Public art galleries, museums under inspection

TIRANA, July 30 – Albania’s Culture Ministry has warned it will launch inspections in the country’s public museums and galleries after dozens of paintings by a renowned impressionist painter mysteriously disappeared from an art gallery in Korca, southeastern Albania.
The inspections which will be carried out in cooperation with the State Museums Committee target providing a detailed picture of the cultural heritage collection displayed in public art facilities and inspect their preservation conditions.
Culture Minister Aldo Bumci has announced some legal changes will be undertaken giving the State Museums Committee full authority to carry out controls, impose penalties and even close down galleries which do not meet security and maintenance criteria.
Under the legal changes, the Committee will temporarily take over the galleries’ administration if the local administration units, municipalities and communes fail to take the appropriate measures.
Inspections in some 50 galleries and museums managed by local government units will be carried out in cooperation with specialists of the National Arts Gallery and the National Museum of History.
The new inspection initiative comes after some 60 works mysteriously disappeared from the public art gallery of the southern city of Korca last July. Around 30 of them belonged to late renowned painter Vangjush Mio. The scandal was unveiled last month during a recent inventory as a new caretaker took over.
This week, Grigor Cani, the head of the music section at the Vangjush Mio centre was temporarily appointed head of the Centre
Vladimir Topi, the director of the Guri Madhi gallery in Korca and Sotiraq Gega, the person who has been in charge of the collection during the past 10 years, have both been suspended and placed under house arrest. None of the 1,000 paintings found in the caretaker’s home belonged to Vangjush Mio, specialists said. Mio’s paintings are each valued between USD 10,000 to 30,000.
The disappeared Mio paintings were created in the early 20th century during Albania’s independence, the National Liberation War and the communist era.
Rozeta Mio, the artist’s daughter says she is shocked by the disappearance of her father’s works which is the second after the 1994 robbery. Over 400 of his paintings are preserved, both in museums and galleries in Tirana and Kor衬 in particular his home in Kor衠which now houses the Vangjush Mio Museum. He is remembered in particular for his landscape paintings: poplars glowing in the autumn sunlight beside the waters of Lake Ohrid and floodlit plains of Kor衠covered in snow.