PARIS

*I intended to be concerned with literary form in this series of reportage. I can see I have done better than I expected. At the moment, my problem is preserving the chronological order of events. Our departure from Odessa was marked by a small, insignificant in fact, incident,

The history of a country's libraries is made not only of facts and events related to large (or smaller) institutions, but also of phenomena that illustrate the taste for books and bibliophily of particular individuals, especially when such libraries come to be included

The Romanian Peasant's Museum Motto: A photo is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.  At the beginning of the 20th century, Alexandru Tzigara-Samurcaş1 was wandering around the villages of Oltenia and Bucovina, looking for folk art objects.

Alongside collectors of art works, of minerals, of butterflies, of match-boxes, of vintage automobiles, there appeared, in the early 20th century, collectors of naïve art. Daring, of good taste, discoverers by vocation, they granted civitas rights to a field as old as the

Shortly after World War I a new name amidst art collectors in the know started to compel recognition: that of poet Ion Minulescu. At that time, more intensely than in previous years, he would, due among others to his obligations as Director General of the Arts, visit exhibitions,

excerpts IV In his office on the ground floor, Saferian, on a chair and surrounded by four men, all standing, was contemplating an oil portrait, set near them against the back of an ordinary straw chair. It is an Ingres, most certainly, said one of the four, a man with trimmed

If his consuming passion for art gained Krikor Zambaccian a familiar fame amongst the collectors in Bucharest, particularly by dint of his acquisitions in the field or foreign art, few know that his younger brother, Onic (1891-1975), yet another aficionado of beauty, was

Krikor H. ZAMBACCIAN (1889-1962) was born in an Armenian family that had long before settled in Constanta on the Romanian Black Sea coast. From 1907 he attended commerce colleges in Antwerp and Paris, where he became acquainted with western art and met Matisse, Dufy, Derrain,

Director, Museum of Art Collections A magic and impartial destiny decided that, at the celebration of a century since the materialization of the idea of art collection and art collector, the reopening of a Palace of Collections should take place. An initiative, disputed

In 1951, the 'Slătineanu Collection' opened at No 3, Obedenaru Street. After crossing a garden bordered by big mosaic slabs, one reaches the building hosting the Collection. Two 18th century ewers warn the visitors that they will find numerous ceramic pieces indoors.

1947. The year of the most despotic deeds of the communist regime come to power in the shadow of the Soviet tanks. The ordeal of the Romanian intellectual elites (and not only) begins. The Slătineanu family find themselves treated like common criminals. The whole family

The chance passers-by through the quiet Cotroceni neighbourhood could discover, at the end of a well tended garden, a two-storey house with no other adornment than its iron-wrought latticework. What was strange was that leaning against the wall separating it from the house