Museum of Contemporary Art Sibiu

The Brukenthal National Museum's Museum of Contemporary Art is at Strada Tribunei 6, south-west of Piața Mare, outside the Brukenthal Palace. The building was erected in 1901 by Emil Kirscher in the Viennese Secession style, with a basement, ground floor, upper floor and attic. The façade has human masks above its four bays, and the vaulted ground floor and the wrought-iron stair balustrade carry plant motifs. The building is a listed historic monument, recorded as the "former Arta cinema" (code SB-II-m-B-20997). In the early twentieth century it housed Kirscher's Unicum Café & Restaurant, with the Unicum Hall upstairs used for meetings, concerts and celebrations. In 1945 a cinema opened in the building, at the time the most modern in Sibiu. The Museum of Contemporary Art opened here in 2006 as the newest venue of the Brukenthal National Museum. The ground floor is used for temporary exhibitions, while the first and second floors have held, since 2014, a visitable storeroom where contemporary works, mainly paintings, can be seen as they are kept in storage. A further temporary exhibition room opened in 2019.