M.