The National Museum of Art of Romania is launching a new series of talks within the program Spotlight Works in the European Art Gallery, under the title “Embodiments of Nations.” The first lecture took place in November, and the theme will be revisited during the free-entry Wednesdays on January 14 and February 4, 2026. The Spotlight Works program is initiated and coordinated by Mălina Conțu, specialist within the European Art Department.

Through this series of presentations, the public is invited to engage directly with lesser-known—or even previously unseen—works from the European Art Department’s storage collections. For four months, a painting or sculpture will be displayed in the European Art Gallery, allowing it to be explored from various thematic perspectives that cast it in a new light.

Between November 2025 and February 2026, the work telling its story will be “Bonny Kilmeny” by Scottish artist Robert Hope (1869–1936), painted at the end of the 19th century. Starting from this symbolic image, the presentation invites the public to reflect on allegorical representations of nationhood and national identity in modern Europe, focusing on the period in which this ideology took shape and contributed to the formation of nation-states.

Bonny Kilmeny is a fictional, ethereal character drawn from a poem published in 1813 by Scottish writer James Hogg, intended to evoke—in the midst of the Scottish national revival—a key historical moment: the return of Queen Mary Stuart from France to Scotland in 1561.

The lectures under the theme “Embodiments of Nations” will take place on the second floor of the European Art Gallery, in the French Impressionist painting room, where the spotlighted work will be exhibited during the period mentioned above.