Before becoming a historian, political scientist, and theologian, Daniel Barbu was an art historian. He graduated from the National Institute of Art N. Grigorescu in Bucharest in 1980 and then worked as a museum custodian at the Village Museum and the Museum of Art in Bucharest. This article focuses on Professor Daniel Barbu's early life as an art historian during the communist regime in Romania. While Barbu's political writings emphasized the communist regime's reliance on the assent of intellectuals rather than their dissent, during this period, he himself made courageous gestures against Ceaușescu's policy of destroying Romanian heritage. The article highlights two reports written by Barbu, Octavian Roske, and Radu Ciuceanu in 1981 and 1984. These reports documented the condition of historical monuments under the Ceaușescu regime and were sent to Radio Free Europe. This prompted a Securitate investigation that failed to identify the authors. Moreover, during the post-communist period, Barbu criticized the anticommunism adopted by Romanian intellectuals after the fact.