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The museum is due to open in 2013, in a building designed by the acclaimed Anglo-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid whose project was chosen in a bidding process earlier this year.
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VILNIUS (AFP)---Lithuania's government Wednesday approved the construction of a new museum in its capital, Vilnius, a joint project between the Baltic state, Russia's renowned Hermitage museum and America's Guggenheim.
The museum is also to house an art and information centre dedicated to the "Litvaks", or Jews from Lithuania.
"This is an important project, in a move to attract tourists to Lithuania. It is also important to Lithuania's image," Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas told journalists.
The museum is due to open in 2013, in a building designed by the acclaimed Anglo-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid whose project was chosen in a bidding process earlier this year.
The estimated value of the project is 260 million litas (75 million euros,117 million dollars).
The government is due to provide 10-15 percent of the sum, with the rest coming from Vilnius city hall and private investors, Kirkilas said.
Arturas Zuokas, Vilnius' former mayor and one of the masterminds of the project, said a feasibility study had shown that the museum could draw 400,000 visitors a year, half of them from outside Lithuania.
"They would spend some 75 million litas in Vilnius a year, and that would add some 35-40 million litas in additional income to the city's budget," he said.
Lithuania's picturesque capital has long been a favourite destination of tourists from the rest of eastern Europe and has more recently become a draw for visitors from elsewhere, notably since the country joined the European Union in 2004.
The museum is set to house several exhibition galleries, which will display works of art from the collection it plans to build up as well as those lent by Saint Petersburg's Hermitage and New York's Guggenheim, which are among the largest museums in the world.
Lithuania was home to a thriving Jewish community of nearly 220,000 before World War II, 95 percent of whom perished during the Nazi occupation of the country.
