Interviews and fieldwork · Editor, reporting
Loredana Vale
Covers the part that requires talking to someone: galleries with no website, spaces that announce their programme only on Instagram, people who appear in no search at all.
She interviewed mayors, deputy mayors and city officers from twelve European cities for the coverage of the 2024 Eurocities Annual Conference, hosted by Cluj-Napoca. The job is the same here; only the person across the table has changed: instead of a mayor from Rotterdam, someone who keeps a gallery open three evenings a week and has never written a press release.
That matters more than it sounds for a guide like this one. The busiest art spaces in Cluj — Aluvial, Atelier Patru, Galeria Parter — have no website. Their programme cannot be read anywhere; it can only be found out. The reporting here on independent spaces comes out of that half of the work.
She co-founded Asociația Future Hubs in 2024 with Robert Eduard Antal, after the two won first place at CommuniCon, the FSPAC competition at Babeș-Bolyai University. She is vice-president of the association.
Covers
- Reporting and interviews
- Independent spaces
- Communication and PR
Elsewhere
What they have written here
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2026-09-10
What opens on 18 September in the Bogdánffy House
The Plan B Foundation opens a public space for contemporary art in an early nineteenth-century house. Its first exhibition hangs Piero Manzoni on the same wall as two artists from Cluj.
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2026-09-10
The second most-visited cultural place in Cluj is a house students asked for in 1921
The “Dumitru Fărcaș” Students' Culture House has 4,950 Google reviews — more than the Art Museum, the National Opera and the National Theatre. Its listing is claimed by nobody.
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2026-09-10
The oldest pharmacy in Cluj and one of its newest galleries are in the same house
The Hintz House opened the city's first pharmacy in 1573. Today the building has two entrances, two institutions, and two audiences that barely meet.
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2026-09-10
What came after the Paintbrush Factory: a house in the centre, five reviews, and an exhibition that is open
Centrul de Interes operates in the Hintz House, at Regele Ferdinand 1. It has published hours, exhibitions and guided tours. It also has five Google reviews, against 176 for the Factory that closed.
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2026-09-10
Five creatives of the week: 8–14 September
Five people with something on a wall or a stage in Cluj this week. Each with the date, the place and the source. Four of them are searched for by nobody.
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2026-09-10
The Paintbrush Factory closed in 2022, not 2019. A correction, and what actually happened
We published the wrong year in this site's timeline. We checked it, fixed it, and read the closing statement — which is harsher than anything we would have written.
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2026-09-10
Cluj county had thousands of glassworkers. Today “atelier sticlă Cluj” returns fourteen glaziers
Over five thousand people worked at Turda before 1989. A thousand at Gherla in 2003, making hand-worked glassware that went to Japan and the United States. We went looking for what is left.
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2026-09-10
The Hungarian Opera has 1,600 searches a month and a domain that will not open at all
The domain hungarianopera.ro serves a certificate issued for a completely different address, so browsers block it. The site that works is a different one, and nobody tells you that.
Sources (2)
- futurehubs.eu/association · 2026-09-10 Rolul de vicepreședintă, co-fondarea în 2024 și interviurile Eurocities
- www.linkedin.com/in/loredana-vale-9a1453225 · 2026-09-10 Profilul profesional