Seven pupils of the «Raisa Cojocaru» School of Fine Arts in Ungheni are showing their work on the walls of a Municipal Museum gallery in Iași. The exhibition is called «Linii în dialog» — «Lines in Dialogue» — it is open until 31 July, and its opening was held on Thursday, 16 July. Entry is free.
Ten other young artists exhibit alongside them — 17 in all, from Iași and Ungheni, according to the organisers’ press release. The venue: the «Dumitru I. Grumăzescu» Galleries, 24 Alexandru Lăpușneanu Street, Iași.
Not just any room: a gallery of the city’s museum
That address is, in fact, the heart of the news. The «Dumitru I. Grumăzescu» Galleries are one of the three sections of the «Regina Maria» Municipal Museum in Iași — the museum network of Iași City Hall. Not a school corridor, nor an improvised space: a public gallery of the city.
Confirmation comes from the hosts as well, independently of the school in Ungheni. On Monday, 13 July, Iași City Hall published the exhibition programme of the «Regina Maria» Municipal Museum and of the galleries it administers. Under the heading “«Dumitru I. Grumăzescu» Galleries — 24 Lăpușneanu Street” it appears in black and white: “«Linii în dialog» — an exhibition of drawing and painting.” The children’s work sits, in that same official programme, alongside the museum’s permanent display, «Magia clipei» — photography by Mihai Potârniche — and «The Fascinating Japanese Print».
The venue has a history of its own. The antiquarian bookshop was opened in 1992 by the collector Dumitru Grumăzescu, a man with more than fifty years of collecting behind him; the space holds a large collection of Eminescu volumes and a collection of miniature books, and since 15 June 2019 it has been running, reopened, as a venue for exhibitions, book launches and musical events. It is on these walls — between Eminescu and books the size of a matchbox — that the children from Ungheni have hung their work.
Who is actually behind the exhibition
Not the school, and not the museum. The exhibition is run by the «Dialog pentru Dezvoltare» Association of Iași, within a project called «Open Doors for Future Artists — UDVA 2026». The partners, as the press release lists them: the «Regina Maria» Municipal Museum Iași, the Children’s Palace Iași, the «Raisa Cojocaru» School of Fine Arts in Ungheni, Ungheni City Hall, and the «Art-Meșteșugurile Prutului» Association.
The event’s coordinators are Aurica Ichim, director of the «Regina Maria» Municipal Museum in Iași, and Elena Isabela Oniche, president of the organising association. The opening is announced with a two-hour duration and a short recital by the artist DA:NA.
The 17 exhibitors are coached by four teachers: Dana Ungureanu (Children’s Palace Iași), Cristina Dragomir (headmistress of the School of Fine Arts in Ungheni), Ecaterina Solomon and Diana Sterpu. On the exhibition poster, the group signed by Cristina Dragomir — that of the Ungheni school — numbers seven pupils; seven more are coached by Dana Ungureanu, while Ecaterina Solomon and Diana Sterpu each present one pupil. The poster therefore lists 16 names, one fewer than the «17 young artists» given in the press release. Triunghi.md does not publish the exhibitors’ names: they are children.
Two things the press release left unstated: how many works are on show, and who covers the Ungheni pupils’ journey to Iași. The exhibition’s host — the «Regina Maria» Municipal Museum in Iași — supplied both to Triunghi.md: 35 works are on show, 19 of them by the Ungheni pupils — more than half. And the participants’ travel costs, the museum said, are «covered in full by the organisers».
The hosts: a Children’s Palace in an 1840 boyar house
The main partner in Iași is not a private gallery but, again, an institution for children. The Children’s Palace in Iași provides non-formal education — clubs in art, culture, science and technology, sport and tourism — and operates in the Cantacuzino-Pașcanu House, a building raised in 1840 by the grand logothete Dumitrache Cantacuzino-Pașcanu, on Carol I Boulevard. The institution opened there in 1965 as the Pioneers’ Palace and took its present name after December 1989.
Put plainly: two children learning to draw, one in Ungheni and one in Iași, end up on the same wall. The institutions they come from are, structurally, relatives — after-school schools, where a child goes because they want to, not because they have to.
