Loved it.  The <a href="http://sghg.bg/newsite/index.php?module=pages&amp;lg=en&amp;page=history">Sofia City Art Gallery </a>has three great exhibitions up right now (and one of the best museum/gallery websites in Bulgaria I've seen).  The thing is I think that the exhibitions I saw today are all closing soon (April 26th).  So go this weekend or you'll be sad that you missed it.   Oh and no excuses: the gallery is free and I don't that it's ever very crowded.  Today there were maybe five other people there--more or less I had the gallery to myself.

What's there to see? First there's "From Yesterday Till Tomorrow: Monuments to Sofia" this is a collection of paintings and mixed media pieces that portray the city and people of Sofia.  I was surprised to find myself thinking: I walk by these things every day but I've never seen X in this light before.  The pieces were beautiful and evocative and span the greater part of the 20th century. At the end,  I thought: this is such a treasure and shows a Sofia, a range of talent and an eye for display that I haven't seen much of in museums and galleries in Bulgaria.  It's truly a shame that this is not a more permanent exhibit.<!--more-->

Then there was an installation piece by Nadezhda Oley Lyahova titled: Globally and on a Long-Term/ Basis the Situation is Positive.  I have to admit, I am not sure I "got it."  Visually the pieces are a lot of fun to watch and the use of space and video is spot on but the individual pieces and the collection's title don't come together for me.  Also, it might be that the title didn't translate well into English--in Bulgarian the title was only maybe six words long (curses not knowing Bulgarian).

The exhibit that I almost missed because it's upstairs and I didn't see the stairs until my way out of the building was "On a Sheet of Paper" (March 31-April 26, 2009)  For some reason, I wasn't expecting much but it was fantastic.  It's sort of a retrospective of graphic art and drawing in Bulgaria.  Normally I think retrospective is a term the refers to the life of one artist so it shouldn't apply to this collection but I am using it in spite of this.  And here's why, it's because you get to see the development and growth of graphic art on paper (get the title now?) in Bulgaria since the 1920s.

There's a lot of great stuff hidden up here on the second floor--pieces that surprised and delighted me.  My aunt once asked me upon exiting a museum: which piece would you take with you? I didn't understand what she was getting at.  It turns out she was asking me if I could take one piece  home with me to be a part of my (nonexistent) art collection which one would it be? It's a question that now always hovers around in my mind as I am looking at art and exploring new museums.

I've never really felt this way before but in the gallery I realized that I would be more than happy to take the entire exhibition home with me.  Sure wall space would be a problem but a girl can dream, right?  What stood out the most to me was how modern the pieces seemed.  Maybe this is because the pieces and artifacts that Bulgarian museums and collections tends to emphasize are from the Thracian times but sometimes I get a sense that not much was happening on the art front in Bulgaria during the 20th century (again it's not like I am well connected to the art scene but I hear much more talk about UNESCO sites than art these days).

The Lonely Planet guide makes the gallery sound rather uninteresting writing: This gallery at the southern ed of the City Garden stages rotating exhibitions of modern Bulgarian art over two floors.  So it took me nearly 8 months to make it to the gallery.  I am clearly the one who missed out.  What else would I add to this description? The gallery is accessible for English speakers as all of the art was labeled in both English and Bulgarian, the staff while they don't appear to speak much English had smiles ready for me, the curators are rocking the exhibitions, and the gallery is FREE.  So, go.  You have no reason not to.