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The Romanian Academy announces the resumption after a 75-year break of the cycle of public conferences held at the Dalles Foundation, with Academy president Ioan-Aurel Pop delivering the inaugural lecture at an event scheduled for Thursday, from 9:00 a.m., at the Dalles Hall at No. 18 on Bucharest's Nicolae Balcescu Boulevard. The winding history of the Ioan I. Dalles Foundation will be presented, as well as a brief history of the namesake building, the Academy informs in a release.
Built between 1930 - 1932 by the Romanian Academy according to the clauses of Elena Dalles' will, and abusively seized in 1948 by the communist regime, the famous Dalles Hall in Bucharest will host, starting in 2023, a program of conferences and debates put together by the Romanian Academy's Ioan I. Dalles Cultural Foundation. Having the mission to support, promote and develop cultural and educational activities, the foundation also aims to carry out intercultural exchanges for the promotion of the national heritage - literature, art, music, theater, etc. - and for the integration of Romanian cultural and artistic values in the international circuit, as well as the organization of research activities, Agerpres informs.
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In 1918, Elena Dalles, who was left heirless, bequeathed to the Romanian Academy two properties in the center Bucharest, with precise indications regarding the expropriation, as well as her desire for a cultural edifice to be erected on the site and the establishment of a foundation that was to bear the name of her untimely deceased son.
Twelve years later, in 1930, the Romanian Academy organizes an architectural design competition for the seat of the Dalles Foundation; the winner of the contest was architect Horia Teodoru, and the contract for the works was awarded to the company of engineer Emil Prager, that will carry out the project.
The costs in amount of 14 million lei were settled from the Romanian Academy's own funds.
A year later, on May 28, 1932, the cultural center opens in the presence of the members of the Romanian Academy, the Bucharest mayor and other officials. The building consisted of exhibition halls, a conference hall and a concert hall. The Ioan I. Dalles Foundation is inaugurated on the same date, beginning its activity under the leadership of Academician Gheorghe Titeica, general secretary of the Romanian Academy.
The foundation will host exhibitions and concerts of the most renowned artists of the time and big names of Romanian culture will hold conferences and meet the public here.
In 1948 all the properties of the Romanian Academy, the Dalles Hall included, were illegally seized under Decision No. 1486 of the Council of Ministers; the building was put to the use of the Ministry of Arts and Information and then entrusted for administration to the Art Museum of the Romanian People's Republic.
The headquarters of the Dalles Foundation underwent major changes between 1959 and 1961, when the 7-storey Dalles Bloc was erected in front of the original building, incorporating the initial structure. Architect Octav Doicescu preserved the cultural destination of the ground floor and the mezzanine as exhibition spaces.
In 1962, the newly set up People's University of Bucharest takes over the foundation building, carrying out an intense public activity consisting mainly of broad-public art courses. Bucharest's collective memory, however, preserves the name of the Dalles Hall and keeps alive the memory of its cultural destination.
After the fall of the communist regime, the Romanian Academy submitted a notification for the recovery of the hall, by the building's restitution in kind; the Bucharest City Hall initially rejected the request. Only in 2018 does the general mayor of the Capital order the building's restitution, so that the Romanian Academy takes it back as its rightful owner.
The Metropolitan Center for Education and Culture currently operates in the Dalles building, using the concert and performance hall under a lease agreement signed with the Romanian Academy.
