Museums, Bucharest

The museum is located opposite to the Ateneul Roman. The most important collections here are the Gallery of Romanian Medieval Art and the Gallery of Romanian Modern Art.
Works of the following known painters are on display: Gheorghe Tattarescu, Theodor Aman, Karl Storck, Ioan Andreescu, Stefan Luchian and Theodor Pallady.
The work of the romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncusi (1876-1953) is also displayed here.

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What was once the Royal Palace is now a very pleasant art museum with several galleries and many notable works by famous Romanian and foreign painters.

The National Museum of Art of Romania, which is the official name, was founded in 1948 and is home to the largest and finest art collection in the country.

The Museum of the Romanian Peasant (Muzeul Taranului Român) was the only museum I could visit during my short stay in Bucharest. It was very interesting. The museum is in an exceptional building in new Romanian style. In display are a lot of objects of the romanian culture such as wooden elements, pottery, costumes, textiles, and even an original wooden church. It's really interesting if you want to learn something about the romanian culture and history.

The National Museum of Art of Romania was founded in 1948 from the royal collection as well as with works drawn from local private and public collections.
Departaments:
-Romanian Medieval and Modern Art
-European Painting and Sculpture
-Prints and Drawings
-Oriental Art
- European Decorative Art
-Contemporary Art
Opening hours:
Wednesday - Sunday,
11.00 a.m. - 7.00 p.m. (May - September) 10.00 a.m. - 6.00 p.m. (October - April
Closed:
Monday, Tuesday

The museum was founded on 5 February 1990 and today its considered to one of the best museums of the country (voted to the European Museum of the year in 1996). At the museum you can learn a lot about the Romanian history and on the local customs of the locals.
The building erected in 1912 following the plans of arch. N.Ghica-Budesti.

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UPDATE: The museum was closed for modernization between 2009-2010. With an investment of 13 mil. EUR the museum will reopen in 2011 with better interiors, halls and exhibits, many of them modern, with multimedia explanations. A new must see for Bucharest in 2011!

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In the cellar of the Museum of Romanian Peasant there are two small rooms dedicated to the “collectivization” of agriculture in Romania which took place in the early years of the communist regime. Started in 1949 the project sought to force the peasants to bring their land into collective farms. Aside from the persistent propaganda, violent means like intimidation, beating, arrest and imprisonment were used to convince peasants to join. According to a wikipedia page on the subject, by 1962 a total of 96% of the country’s arable surface and 93.4% of its agricultural land had been included in collective structures. To achieve this 80.000 peasants were taken to court, 30.000 of which were judged and found guilty in public trials. The effect of the small rooms is rather chilling. The first room is wallpapered with old newspapers clippings while the second room looks like one used for a party meeting, where “traitors” were brought forward, accused and asked to self-criticize.

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The Museum of Romanian Peasant is one of my favourite museums in Bucharest. It houses, as the name suggests, a large collection of objects used by Romanian peasants: pottery, textiles, traditional costumes, icons and other religious artifacts, pieces of furniture, carpets etc as well as photographs documenting the customs of rural life. In one of the galleries you can see a wooden church and in another a wooden peasant house. They also have some beautiful "troite" (crosses placed at crossroads or at the edge of a village). The museum was founded in 1906 under the name of Ethnographic and National Art Museum and was housed temporarily at another location. Construction to the present building started in 1912, was stopped in 1916 and restarted in 1932. It was completed in 1941, 29 years after it was started. The building is the project of architect Nicolae Ghika Budeşti who designed it as an illustration of the neo-Romanian style, very popular in Bucharest at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1953, the communists “liberated” the building, turning it into a museum dedicated to the history of the Communist Party and sending the collection away. In 1990, after the Romanian Revolution, the collection returned home.

What makes this museum special is the way the collection is displayed, less like a museum and more like an art gallery. Objects are not behind glass cases but displayed freely and the display information is hand written on pieces of paper or illustrated by sketches. This somehow cuts the distance between the viewer and the objects, making the impact of the displays greater, more personal. It’s certainly different than other museums I’ve been to. The vision belongs to the museum’s first director after 1990, painter Horia Bernea, and to one of his main collaborators Irina Nicolau. Under their guidance the Museum of Romanian Peasant won the the European Museum of the Year Award in 1996, the first museum in Eastern Europe to be granted this honor.