In October 2026, an international conference in Târgu Jiu marks 150 years since the birth of the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, who was born in nearby Hobița in 1876.
Târgu Jiu in Romania is home to a group of monumental outdoor works by Brâncuși, including Endless Column, the Table of Silence, and the Gate of the Kiss. They were constructed between 1937 and 1938 as a memorial to the soldiers, police and ordinary citizens who died defending the city during the First World War. It is now a UNESCO world heritage site.
Founder of Kettle’s Yard, Jim Ede, met Brâncuși in Paris on one of his many visits to the city, during the time he worked at the National Gallery, Millbank (the Tate Gallery) in London. It was Brâncuși’s studio in particular that Ede found captivating. In his 1984 book A way of life, Ede recalled:
When I went to see Brâncuși I felt that all the elements were there collected in his studio, almost as though it were nature’s workshop, the air (& forms) and light, poise and (the) rhythm of his carvings.
Brâncuși was also famous for his hospitality, offering visitors the kind of produce that was rare in London in the 1920s and 1930s. Ede described how Brâncuși:
cleared a large slab of stone and laying white paper on it [added] glasses knives, butter and fresh radishes [with] a long French loaf […]
Ede first acquired the sculpture Fish – which was delivered to his desk at the National Gallery in 1927 – and which he eventually took home and placed on his dining room table. In 1969, he acquired Prometheus (1912), which had initially been lent to Kettle’s Yard by the Edes’ friend, pianist Vera Moore and her son. Also in the Kettle’s Yard collection are drawings and photographs by Brâncuși.
In Brâncuși’s studio, Ede observed how the individual works of art, found objects and other items combined to create a beautiful whole. It was this effect Ede sought to create at Kettle’s Yard, which opened its doors to visitors for the first time in 1957 (just a few months after Brâncuși died).
Brâncuși bequeathed his studio and its entire contents to the French state and, ultimately, it became part of the collection of the Musée national d’art moderne in Paris at the Centre Pompidou. Ede followed the sculptor’s example in his own gift of Kettle’s Yard and his entire collection to the University of Cambridge in 1966.
There are many correspondences between the objects and ideas that lie behind Brâncuși’s studio and Kettle’s Yard, which I explore in my conference paper.
The symposium has been organised by the Constantin Brâncuși University of Târgu Jiu and Târgu Jiu Town Hall under the patronage of the President of Romania and partners UNESCO and Kettle’s Yard, the University of Cambridge. It brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars, museum professionals and artists. By exploring archives, previously untranslated texts, analysis of objects in international collections and underrepresented artistic practices, the symposium aims to inform a new era of scholarship on Brâncuși and related subject areas within twentieth-century Romanian culture and international modernism.
Constantin Brâncuși: Philosophy of Form
at Constantin Brâncuși University, Târgu Jiu
22–26 October 2026
Brâncuși at Kettle's Yard
History of Kettle's Yard
