The Calina Foundation, a non-governmental organization with a non-profit platform, active continuously for 18 years on the contemporary art scene, was established in 2006. It has aimed since its foundation to promote Romanian contemporary art and, in especially, young and emerging artists, giving them the opportunity to express themselves and publicly exhibit new productions supported exclusively by the foundation, from private funds, many of them being at their first personal exhibition.
For 17 years, the Foundation operated as a non-commercial gallery/project space, known as Galeria Calina. In 2019, the Foundation inaugurated the Kunsthalle Bega space which kept its mission and direction established since the beginning, but expanding its activity towards international artists, large-scale group exhibitions, financial support for the production of new works of art, in percentage of over 50% of the works exhibited in the space over the 4 years, financial and logistical support of curatorial projects, realization and support of a complex mediation program, with public and private financial support.
Kunsthalle Bega is today an alternative and experimental art space, dedicated to supporting artistic production and understanding the current problems of the creative spectrum from a curatorial perspective, it awards the Bega Art Prize to a Romanian curator who manages to change the rules of perception of the curatorial act.
The Calina Foundation through Kunsthalle Bega organized 21 exhibitions (4 large-scale international group exhibitions & 4 large-scale group exhibitions with national participation in the main space/ 11 artist exhibitions and 1 group exhibition with local participation in the Kunsthalle Bega Box project space ), edited 15 art publications, organized guided tours, artist talks, workshops for different age groups and for different communities, carried out cultural mediation projects, all supported by numerous institutional/media partners and public funders and private.