Who would have ever thought that there is such a strong connection between the small village of Băița, Romania, tucked comfortably in Transylvania, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York? Well, the mysterious link between these “parallel universes” is Dr. Florica Zaharia! Born in the village of Hărțăgani (part of Băița commune, Hunedoara County), in the Apuseni Mountains, Florica Zaharia grew up surrounded by a glorious landscape and by textiles, since all women in her

Our series of events celebrating 140 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between Romania and the United States continued on December 14, 2020 with a conversation with NATO Deputy Secretary-General Mircea Geoană and Ambassador Mark Gitenstein about the diplomatic relations between the two countries post-1989 and into the 21st century. Moderated by media executive and Alianța Board member John Florescu. With a brief historical overview by Professor Dennis Dele

Direct and personal: The long Romanian-American friendship in people's own words We mark this year 140 years since the establishment of Romanian-American diplomatic relations, which have become, heightened at the level of a Strategic Partnership, one of the main anchors of our foreign policy. We are celebrating a relationship that has grown ever stronger by amplifying the voices of all those who, with myriad of everyday gestures, are giving a personal and immediate meaning to

A special edition of the Feraru Conferences series, devoted to one of the most beloved and consequential personalities of Romanian history, Queen Marie, and to her triumphal 1926 visit to America. Beautiful and eloquent, adored by her subjects and glorified by the media, the great Queen embarked on a long, exhausting tour throughout the United States to capture the hearts and minds of the Americans and enhance Romania’s profile across the Atlantic. We revisited the history of

Romanian cultural life paced out of a scarring WWI with vigor and determination. The unification of all Romanian provinces in 1918 unleashed tremendous societal energies and led to an increased international interest in the newly created state. Literature, art, social life thrived in the interwar years, which ushered an unparalleled internationalization and revamping of Romanian culture. In 1919, Romanian painter and academic Costin Petrescu (1872-1954) was sent on an officia

140 years ago today, Romania and The United States established diplomatic relations, marking the beginning of a long, complex and fruitful association in all respects. While the Romanian-American relations are much older, going beyond diplomacy and political relations, we celebrate this day as the inaugural moment of a common journey that grew to become a crucial strategic partnership as a most solid anchor of security, stability, and development. Join us in exploring this lo

Exactly 56 years ago, on June 1 1964, Romania and the United States decided to elevate their diplomatic relations to embassy level. The landmark decision came after years of sinuous political rapprochement in the complicated context of the Cold War and almost a century of proper diplomatic relations. Diplomatic relations between Romania and the United States were established on June 14, 1880 when U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Eugene Schuyler as Diplomatic Agent

Hollywood literally bursts into the Romanian cultural landscape in the first years after the First World War. In the 1920s, there are almost 30 film distribution companies that offer an audience with an already insatiable appetite for movies recent American premieres, in which shine the great stars of the silent era, such as Rudolf Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks or Mary Pickford. At the beginning of 1925, the famous The Thief of Baghdad or Charlie Chaplin’s The Pilgrim are alre

Leon Feraru, who gives the name to our popular series of conversations, may be considered the founder of Romanian professional cultural diplomacy in the United States. Born Otto Enselberg/Inselberg in Brăila (a multicultural port on the Danube, at the time with a significant Jewish population) in 1887, Feraru was a poet, activist and professor of Romanian and French Studies at Columbia University and later at Long Island University, as well as a tireless promoter of Romanian

For a long time, the international fairs, an invention of the industrial age, granted countries the most visible stages to showcase their identity, economic power, and cultural achievements. Until late in the 20th century, they offered the context for Romania’s biggest and most impactful programs of national promotion. Among these participations, few compared with the grandiose and memorable Romanian program at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, which opened exactly 81 years ago

Another medical hero in our series is the Romania-born American cell biologist George Emil Palade, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1974. Palade was born in Iași, one of the oldest Romanian cities and an effervescent cultural and academic center, in 1912, as the second son of a university philosophy professor and a schoolteacher. He studied at the University of Bucharest’s Faculty of Medicine, where he showed a keen interest in the anatomy courses of Professor

Jazz comes quite early to Romania, in the first years after the First World War, and soon establishes itself as one of the first forms of American culture that enjoys a massive and irresistible spread throughout the Romanian society. The other one is, obviously, Hollywood cinema. Already in the 1920s there are several places in Bucharest and other major cities where one can engage in the frenzied beat of the Charleston, Foxtrot or the Boston. Some of the contemporaries see ja

As the Wallachians and Moldovans of the18th century and the first decades of the 19th century lived under Greek cultural influence, it was only natural that their first extensive information in their very own Romanian language had been taken mostly from Greek works, themselves translations of Western sources. These first accounts identify rather precisely the place of the two Americas on the world’s map, narrate an overall correct history of the New World and offer a collecti

Today one of the most iconic buildings of Romania’s capital city, the Telephone Palace is the only enduring result of a bold architectural dream to transform Calea Victoriei (Victory Way) in a Romanian version of the famous Broadway. The building, erected between 1931-33, was met with mixed feelings by the people of Bucharest who saw in its elegant straight lines and tall silhouette both an architectural wonder and a reason for scandal. The Telephone Palace (Palatul Telefoane

In the Romanian Provinces, Transylvanians are the first to learn about the New World. The earliest information on the amazing exploits of Columbus, Magellan and the conquistadors emerge already in the first decades of the 16th century and even before these novelties begin to circulate in the Kingdom of Hungary and Poland and in the Ottoman and Russian Empires. A humanist of Transylvanian origin, Maximilianus Transylvanus (cca. 1490-1538), publishes in 1523 one of the first, a

We know little of this mysterious Transylvanian other than what the great Benjamin Franklin, who claims to have been his friend, reveals in a letter from 1755. A man of good education and many interests, Samuilă Damian (Samuel Domjen/Dömjen) was an intrepid Orthodox priest with a passion for traveling. In fact, his dream, quite unusual at the time, was to go around the world. To accomplish this feat, between 1744-45 he crossed Europe towards England passing through Germany, F