内容摘要：A design by Jacques Agbobly, intended for the upcoming Costume Institute exhibit, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” appears in the installation room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jocelyn Noveck)

A design by Jacques Agbobly, intended for the upcoming Costume Institute exhibit, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” appears in the installation room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jocelyn Noveck)

The villa’s rebirth stems from a pledge by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama to visitingin October 2023 to turn it into an artists’ center — “something that would make Enver Hoxha roll in his grave.”

Closed off to the public until now, the villa has welcomed artists, residing there since late January, and hopes to soon see tourists too.“This is what I believe is the power of art, to deal with a past and a painful past, like the one that this villa symbolizes,” said Nita Deda, manager of Art Explora, a French-based foundation that spearheaded the building’s transformation.An interior view of Villa 31 where the late communist dictator Enver Hoxha, once a symbol of totalitarian rule used to live, in Tirana, Albania, Friday, Feb. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Vlasov Sulaj)

An interior view of Villa 31 where the late communist dictator Enver Hoxha, once a symbol of totalitarian rule used to live, in Tirana, Albania, Friday, Feb. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Vlasov Sulaj)Inside the studios that replaced once labyrinthine apartments, visiting artists have the freedom to “express everything, from fury to anger, to betrayal, to ambivalence, to the absurd ... exactly his (Hoxha’s) worst nightmare,” said Ukrainian artist Stanislava Pinchuk.

Pinchuk, 37, says she is happy to come to Albania, the “last puzzle piece” of former communist countries, though she finds it difficult to sleep at the villa.

She is baffled by Hoxha’s library, which holds books by his communist idols — Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin — to books about the French Revolution and students’ protests in the former Czechoslovakia and Hungary in the 1950s and 1960s. There are also books on sex, which ordinary Albanians were banned from reading at the time.on products from China to 145%, and China retaliated with 125%. But Monday’s

between the two countries backed up the reluctance of many farmers to hit the panic button.More good news came in an

from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Monday that projected higher corn exports and only slightly lower corn prices. The report also predicted somewhat lower soybean exports but higher domestic consumption, resulting in higher prices. Soybean futures surged.After he finished planting his soybean crop on Monday, Glessing said he was excited by the news and hopes to see more progress. But he said he wasn’t really surprised.