Radio România Internațional

Tag: restoration

  • Exhibitions in 2022, hosted by the Bucharest Municipality Museum

    Exhibitions in 2022, hosted by the Bucharest Municipality Museum

    A string of painting, sculpture and graphic art exhibitions whose eventual aim is to put to good use the rich heritage of Bucharests Art Gallery Collection will be mounted by the Bucharest Municipality Museum all throughout 2022. Brought to the fore for art lovers will be artists house-studios, but also costume collections, rare documents, traditional art and photographs of old Bucharest. The beginning of the museum is linked to the decision of Bucharest Town Halls Communal Council, issued in late July 1921, whereby the suggestion was put forward, for the foundation of a communal museum. In 1956 it was officially decided that The Sutu Palace (a historical monument built in 1834) would become the headquarters of the museum. In 1959, the History Museum of the City of Bucharest was reopened to the public. The museums history and fine arts sections merged, and that is how Bucharest Municipal Citys Arts and History Museum came into being. In 1999, the institution regained its initial name, the Bucharest Municipality Museum. At the moment, part of Bucharest Municipality Museum are 14 museums, collections and memorial houses. One such museum is “Theodor Aman. ” The museum awaits its public for a temporary exhibition, to be inaugurated on April 7th. The museum will be open to the public until March 2023. From May 27, on the premises at the Frederic Storck and Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck Museum, an exhibition will be opened, themed “From Cape Kaliakra to Balchik. A painting itinerary.”



    Elena Olariu is the deputy director of Bucharest Municipality Museums Art, Restoration and Preservation Centre. She will now be speaking about those exhibitions, to be opened soon on the premises of Bucharest Municipality Museum.



    “The Theodor Aman Museum is one Bucharests most beautiful museums, playing host to painter Theodor Amans collection, it was also his house, a lot of people must have visited the museum already. Those who are not familiar with it, I invite them to seize the opportunity, the house is superb. It is an old house we preserved, in a bid to keep the interior just as it was decorated when the painter was still alive. Then again, apart from the permanent exhibition, in April, an exhibition will also be opened, themed Aman in plein air. Which means we present what the artist painted outdoors. Our lady colleagues were very inspired when they picked up the theme, as it is an opportunity to see the gardens Theodor Aman painted. In the month of May we will have another exhibition, just as interesting, venued by the Frederic Storck and Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck Museum. Paintress Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck travelled to Balchik many times, there she met Queen Marie of Romania, a close friend of hers. Therefore, the exhibition will present Cecilia Cuțescu-Storcks works, inspired by those places. Ours will be an artistic journey, we will also have the chance to see the interior of the house, with a couple of novel works belonging to the Storck family house, we hope it will be an interesting exhibition. Actually, each year we stage small-scale exhibitions on the premises at the Storck Museum, and this time I decided we should focus on Balchik as well.”



    In late April this year, the Sutu Palace in Bucharest will play host to the exhibition themed “Phanariot Princely Documents as part of the Bucharest Municipality Museum Collection”. Starting May 18, the Sutu Palace will also be the venue for an exhibition themed “The Romanian principalities. Landscapes of the 19th century European engraving”. The exhibition puts to good use the heritage of the Bucharest Municipality Museums Prints and Imprints Collection. Also, the exhibition seeks to introduce visitors to the Romanian atmosphere of the 19th century. More than 50 works will be exhibited, depicting places in the Romanian Principalities captured by foreign engravers, and bringing center-stage elements of urban and rural architecture. Two exhibitions will be opened in August, as part of the Donations and Donors series. The Sutu Palace will venue the “Ioana Gabriela and Alexandru Beldiman Donation”, while the Nicolae Minovici Museum will play host to the exhibition themed “Under the Sign of Royalty: the Photographs of a young princess.” Elena Olariu is the deputy director of Bucharest Municipality Museums Art, Restoration and Preservation Section. Here she is again, speaking about this coming Septembers exhibition hosted by the Sutu Palace, themed “Painter Gheorghe Tattarescus Family, Faith and Home. “



    “It will be an exhibition dedicated to Gheorghe Tattarescus house, so we will exhibit several objects from that house. These are objects that have been restored, and that was accomplished thanks to my colleagues who succeeded to restore a great part of the Gheorghe Tattarescu Memorial House, and Im speaking about objects but also about paintings. We will have on display ceramics, painted icons, books, artists personal objects, several paintings of a small exhibition, so that the public can see those wonderful objects that have also been restored. They will be presented as an absolute first, which is also an opportunity to make the work of our colleagues in the Restoration section known to visitors. Perhaps very few people know that most of the exhibited objects also go through the restoration labs, where our colleagues work, and the work they do is less well-known to the public, yet it is a kind of work we have been trying to bring center-stage, via those types of exhibitions.”



