The National Museum of Natural History "Grigore Antipa" together with its partners - the Cotroceni National Museum, the Peleș National Museum and the Bucharest Municipality Museum - invites you on Wednesday, November 22, 2017, at 6:00 p.m., to the opening of the temporary exhibition entitled "A Royal Friendship: Grigore Antipa and the Kings of Romania 1892-1944". This event, organized under the auspices of the Royal Family of Romania, is part of the series of numerous events organized by the Museum this year, to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Grigore Antipa.
The exhibition tells the story of a friendship that encompasses four generations of the Royal Family, a friendship revealed by priceless objects, documents and unpublished photographs from the collections of the partner museums. The first pages of this story about "A Royal Friendship" were written at Peleș in October 1892, when Grigore Antipa, an eminent young man, educated at a prestigious university in Germany, has the special honor of presenting his future plans to King Carol I. Conquered by the young zoologist with the mind of an economist, the sovereign keeps him for breakfast and, moreover, becomes to him over the years "a true father who supported and advised him until the end of his life".
By visiting the exhibition, we will discover Grigore Antipa – the devoted friend, the one who traveled year after year to the Danube Delta with the Royal Family and about whom Queen Maria remembers with pleasure in her famous Memoirs: “Our dearest companion on these trips on the Danube was Dr. Antipa, an unusually small man, round, jovial and full of wisdom. He had studied in Germany and spoke German with the same ease as his own language. There was nothing in the world that he did not know about water, fish and birds. Antipa was friends with everyone and a walk on the Danube without him lost half of its charm.”
Stepping into this moving temporary exhibition, we will discover some of the treasures of the Museum whose "soul" was Grigore Antipa, the one whom King Carol I considered irreplaceable at the head of the State Fisheries, the lifelong friend of King Ferdinand or the close collaborator of King Carol II. The Museum's book of honor preserves the signatures of the members of the Royal Family of Romania, who returned year after year with pleasure to revisit the Museum of Natural History, the museum of their childhood.
In 1933, on the anniversary of the institution he led, Grigore Antipa said that the museum “must become a true hotbed of science and culture for the Romanian nation”. On the same occasion, King Carol II stated that “this museum is one of the cultural institutions of Romania that we can be proud of and that has carried the good reputation of our country beyond its borders” and, as a sign of deep gratitude for the founder of the modern museum, decided that the institution should bear the name “Dr. Grigore Antipa”.
The exhibition can be visited between November 22, 2017 and March 4, 2018 in the central hall on the Museum floor, being integrated into the main exhibition.
The museum is open from Tuesday to Friday between 10:00 and 18:00, the last visitor enters at 17:00, and on Saturday and Sunday between 10:00 and 19:00 (last visitor entering at 18:00).