The Art Museum in Craiova
Since 1954 it is hosted by the Jean Mihail Palace, an elegand and large structure, appropriate for such a cultural institution. The Art Museum in Craiova is one of the most important and appreciated Romanian museums, due both to the quality and richness of the exhibits, as well as the manner in which they are presented.
The museum has three distinct sections :
The Gallery for Universal Art : bringing together Flemish, Dutch, French and Italian art, this section is presented in the five halls on the ground floor of the palace. Some of the artworks exhibited here are very rare and valuable, both for dealers and researchers.
The Gallery for Romanian Art : it ocuppies the whole floor, the hall of honour and the beautiful Brancusi Cabinet.
3. The Cabinet for Romanian and Foreign Graphical Art : still it isn't opened for the general public, yet it's bound to be one of the most interesting parts of the whole museum.
Besides all that, in the museum's collections you can also find a large number of paintings, sculptures, drawings, sketches, decorative arts, signed by German, Austrian, English, Spanish artists (and many others), as well as several Oriental art works, from Turkey, China, Japan, all made before the 20th century, thus many of great value.
In the beginning, the vast majority of the museum's collections came from the "Alexandru and Aristia Aman" Art Gallery. Founded in 1908, according to the two collectors and philantropers last will (both of them were from Craiova) this rich art collection was exhibited for several decades in the house of Aristia Aman's parents. The bulk of the collection was made out of paintings from the Dutch, Flemish, Italian and French schools, mostly 17th century works of art, some paintings and drawings by Theodor Aman and some Romanian and foreign decorative art. Over the years, this collection was enriched with donations and acquisitions made by the City Hall of Craiova and soon the old house proved to be way too little. A new wing was added to the house in 1930 - 1931, to house the Romanescu donation. In 1950 all of the art works were given to the Oltenia Museum, and in 1954 they were moved to the present location.
During the following years, the new Museum of Art in Craiova received several important works from the National Art Museum of Bucharest, as well as several donations and acquisitions, and the number of the artworks grew considerably. By the end of 1993 the museum already had almost 12.000 works of art, among which around 2000 were works by Romanian artists, over 6500 were drawings and engravings, and so on. Nowadays the Art Museum in Craiova is one of the most important museum of Romania and surely must be visited by anyone who is interested in art. If not, the city also has several other cultural institutions, waiting to be discovered.
Photo : judetuldolj.ro
2008-01-14