    In September and October, 2022, the Bucharest Municipality Museum, though its exhibitions, will put to good use the creation of three women sculptors: Elena Surdu Stănescu, Henriette Cihoschi and Doina Lie.


    (EN)




  • The Wooden Church in the village of Urși

    The Wooden Church in the village of Urși

    The
    restauration of this small church in Valcea county, southern Romania, which
    started in 2009 and was completed in 2020 thanks to the funds obtained through
    donations and the volunteer work of numerous students, architects and
    professional painting conservators, has become not only a model to imitate but
    also a way to learn how they used to build things at that time. According to
    architect Raluca Munteanu, who got involved with the restoration works, the
    church, which was dedicated to the Annunciation and the Archangel Michael, was
    built between 1757-1784.






    Raluca Munteanu: The church we see today isn’t likely to be
    the church that was built first, as we ‘ve learnt that it survived a
    devastating fire in 1883 and subsequently underwent a series of restauration
    works. An 1843 inscription placed at its entrance mentions founder Nicolae
    Milcoveanu who did the restauration works and the church’s extremely valuable
    wall paintings date back to the same year. Nicolae Milcoveanu wasn’t a boyar, but a
    wealthy local who got actively involved in the community life like they used to
    back then. He repaired the church and gave it back to the community.


    However,
    the woodcarvers, those who actually built the church, remained anonymous until
    nowadays, though the painters were mentioned, Gheorghe, Nicolaie and Ioan.
    Gheorghe was seemingly one of the locals, as architect Raluca Munteanu
    believes.






    Raluca Munteanu: They could have been locals who got their
    inspiration from the monasteries in the area, mainly from the Hurezi monastery,
    which served, as one can easily notice, as model for the other churches in the
    area. However, documents are pretty scare in the area and it is possible that
    the names of the builders had been known to the locals, but as they didn’t have
    the routine of documenting events, their names remain unknown to us. A strange
    thing though is that we know the names of the painters… In the case of these
    village churches, few names of their builders are known. We only know they were
    well-trained professionals and went from one place to the other to build
    churches in the neighborhood. An expert painter can nowadays identify the way
    in which local style was passed down from generation to generation.




    The
    dimensions of this church are also illustrative for the village community but
    also for the wood exploitation capabilities of the region. The small church in
    Ursi is almost 8 meters long, 6 meters wide and maybe measures 2 meters and 40
    centimeters from the floor up to its ceiling. With its roof, the church’s total
    height stands at 4 meters and 50 centimeters, says Raluca Munteanu adding that its
    architecture doesn’t belong to any particular style.




    Raluca Munteanu: This is a vernacular church built as
    pragmatically as they possibly could at that time. It is a simple construction
    made with the materials they abundantly had at that time, like wood, for
    instance. This type of dovetail joints can be found all over Europe as it was
    the easiest and cheapest way to build something. At the same time, wood was
    also cheap and easy to come by in these mountainous areas. The church was
    functional and adjusted to meet the requirements of the religious services of
    the Orthodox Church and it doesn’t have anything special as compared to the
    other wooden churches in the region. It complies with the requirements of the
    Orthodox religion and the pattern of its buildings, both in terms of interior
    compartmentalization and functionality. Like I said its decorations were
    influenced by the paintings of the Hurezi monastery and are organized in keeping
    with the Orthodox rituals. What is special, not only for this region but for a
    larger area is the builders’ decision to adorn the church with wooden frescoes
    as these two techniques, the frescoes and the wooden paintings are known to be
    incompatible. Painters here employed a technique used at wall-painted
    monasteries, also known as fresco painting, which is executed upon freshly laid
    lime plaster and is different from secco painting techniques, which are applied
    to dried plaster.




    The church’s frail mural painting and its
    premises have been completely refurbished and given back to the parishioners
    concurrently with another concrete church recently built in the village.




    (bill)



  • Behind the scenes at Romania’s National Museum of History

    Behind the scenes at Romania’s National Museum of History


    Fragment. The Experience of restoration.
    It is the title of an exhibition hosted by Romania’s National Museum of History,
    located in the Old City Centre. The exhibition is on until mid-June. Visitors
    can have the chance to know the museum’s restoration laboratories, whether we speak
    about painting, metal or wood, or whether it’s about ceramic, paper or textile
    materials/fabric. It is an incursion in history but also a behind-the-scenes glimpse
    of the exhibits, there where the items are stored, maintained and restored by
    dedicated and passionate people. We were lucky enough to speak to restorer Sorina
    Gheorghiță, a collaborator of Romania’s National Museum of History’s painting restoration
    laboratory. Here she is, giving us details on the work behind the exhibited
    paintings but mainly about a restorer’s work as such:

