The Art Collections Museum (Part 3)

Prof. Garabet Avakian Collection

Garabet Avachian (1907-1967), a talented musician and violin teacher at the Conservatory “Ciprian Porumbescu” in Bucharest, acquired an impressive amount of Romanian paintings and folk art, Western European decorative art and furniture, as well as Oriental art. In 1968, his wife donated the collection to the state.


Nude and Apples, Theodor Pallady
Painting was undoubtedly the collector’s favorite genre, and Theodor Pallady his great passion. Furthermore, the collection includes many canvases signed by other renowned Romanian artists, such as Nicolae Grigorescu, Ştefan Luchian, Gheorghe Petraşcu, Dimitrie Ghiaţă, Lucian Grigorescu and Alexandru Ciucurencu. The visitors can also admire an impressive collection of icons on glass, representative for the evolution of the genre, revealing the stylistic differences among the main Romanian creative schools.

Garabet Avachian was also interested in oriental art and his collection features Chinese bronze sculptures, Japanese cloisonné, ceramics, swords, paintings on silk, and several Turkish and Caucasian carpets, as well as Persian ceramics.


The comparative art collection of Alexandra and Barbu Slătineanu

Barbu Slătineanu (1895-1959) was an expert of Romanian folk ceramics, who studied systematically, taking part in archaeological excavations and writing studies on ceramics in specialised publications. His wife, Alexandra (1985-1979) was a passionate collector of folk textiles, icons on wood and glass, as well as paintings. The collection was opened to the public in 1948, and in 1951 it was donated to the state together with other objects that had remained in the possession of the family. The phrase “comparative art collection” emphasises the donors’ intention of revealing the specificity of Romanian artistic creation within a universal context.


The Carrot Gatherer, 1885, Vincent Van Gogh
The Romanian folk ceramics (17th-20th centuries) offer a comprehensive overview of the country’s most important pottery centres. Alongside ceramics, the originality of Romanian folk art is reflected by textiles, carpets, folk costumes, and furniture pieces.


Gallé Desk, Carved wood, marquetry
Furthermore, the collection holds paintings and engravings by Romanian artists, such as Nicolae Grigorescu, Ştefan Luchian and Iosif Iser. Western art is illustrated by seventeenth- to nineteenth-century provincial furniture pieces. A coal drawing by Vincent van Gogh, which apparently was bought from the famous art dealer Ambroise Vollard, is undoubtedly the collection’s most valuable representation of Western art.

Several items in silver, as well as some oriental arms (18th-19th centuries) round out the collection.

(From MNAR)

The Art Collections Museum (Part 2)

Béatrice and Hrandt Avakian Collection

The collection of brothers Béatrice and Hrandt Avakian is a complex ensemble of Romanian, European and Oriental art. Béatrice Avakian (1905-1996) was passionate about jewelery, wooden and ivory miniatures, embroidery, and Bohemia crystal. Hrandt Avakian (1900-1990) was mostly attracted by bronze statuettes, archaeological items, Roman glassware, textiles and ceramics.

One of the collection’s highlights is a group of Japanese small sculptures (18th - 19th century), which includes several netsuke (ivory and wooden miniatures) and inrõ (small lacquered and painted partitioned boxes for medicines). Other interesting objects (given the rarity of the iconographic representations) are the Lamaist bronze sculptures of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).


Far Eastern Ensemble
The textile holdings comprise various Turkish and Caucasian prayer carpets (16th - 19th centuries), a spectacular horse rug woven in the sumak technique (19th century), embroideries from Bursa and Bukhara, and nineteenth-century Cashmere shawls. Precious metals art is well represented in the collection by goblets, boxes, Turkish mirrors, silverware and jewelery (silver, polychrome enamel, pearls, precious and semiprecious stones) created in workshops in Vienna, Paris, Moscow, London or Augsburg, which reflect both Oriental ostentation and Western comfort. Ceramics is likewise exhibited in the collection: Greek and Roman pieces (1st to 4th centuries), as well as Persian vases, bowls and plates from the 13th to the 19th centuries.


