THE EXHIBITION “LITHIC PIECES RESTORED FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES”

The Bucharest Municipality Museum along with the “Vasile Pârvan” Institute of Archaeology invites the public to discover a new section of the National Museum of Antiquities exhibition. An archaeological exhibition, hosted by the George Severeanu Museum, until July 10th 2016. The “Vasile Pârvan” Institute of Archaeology, the continuation of the National Museum of Antiquities, is the owner of an important collection of sculptural pieces, Greek-Roman epigraphs and architectonic pieces which constitute the Lapidary counting more than 1000 pieces, kept in the courtyard, basement, and vestibule of Macca House (Henri Coanda Str. No. 11). A series of sarcophagi and architectural pieces may also be seen in the Romanian Academy garden, in the House of Scientists courtyard and in the yard of the house at No. 8-12 Spiru Haret Str.

The Lapidary, the result of accumulations for over a century, contains items such as statuettes and plaques, or statues, funerary steles, honorific decrees, altars, architectonic fragments, and so on – a veritable archive of stone and marble for the study of Greek and Roman Antiquity on the territory of Romania, as well as representative for the provincial art of the time, originating from Greek-Roman fortified cities, from the large Danubian urban centres, from the rural centres of Scythia Minor or Lower Dacia.

Nine of these lithic pieces, belonging to the “Vasile Pârvan” Institute and part of the National Antiquities Museum collections have been submitted to a process of conservation and restoration within the stone restoration workshop of the Department of Preservation and Restoration of the Bucharest National University of Art, in accordance with a partnership, to which the Bucharest Municipality Museum also contributed.

Thus, the exhibition The National Museum of Antiquities. An archaeological excursion, hosted by the George Severeanu Museum, was enriched with the above-mentioned stone pieces. The items’ exhibition is accompanied by a succinct documentation regarding the preservation and restoration processes. Based on the principle of minimal intervention and of the respect for the work’s authenticity, the operations undergone on the nine lithic pieces were applied under the strict coordination of specialists from the Preservation and Restoration Department.

The exhibition The National Museum of Antiquities. An archaeological excursion is open to the public until July 10th 2016, at the George Severeanu Museum.