    Sorina Gheorghita:


    Since
    2013, when the easel painting restoration lab was accredited as part of Romania’s
    National Museum of History, around 25 paintings have been restored. Many of the
    paintings are authored by renowned Romanian painters such as Luchian, Tonitza,
    Ressu, Stoica, Teodorescu-Sion. The Paintings depict major historical events,
    war scenes, mainly, focusing on the War of Independence or World War One. A major
    work which has been restored is a painting by Aman, titled The Proclamation of the
    Union, it is the Union of the Principalities, the depicted scene is a very familiar
    one, it is a scene that usually goes with the event.


    But what are the restoration stages for
    a painting? How does the whole process unfold?

    Sorina Gheorghita:


    Speaking about the
    steps to be taken for the restoration of a painting, the very moment the
    decision has been taken for that particular painting to be restored, it had
    been examined already by the preservation person responsible for the painting warehouse,
    jointly with the restorer, in some cases, and a common decision has been taken,
    to that end. The very moment the
    painting is taken to the restoration lab, the painting undergoes a research process for which using various means and operations are being used, direct light, lateral light, ultra-violet light, we sometimes
    have no choice other than using infrared light or X-rays.
    We resort to analyses, the laboratory of Romanian National Museum of History’s
    is extremely well-provided, giving us a hand whenever needed…Then, as soon as
    all those investigations have been made and the structure of the painting layer
    has been accurately detected, the level of degradation and the cause of the degradation
    are also specified. Then the proceedings are set, for a detailed research proposal,
    whereby all the required operations are presented for the painting to be
    restored, that particular research and the ensuing intervention proposals are
    presented before a sitting restoration panel which gives its go-ahead for the operation.
    The restoration process comes to a close, that’s for sure, while the
    freshly-restored work is again presented before a panel, whose job is to check
    if all the steps had been taken, that were put forward for the restoration work,
    also checking the respective work’s post-restoration condition, then the work
    returns to the storage room or is being displayed as part of an exhibition, like
    the one we’re having right now. The most rewarding surprises emerge, in fact, while
    we’re doing the cleaning, which is a spectacular operation, whether we remove
    the varnish alone and the surface layers. A great many details resurface, which had not been visible before, or the colors, which turn out to be a lot livelier.
    Also, if, in time, the painting was covered in certain re-painting layers, we
    can have the surprise of coming across some details that had become absolutely
    invisible, otherwise, or even signatures.


    As part of the « Fragment »
    exhibition, an important section is spectacularly represented, the metal
    restoration laboratory. Moreover, as an absolute first for the lay public,
    bronze and iron items are shown, in an exquisite display, items that are part
    of the archaeological site that was discovered in 2012 in Tartaria, lying in the
    central Romanian county of Alba.

    Archaeologist Corina Bors:


    The archaeological site in
    Tartaria, the Western Tartaria Bridge was unearthed in the spring of 2012. The
    discovery occurred as part of a series of large-scale or pre-emptive archaeological
    research, carried on the occasion of the construction of a highway along the
    Mures River valley. The two deposits, with bronze and iron objects, were
    discovered in an extremely special archaeological context, namely the western boundary
    ditch of the Hallstattian habitat, the objects were stored in two pots made of
    clay, with archaeologists taking samples of all that. The first deposit, labeled Tartaria 1, has, judging
    by what we have been able to find so far, and you will see why, more than 400
    items made of bronze and iron, dating, broadly speaking, from the 19th
    and the 18th centuries BC. The second one counts 50 objects, also dated
    for the same timeframe.


    But which of the items that have been discovered
    are the most precious, archeologically and historically?

    Corina Bors:


    The items of
    exception that were found in all those prehistorical votive deposits, among
    them, there is a chest lace piece, a lavish harness kit made of a tongue bit with
    a mouthpiece, but also several phalera, the golds medals offered to the Romanian
    soldiers as a prize and worn around the neck, as well as other everyday items,
    made of bronze. In the Fragment exhibition which is still open at the Romania’s
    National Museum of History, you can admire, separately, the seven-part necklace,
    but also, in a one-of-a kind display, the harness kit placed on a real-scale
    horse bust, as well as a series of adornment objects, day-to-day objects,
    belonging to a male set, also displayed on a man’s bust. And, last but not the
    least, a necklace made of bronze beads is also displayed, again, a piece which
    is extremely rare for the so-called middle Hallstatt age from the area of the Danube
    River basin. The discovery was made by archeologists and all the fragments kept
    in those deposits could be sampled, with utmost care, so organic materials were
    also sampled, which made it possible for the findings to be accurately dated.






