Published 2026-09-10

By Meda Andreea Căpîlna · Editor, guides

The school that produced the Cluj School turns one hundred

The University of Art and Design was founded in 1926. In 2026 it turns a century old — and it is measured at five times the search demand of any gallery in the city.

Verified · 2026-09-10

When people write about contemporary art in Cluj, the story almost always begins in 2005, with the opening of Galeria Plan B. That is a correct date and a good story, but it skips the question before it: where the people who opened it came from.

They came, almost all of them, from the same address on Piața Unirii. And that address turns one hundred this year.

A hundred years, under four names

Founded in 1926 as the School of Fine Arts. From 1950 to 1990, the “Ion Andreescu” Institute of Fine Arts. From 1990 to 2001, the “Ion Andreescu” Academy of Visual Arts. Since 2001, the University of Art and Design Cluj-Napoca.

Four names in a hundred years tell you what the institution lived through without further comment. Today it has two faculties: Fine Arts, and Decorative Arts and Design. The main building is at Piața Unirii 31 — immediately beside the Bánffy Palace, which houses the Art Museum.

Who walked out of this door

The list of notable graduates includes Adrian Ghenie, Victor Man, Șerban Savu, Ciprian Mureșan and Mircea Cantor. Which is, in practice, everything meant by “the Cluj School” — plus Cantor, who won the Marcel Duchamp Prize.

It also includes names from before them: Béla Gy. Szabó, Virgil Fulicea, Mircea Roman, Mircea Corneliu Spătaru, Horea Cucerzan, László Botár, Szilágyi Varga Zoltán.

We measured the first five: 4,440 monthly searches in Romania between them. The institution that trained them draws 1,000. The graduates are searched four times more than the school — which, for an art school, is probably the definition of success.

The figure that puts it in context

“UAD Cluj” draws 1,000 searches a month in Romania, 480 in Cluj itself. “Facultatea de arte cluj” adds another 210.

For comparison: the most-searched gallery in this guide, Galeria Plan B, and the busiest independent spaces in the city come nowhere close. The most-searched independent space, NON Centru de Arte Performative, has 320 nationally.

In a city where the galleries are close to invisible in search, the art school is visible. That is a resource, not a statistic.

What happens in the centenary year

The university marks the year under the label UAD100. The programme includes the exhibition “The Wind of Change: Cluj Artists in the Transition Years 1990–2010+”, opening on 9 May 2026 at Bánffy Castle in Răscruci.

The choice of subject is worth noticing: not a centenary about 1926, but about the twenty years after 1990 — precisely the window in which the generation that would reach Venice was formed.

The university also runs Arts Summer University, a two-week programme in which eleventh-year pupils from across the country spend time inside the Cluj university environment before choosing a faculty. If you wondered how a scene reproduces itself: like that, by recruiting two years ahead.

What this is about

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