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The President of the Romanian Academy, Ioan-Aurel Pop, on Thursday said, on the occasion of the resumption of the series of public conferences held at the "Dalles" Foundation, after an interruption of 75 years, that the purpose of these actions is to restore dialogue and communication in the Romanian society, told Agerpres.
"In my opinion, today, the Romanian society lacks dialogue and communication, and this is one of the reasons why the world feels disoriented. Young people allow themselves to be enslaved by these devices, by digitization, by communication through social networks, while the adults and the elder are nostalgic for the old times. We would like to restore this dialogue. Of course, through the Romanian Academy," stated Pop, at the end of the event.
The President of the Academy showed that the name Dalles (...) represents "an effigy of spiritual quality."
"The exhibitions that took place at the Dalles Hall, even during the communist regime, meant the affirmation of some artists. The conferences that took place at the Dalles Hall, especially before, but also during the communist regime, when they were no longer under the auspices of the Romanian Academy, were still of great quality. And people of extraordinary openness and with intellectual concerns in their specialty felt the need to explain these results that they obtained, as a result of their concerns and research, in a way that the public could understand. And there was a dialogue, an extraordinary communication in society," said Pop.
Through this cycle of conferences "a tradition is resumed," added Pop, noting that, "at the same time, because many decades have passed since 1948, the conferences are conceived for the beginning of the new millennium."
"That is, they are meant to bring novelties - and the news of science are the order of the day -, to explain certain realities, to determine the world turn to culture again, general culture and special culture, at the same time, to be understandable to intellectuals, to the understanding of some groups of interested people and not strictly specialized, because we keep those at the Romanian Academy within the sections," explained the President of the Academy.
During the conference, also attended by academician Razvan Theodorescu, Vice-President of the Romanian Academy, and university professor Gheorghe Chivu, PhD, corresponding member of the Romanian Academy, president of the "Ioan I. Dalles" Cultural Foundation, Ioan-Aurel Pop, gave a eulogy to the academies and summarized the current purpose of this forum.
Speaking about the totalitarian period, Ioan-Aurel Pop highlighted that "in all these years, the Academy was not equal to itself, but it tried and mostly succeeded in remaining a benchmark institution of the country."
"And very few counterfeit scholars entered it. In other words, after facing a great danger in 1948, when it was disbanded and then reestablished, from '74 to '89, the Academy did not receive any more members into its ranks, after Elena Ceausescu joined as a member, the Academy was actually not allowed to receive any more members in its ranks for 15 years. And you know that academicians are not young people. In the vision of the regime, which had established another parallel academy of social and political sciences, which was supposed to come to the fore and take over the other institutions, which it did to a certain extent, our institution was supposed to disappear in these 15 years, had to die, biologically, by nature, through the death of people. And if the regime lasted a little longer, this biological death of the institution would have been fulfilled," the academician explained.
Ioan-Aurel Pop showed that during all those years, "the Academy tried to fulfill its mission that it had since establishment, to defence language and literature, history, ethnography, folklore, arts, plus the fundamental sciences, which had become a component part of culture - even under those conditions."
On the same occasion, in his turn, Razvan Theodorescu briefly presented the history of the "Ioan I. Dalles" Foundation, as well as of the edifice with the same name, mentioning that the Academy is "in a dispute, in a process" with the Ministry of Culture to obtain the hall with the same name, "which is unoccupied, in which the rain has started to infiltrate and which is the most beautiful hall that Bucharest has."
Built between 1930 and 1932 by the Romanian Academy, according to the provisions of Elena Dalles' will, the famous "Dalles" Hall in Bucharest was illegally confiscated in 1948 by the communist regime.
After the fall of the communist regime, the Romanian Academy sought to recover the "Dalles" Hall, by returning the building in kind, which was initially rejected by Bucharest City Hall. Only in 2018, the general mayor of the Capital ordered the restitution in kind of this building. Thus, the building built by the Romanian Academy in the 1930s returned to its rightful owner.
Starting in 2023, a programme of conferences and debates structured by the Romanian Academy will take place here, once a month. Both renowned academicians and other names of Romanian science and culture will be invited to the events. The programme will be created by the "Ioan I. Dalles" Cultural Foundation within the Romanian Academy, with the aim of supporting, promoting and developing cultural and educational activity.
Currently, the Metropolitan Education and Culture Centre of the same name operates in the building of the "Dalles" Hall, which uses the concert and performance hall based on the rental contract signed with the Romanian Academy.
