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)