Seized artwork. Was Thimo a guardian or thief of the icons?

Arben Spaho and Gjergj Thimo denied accusations that they were about to sell the icons. They said it was their collection, and that they wanted to display them in a museum that was about to open. The Cultural Wealth Inventory Center is also expected to be investigated for giving ownership certifications to the arrested.

The news for the seizing of this treasury also found the attention of foreign media, with Washington Post noting that the real value has not been made public. The artworks will be held at the National Gallery of Arts, in Tirana, where experts will examine and restore the damaged ones.

BBC and Associated Press refer to the declaration of The Albanian Prime Minister, Edi Rama,  who considered this as one of the biggest police operations against art.

Experts say that most of the artworks in Orthodox churches in Albania has been stolen after the fall of communism, and that their traffic is a spread phenomenon.

Gjergji Thimo, guardian or thief of icons?
 
One of the people arrested for the traffic is Gjergji Thimo, a renowned art work collector in Albania.

His name on the list of the arrested has made the situation a bit gray, since Thimo had publicly declared himself as savior of hundreds of artworks and had constantly been asking for a museum. According to him, the collection he inherited was inreached in the early nineties, with artworks bought in Korce by traffickers who put them on sale in the flea market, or that exchanged them for a Greek visa.

Thimo says that in 1997 his house was attacked for his collection, and that in 1999 his house was put on fire, a few days before he opened the first exhibit in Korce. Fortunately, the collection was removed from the house earlier. Thimo accused Greek chauvinist circles for these acts, who had also offered him a comfortable shelter in Greece if he went there with his collection.

In 2000 Thimo went to Tirana with 100 artworks, part of his collection, which he put o display at the National Museum. He has reported time after time the problems that our country has had with the fund obstacles that would help opening a museum.

His story received attention, and media outlets appealed the government to create a museum for him, so that the artworks would not degrade.

Thimo decided to abandon Korce and establish his collection in Tirana, placing them in two rented apartments, where they were recently seized by the police. Top Channel visited it again, and its cameras showed that they were kept in inappropriate conditions, while Thimo declared that they are profiting from him.

“The people who want to profit from my collection are those vested with power”, Thimo declare din an interview for Top Channel some time ago.

To convince the government to give him funds for the museum, he sent a complete list of his collection to Prime Minister Berisha, but it was never sent to a museum or even seized for being verified by the state.

Thimo had received positive attention from the media and high rank officials of that time for the service that he was doing. But now he appears with another face, a suspect for stealing the artworks. The Police and prosecution are still investigating the sources of the artworks and their real destination. Many of the artworks found by the police were reported stolen in Macedonia.

This story gives more mystery to the collector who dedicated his life and his family’s wealth to the purchase and conservation of these artworks. After all, these icons are today at the Gallery of Arts, thanks to his illegal work, and they are there too late, after no official had shown any interest to this cultural wealth that Thimo and the media had often shown where it was.

Top Channel