Museum of Art Collections

The Museum of Art Collections (Romanian: Muzeului Colecțiilor de Artă) is a branch of the National Museum of Art of Romania and is situated in Bucharest. It is located on Calea Victoriei no.111 at the corner of Calea Griviței, in Romanit Palace, the first section of which was built in 1822.

The museum contains 44 collections donated to the Romanian State beginning with 1927 by the families of: Hurmuz Aznavorian, Dumitru and Maria Ştefănescu, Josefina, and Eugen Taru, Emanoil Romulus Anca and Ortansa Dinulescu Anca, Garabet Avakian, Mircea Petrescu and Artemiza Petrescu, Sandu Lieblich, Sică Alexandrescu, Clara and Anatol E. Baconsky, Sorin Schächter, Céline Emilian, Marcu Beza – Hortensia and Vasile Beza, Alexandra and Barbu Slătineanu, Béatrice and Hrandt Avakian.^[1]

The collection includes various pieces from Asia and the Middle East, and several pieces by Western European artists (including one drawing by Vincent van Gogh, but the heart of the collection consists of work of late 19th- and 20th-century Romanian artists, including Theodor Aman, Nicolae Grigorescu, Ioan Andreescu, Nicolae Tonitza, Gheorghe Petrașcu, Theodor Pallady, Lucian Grigorescu, Iosif Iser, Camil Ressu, Francisc Șirato, Alexandru Ciucurencu, Dimitrie Ghiață, and Corneliu Baba. The museum lapidarium hosts stone carved items of old Romanian art, among which a few pieces extracted from Văcărești Monastery, demolished in 1986 at Nicolae Ceaușescu's order.

The museum officially reopened in June 2013.^[2]