The third thread across the Prut
Ungheni and Iași have been officially twinned since October 2016 — 2026 marks ten years since the agreement was signed. Beneath it, at district and county level, lies an even older cooperation: Ungheni District Council Decision no. 2/2 of 30 April 2009 and Iași County Council Decision no. 277 of 22 September 2009.
That thread is not decorative. In June 2026, under this very agreement, Iași County Council put up 15,000 euros — of the 24,875 needed — so that the Family Doctors’ Office in Cioropcani would finally have heating, a toilet and a proper entrance. Also in June, also in Iași, five gymnasts from the «Santé Gym» club in Ungheni took first place at the «Summer Dance Rhythm» international dance competition.
Money for a medical office, a dance podium, and now a municipal gallery wall. These are three different threads of the same relationship — and all of them cross the same distance: 45 kilometres by motorway (21 by rail), with a state border in between. The figures are Ungheni City Hall’s own, which notes another: Chișinău is 105 kilometres away. For someone from Ungheni, Iași is more than twice as close as their own capital.
A school running since 1968, in a district losing its young
The School of Fine Arts in Ungheni has been running since 1968, at 9 Nicolae Bălcescu Street, in the same building as the Palace of Culture. It bears the name of Raisa Cojocaru, who led it from 1980 to 2018; the municipality dedicated the institution to her by Municipal Council Decision no. 9 of 17 July 2020, after 340 Ungheni residents signed for it. Studies last four years, and in June the school saw off its class of 2026: 80 graduates. Over the decades, artists such as Dumitru Verdianu, Ion Zderciuc, Victor Cobzac, Ilie Cojocaru and Alexandru Plăcintă came out of its classrooms.
The backdrop against which the whole story reads is less bright. The number of young people aged 15–29 in Ungheni district fell from 24,013 in 2014 to 11,029 in 2026 — a loss of 54% in twelve years, according to provisional data from the National Bureau of Statistics. In a district losing half of its young people, a school that turns out dozens of children each year who know how to draw is one of the few institutions still producing reasons to stay.
And for a child of twelve or fourteen, a work hung in a gallery of the Iași Municipal Museum is not a school trip. It is the first line of an artist’s CV — and the first proof that what they make at home, on a floor of a building on Bălcescu Street, is visible on the other side of the Prut as well.
The «Linii în dialog» exhibition — «Dumitru I. Grumăzescu» Galleries, 24 Alexandru Lăpușneanu Street, Iași. Run: 15–31 July 2026. Visiting hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 10.00 to 17.00, last entry at 16.30. Opening: Thursday, 16 July 2026, 16.00, with a short recital by the artist DA:NA. Entry is free.
The details of the exhibition — its run, the opening, the organiser, the partners, the number of exhibitors, the coaching teachers and the free entry — come from the press release of the «Dialog pentru Dezvoltare» Association of Iași, published in the description of the public event, and from the exhibition’s official poster. The exhibition and the venue are independently confirmed by the exhibition programme of the «Regina Maria» Municipal Museum, published by Iași City Hall. The number of works on show (35, of which 19 are by the Ungheni pupils), the visiting hours and the fact that the participants’ travel is covered in full by the organisers were confirmed to Triunghi.md by the exhibition’s host, the «Regina Maria» Municipal Museum in Iași, by email on 15 July 2026; the article has been updated with these details. Triunghi.md does not publish the young exhibitors’ names, as they are minors, even though those names appear on the event’s public poster. The address and status of the «Dumitru I. Grumăzescu» Galleries (a section of the museum, reopened on 15 June 2019) are taken from the official site of the «Regina Maria» Municipal Museum; the history of the antiquarian bookshop from the official tourism platform of the city of Iași; the address and profile of the Children’s Palace from the institution’s own site, and the history of the building that houses it from encyclopaedic sources. The distances are those published by Ungheni City Hall. The demographic figures are official National Bureau of Statistics data for Ungheni district (2026 — provisional data). The cover is a photograph from the exhibition, published by the «Raisa Cojocaru» School of Fine Arts in Ungheni on Facebook after the 16 July opening; the frame was chosen to show the works, not the pupils’ faces, as they are minors.