  • The Zambaccian museum in Bucharest

    The Zambaccian museum in Bucharest



    One of Bucharests interesting museums lies in the northern part of the city, which is actually a residential area where the development of property and the increasingly urbanized character saw their heyday in the inter-war period. The Krikor H. Zambaccian museum is venued by purpose-built premises, capable of hosting a fine art collection. The museum is the brainchild of a merchant with a special personality. He was an art aficionado, also willing to give artists a hand. Born in 1889 in Constanta, in the south-east, Krikor Zambaccian hailed from an Armenian family. He continued the merchant tradition of the family, first in his native city then in Bucharest, where he relocated in 1923. However, fins arts remined his passion throughout. Museographer with the Art Collections Museum, Ilinca Damian, provided the details.



    Ilinca Damian:



    “The family moved to Bucharest, also developing their trade in Romanias capital city. All his life Zambaccian was in the fabric printing business and in the textile material trade, in a broader sense. Apart from that, his great passion was collecting fine art objects, in principal Romanian paintings and in the subsidiary, French paintings. Zambaccian discovered his passion for art when he was a student in Paris. In between accounting and economics courses he found the time to visit art galleries and museums, also taking part in conferences and debates. That is how Zambaccian became a self-made man in the field of fine arts. He succeeded to befriend some of the French artists, such as Henri Matisse. When he returned to Romania, he also befriended the Romanian artists of his generation. Gradually, Krikor Zambaccian began to structure his collection.”



    That occurred properly after he relocated to Bucharest, in 1923. We recall that the items he had purchased before that year, in his first attempt to start a collection, got lost during World War One. The first fine art works he purchased as a collector were authored by the artists he had already befriended.



    Ilinca Damian:



    “All his life he maintained a close friendship with painter Gh. Petrascu. Every so often he would buy works created by the maestro, whom he visited on Sundays, he also had a close friendship with Th. Pallady, who visited Zambaccian in his study. Also, he was a friend of Nicolae Tonitza, temporarily, he was also a friend of Francisc Sirato. Actually, he was a friend of almost all the artists of the time, supporting them all his life to the best of his abilities. So, apart from his fine art collector activity, he also was a Maecenas of fine artists..Just like any other art collector of the time, Zambaccian knew how to add to his collection works by the so-called “forefathers of Romanian modern art”, the likes of Nicolae Grigorescu, Ion Andreescu, Ștefan Luchian, as well as Theodor Aman. The selection of Luchians paintings he purchased was acclaimed from the very beginning. Zambaccian himself did not mince his words saying he dedicated Stefan Luchian an altar, in his collection. Also, he was generous enough to pay good money for the paintings he purchased directly from the artists themselves of from other collectors. He believed a work of quality deserved being purchased for a good price, so he would always offer more money rather than start a negotiation.



    In time, Zambaccians collection was growing, so he needed proper premises for the storage and display of the paintings. In the early 1940s, Krikor Zambaccian had a house built, which had been thought out as a museum but also as lodgings. It is the building of the Zambaccian museum we can still see today.



    Ilinca Damian:



    “In 1942, works for the building had already been completed, and visiting was allowed once a week. Zambaccian had though it out it out as a museum, but he obviously lived there until the year of his death, 1962. The house was designed in the modernist style. Actually, it was a medley of styles, from the neo-Romanian to the minimalist one, also having Moorish influences. So we can say the house had rather an eclectic style, but the main trend was the modernist one quite all right. The idea of opening a museum occurred to Zambaccian as early as 1932-1933. Even before he had the house built he initiated talks with the municipality of Bucharest, but they failed to reach an agreement as to the premises where the works of art would be exhibited. The initial plan was to donate the art collection stored in the house he lived in at that time, which was obviously inappropriate for exhibiting and visiting purposes. Negotiations with the municipality had no positive outcome, yet Zambaccian was adamant in fulfilling his wish, that of creating an open-to-everybody museum. So the 1940s he had his own house built, which clearly had that purpose, and in 1947 he succeeded to donate his Romanian art collection to the state. The donation proper was completed in three stages, in 1947, 1957 and 1962, the year of his death. As we speak, the collection includes 300 works of Romanian and European painting and sculpture.”



    During the communist regime, the collection was unfortunately taken to other premises, it was a museum of several art collections, while Zambaccians house was used for purposes that were different from what the collectors initial intended. In the early 2000, in the wake of a large-scale restoration process, the collection was returned to its original building. Today, the Zambaccian residence but also the collection are open to visitors, just as their creator and initial owner wanted.


    (Translation by Eugen Nasta)