Pawn, silver, Oriental workshop
The collection is rounded out by paintings and drawings by Romanian artists, such as Nicolae Grigorescu, Theodor Pallady, Iosif Iser and Gheorghe Petraşcu.


Josefina and Eugen Taru Collection

The collection comprises paintings and drawings by renowned Romanian artists, such as Ioan Andreescu, Theodor Pallady, Nicolae Tonitza, Francisc Şirato, Alexandru Ciucurencu and Ioan Pacea. The donation also includes Romanian wooden icons, Russian icons (18th - 19th centuries), as well as several icons on glass dating from late 18th century.


Three-piece furniture ensemble and paintings
The visitors can also admire an ensemble of Far Eastern art works (bronze vases, chinaware, a Japanese painting) and some European eighteenth-century furniture pieces. The collection is completed by works signed by Eugen Taru, who had made a name for himself in the arts of satirical drawing and book illustration.

(From MNAR)

The Art Collections Museum (Part 1)

Established in 1978, the Art Collections Museum is housed in the former Romanit Palace. Around 1812 boyar Constantin Facca built the palace which was bought in the early 1830s by Grigore Romanit, treasurer of Prince Grigore Ghica. In 1834 Prince Alexandru Ghica rented the building, which later was to house the Administrative Court of Wallachia. Following the Union of the Romanian Principalities in 1859, the palace became the property of the Ministry of Finance; under its administration, in 1884 two wings were added to the building which largely retained the original neoclassical style.


The Museum currently holds 42 private collections (with over 12,000 works in a wide range of media) donated to the Romanian State between 1927 and 2002, among which those of Elena and Anastase Simu, Prof. Garabet Avachian, Dr. I. N. Dona, Maruca Dona, Alexandra and Barbu Slătineanu, Marcu Beza, George Oprescu, Iosif Iser, Victor Eftimiu, Dr. Mircea Petrescu and Prof. Artemiza Petrescu, Josefina and Eugen Taru, Elisabeta and Moise Weinberg, Idel Ianchelevici, Shizuko Onda, Dr. Emanoil Anca and Ortansa Dinulescu Anca, Hurmuz Aznavorian, Beatrice and Hrandt Avakian.


Buddha, Tibet
Romanian art is particularly well represented: valuable samples of folk art (icons on glass and wood, ceramics, furniture, as well as eighteenth- and nineteenth-century textiles) are shown alongside a significant body of paintings by Nicolae Grigorescu, Ioan Andreescu, Ştefan Luchian, Jean Al. Steriadi, Francisc Şirato, Gheorghe Petraşcu, Nicolae Tonitza, Nicolae Dărăscu, Theodor Pallady, Iosif Iser, Alexandru Ciucurecu, and sculptures by Frederic Storck, Oscar Han, Corneliu Medrea, Miliţa Pătraşcu, Celine Emilian, and Constantin Brâncuşi. The Museum also holds noteworthy works of art by French, Flemish and Dutch artists. Among its masterpieces are works by Gustave Courbet, Camille Pissarro, Antoine Bourdelle, David Teniers the Younger, and Vincent van Gogh.


Jar with Brushes, Gheorghe Petraşcu
The holdings of decorative art include European porcelain and furniture, alongside Egyptian vessels, statuettes and coins, Oriental textiles, Ottoman carpets from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century, Persian ceramics dating from the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, and Tibetan statuettes in bronze. Far Eastern sculptures, cloisonné, as well as eighteenth- and nineteenth-century wood and ivory netsukes round out the collections.


The Quarantine in Sculeni, 1840, A. Raffet
The restoration of the “A Wing” of the Art Collections Museum occasioned the reopening of its cellars to the public. The three vaulted rooms, with niches (in the fake brickwork walls) ending in pointed arches, are an ideal space for organizing the Lapidarium. It hosts an important part of the stone sculpture collection of the Romanian Medieval Art Gallery.

(From MNAR)