A row over mismanagement of public funds has erupted at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, home to the world’s largest collection of paintings by Gustav Klimt. Agnes Husslein-Arco, its director since 2007, was dismissed for violating the museum’s compliance regulations. The accusations against her included charging the museum for personal travel expenses and home repairs, using museum staff for personal needs and taking items from the museum’s shop. Many of the allegations were refuted by an external auditing company that was hired by the museum’s board for an eye-watering €130,000 (her alleged transgressions were estimated to have cost the museum between €13,000 and €30,000).
After Husslein-Arco admitted in July to charging the museum for personal travel expenses, Austria’s culture minister Thomas Drozda announced that her contract would not be renewed from December 2016. In a letter sent on 1 August, Husslein-Arco defended herself by saying she works “around the clock, 365 days a year” and therefore says it is “inevitable” that her professional and private lives would overlap. She also pointed the finger at the museum’s chief financial officer Ulrike Gruber-Mikulcik, who, she says, authorised her expenses and then filed the complaint against her. “It was only when Ms. Gruber was made aware … that she would not be re-appointed… that she alerted the Cultural Ministry to the ‘violations of the compliance guidelines’,” Husslein-Arco wrote.
Meanwhile, the art historian Dieter Bogner has been appointed interim commercial director of the museum.