To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter. The Headlines ABKHAZIA ABLAZE: Thousands of artworks in the Abkhazia National Art Gallery were destroyed in a fire on January 21. Footage of people rescuing large canvases from the charred museum gives a sense of the extensive damage to the institution located in Sukhumi, the capital of the Republic of Abkhazia in Russian-controlled Georgia. It is believed the fire started from an electrical short circuit on the second floor of the museum around 3:38 a.m. local time, and was contained by 7 a.m. Officials reported only about 200 paintings out of some 4000 survived, by artists such as Viktor Sheglov, Khuta Avidzba, Sergey Sangalov, and others. Over 300 works by a single local artist, Alexander Chachba-Shervashidze, who lived during the Russian Empire and was a descendent of an Abkhazia former ruler, were lost. “We have been gathering this collection since 1963 and it went up in flames in seconds. Such a tragedy for us here in Abhkazia,” said museum director Suram Sakany to the BBC. Related …