Lawyer: Romania's Government will buy Brancusi sculpture no matter what

Romania’s Ministry of Culture will pay EUR 11 million to buy Constantin Brancusi’s famous sculpture Wisdom of the Earth (Cumintenia Pamantului), regardless of the public subscription campaign’s result, according to Bogdan Grabowski the lawyer who represents the sculpture’s current owners. He said that the contract signed by the Ministry of Culture with Paula Ionescu and Alina Serbanescu, the sculpture’s owners, provides that the state will pay the money on October 31, reports local News.ro. The contract doesn’t include any conditions related to the result of the public subscription campaign, Grabowski said. Romania’s Ministry of Culture launched a public fundraising campaign in May to raise EUR 6 million for the Brancusi masterpiece. The campaign, which is called “Brancusi is mine (Brancusi e al meu)”, has managed to raise only EUR 562,000 so far. The Ministry of Culture has claimed that the state would only buy the sculpture if it raises the EUR 6 million, as the Government is only willing to pay EUR 5 million from the state budget for this sculpture. Moreover, one of the fundraising campaign’s clauses is that if it doesn’t manage to raise EUR 6 million then the people who have made donations will get their money back. Brancusi created the Wisdom of the Earth in 1907 and sold it in 1911 to one of his good friends, engineer George Romascu. The sculpture was confiscated by the communist regime in 1957 and Romascu’s heirs got it back from the state in 2012. The sculpture was evaluated at EUR 20 million, in September 2014. It is part of Romania’s national cultural heritage and can’t be taken out of the country without the state’s approval. editor@romania-insider.com