London’s National Portrait Gallery has brought its first ever exhibition to Romania, “Love Stories” featuring over 100 masterpieces by Andy Warhol, Man Ray, Van Dyck, and David Hockney created over five centuries.
Love Stories explores the intimacy of the most famous couples from 16th century to present times: Victoria and David Beckham, Yoko Ono and John Lennon, Harry and Meghan Markle, Princess Diana and Prince Charles, Linda and Paul McCartney, Salvador and Gala Dalí, and many more.
“Some of the stories have happy endings while other stories are doomed,” said Dr. Lucy Peltz, head of Collection Displays and Senior Curator of 18th Century Collections at the National Portrait Gallery. “It’s art, passion and tragedy,” she said at a press conference on Thursday.
“I hope the exhibition resonates with people of all ages,” she added.
The love stories are as varied as humans are: some are stable marriages, others are fleeting affairs;some are same-sex relationships, others bisexual. Some are tragic and others blissful, exploring the full range of romantic relationships.
It’s the first time the National Portrait Gallery which has just re-opened after a three-year 41 million-pound refurbishment, has staged an exhibition in central and eastern Europe. Another British iconic museum, the Victoria and Albert will be back in Romania in the autumn.
British Ambassador in Romania Andrew Noble praised the Art Safari team for “their innovation, vision and simple professionalism in mounting an exhibition of this type.”
“Romania is becoming part of the international tourist circuit and British tourists would want to come and see this,” he said.
He noted that the exhibition was opening two days after after the Romanian Parliament passed legislation raising the age of sexual consent from 14 to 16– which will “protect young girls and women from abuse… It is an important step in the protection of young women,” he said.
Ruth Hibbard, from the Victoria and Albert Museum, is the curator of another exhibition on display in Art Safari: “Nymphs and Zombies: Ondine’s Hope and Baraka’s Despair.”
She said the Love Stories was an exhibition of: “light and dark, life and death, heart and horror, dreams and nightmares, hope and despair.”
The exhibition is housed at the Dacia-Romania Palace in the Old City and opens on Friday to the public from 12pm to 20.20 pm.
