National Art Gallery collecting missing artworks

TIRANA, Dec. 12 – The National Art Gallery has launched a campaign to collect artworks taken away from the gallery’s collection since the early 1980s to be displayed at the premises of key state institutions. The Albanian Parliament has been the first institution to positively respond to the appeal by the Artan Shabani, the new director of the National Art Gallery, returning five paintings which were displayed in the Parliament’s headquarters.
“These artworks belong to the collection of the National Art Gallery and in our archive there are a series of works in different institutions such as the President’s office, the Parliament, the Foreign Affairs Ministry and other government institutions,” said Shabani, adding that the artworks which have been away from the gallery since decades are in urgent need restoration.
Some 120 artworks are estimated to have been taken away from the gallery’s collection in the past two decades, many of whom without trace and believed to be under private possession.
The Albanian National Arts Gallery was originally founded in 1954 and moved to its current location on Tirana’s central boulevard in 1974. The national collection of visual arts ranges from a collection of religious icons from the 13th to the 19th century, works from the National Renaissance and Independence period (1883-1944), the biggest painting and sculpture collection in the country from the socialist realism period (1944-1990), as well as a foreign artists’ pavilion and rotating collections of contemporary national and international art.
Some of the most important annual exhibitions organized are “Marubi,” the International Artistic Photography Contest and “Onufri,” the International Visual Arts Contest.
The gallery is surrounded by a lovely park, and as a special bonus at the rear of the building there are a few still-defiant Communist-era partisan statues clenching their fists at the sky, as well as imposing statues of Lenin and Stalin.