RAD Curatorial Summit is an annual, invitation-based program that fosters innovation in curatorial practice. Designed as a platform for dialogue, knowledge exchange, collaboration, and community building, the initiative plays a pivotal role in strengthening the Romanian art scene and positioning it within regional and global contexts.
Since its pilot edition in 2023, RAD Curatorial has evolved into a dynamic platform for exchange, reflection, and professional growth, shaped by each cohort of curators it brings together. Building on this ongoing development, RAD Curatorial 2026 will convene both emerging and established curators for an intensive five-day program focusing on how curatorial practice navigates periods of transition and instability, both locally and globally.
Through dialogue, shared research, and close engagement with artists and institutions, the program situates curatorial practice within today’s overlapping global challenges — from climate crisis and displacement to war, technological acceleration, and political instability. The concept of RAD Curatorial 2026 focuses on curatorial practice as a framework for creating support systems in times of transition and instability.
RAD Curatorial 2026 conceptual framework
Today, as the world faces overlapping global challenges—climate change, displacement, war, and genocide—practitioners in the cultural field are operating within increasingly complex and uncertain conditions. These challenges are shaped by a wide range of scientific, technological, psychological, historical, and environmental frameworks, which often conflict or compete. Amid this complexity, the need to build meaningful connections and sustainable support systemsacross different contexts becomes more urgent.
In such a landscape, art and curatorial practices are not only modes of reflection or critique, but also tools for building and sustaining infrastructures of care, collaboration, and resilience. These support systems may take many forms: informal networks of solidarity, long-term institutional partnerships, publishing platforms, resource-sharing models, or new ways of working that prioritize mutual learning and collective responsibility. They help curators and artists navigate the pressures of censorship, economic precarity, cultural displacement, and political instability—while also creating space for new ways of thinking and making.
RAD Curatorial 2026 will focus on how curatorial practice navigates periods of transition and instability, both locally and globally. The program will explore mechanisms of creating support systems on multiple levels:
• Institutional – long-term partnerships, exchange of best practices, acquisitions policies, artist estate building.
• Discursive – development of critical methodologies that bring together multiple and non-hegemonic perspectives.
• Digital – platforms that enable accessibility and filter information.
• Human – networks of professional and personal solidarity between curators, artists, and communities.
RAD Curatorial 2025 moments
