In conflict-torn Libya, artist’s family turns home into museum

In the North African country still grappling with divisions and conflict after the fall of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011, “art comes last”, said Hadia Gana, the youngest of the artist’s four children.

A decade in the making and with the help of volunteers, she had transformed the classic-style Tripolitan villa her father had built, before passing in 2006 at age 70, into “the first and only museum of modern art in Libya”, Gana told AFP.

Bayt Ali Gana (“Ali Gana’s House” in Arabic) finally opened this year, and seeks to offer both retrospection and hope in a country constantly threatened by violence and where arts and culture stand largely neglected.

“It is seen as…