National Art Museum

Museum was founded in 1939 on the basis of the collection Pinakothek of Chisinau. The idea of creation of it belongs to the sculptor Alexander Plamadeala (1888-1940). The original collection consisted of 161 units, located in two rooms. Most of them were given to participants of the Tenth salon of the Society of Fine Arts in Bessarabia, held in Chisinau in 1939. 

The first director was the painter August Baillayre. Nowadays the museum collection is located in three buildings declared to be the monuments of the national importance. This is Kherts house, built in 1903-1905 in Baroque style, house of the counsel Kligman, built in the neoclassical style of the late XIX not far from home Kherts. Since 1989 the activities of the National Art Museum of Moldova take place in the building at str. 31 August 1989, 115, built in 1895-1901 according to the project of A. Bernardati in the neoclassical style with Gothic elements. Initially there was a girls' school, founded by princess Natalia Dadiani, whose name this gymnasium had until 1940. Today the museum's collection includes over 38 thousand art items . It widely represents the Moldovan fine arts (painting, drawing, sculpture, decorative arts). Special attention should be paid to the collection of medieval iconography of Moldova. The old icons, books and manuscripts illustrate the development of Christianity in the territory of Moldova and its role in the Moldavian culture. The museum has a permanent exhibition of Russian, European and Oriental arts. Russian painting is represented in the works A. Ivanov, I. Repin, V. Perov, A. Savrasov, I. Shishkin, I. Aivazovsky, N. Roerich (cat. 77) and others. The collection of European painting of XVI-XVIII centuries is no less interesting (P. Gober, Rembrandt, F. Boucher, P. Gavarnie, O. Renoir and the others. ). Absolute value is the collection of works by Japanese masters of XVII-XIX centuries. (Kitagawa Utamaro, Ando Hiroshige, Utagawa Kunisada).