The National Gallery in London is set to make cuts to both its workforce and its exhibition programming to address a deficit of £8.2m. A spokesperson for the museum told the Art Newspaper that the institution will be stopping activities where it can ‘no longer justify their costs’, adding that it ‘need[s] to make tough decisions now to future-proof the gallery for the years ahead’. Though visitor numbers increased after the Sainsbury Wing reopened last May, they have not reached pre-pandemic numbers, and this – combined with rising operational costs and the fact that visitors are not spending enough money in the museum – has contributed to the planned cuts. Staff cuts will initially be made through a ‘voluntary exit scheme’ that includes financial incentives. Cuts to programming may lead to fewer ticketed exhibitions and increased prices, as well as fewer free exhibitions. Plans for the gallery’s £400m extension – the funds for which cannot be used for anything else – will continue as expected.
Plans for a satellite museum of the Centre Pompidou in New Jersey – which was set to be the Pompidou’s first outpost in North America – have been scrapped, reports NJ.com. The newly elected Jersey City mayor James Solomon said at a recent press conference that the plan was ‘dead’ not long after announcing that the city is facing a $255m deficit. The project was first announced in 2021 but has been in question ever since: after initially agreeing on the plans, the state of New Jersey withdrew $48m in funding in 2024 after the museum was projected to run an annual operating deficit of $19m. Plans for a revised scheme continued, but have now been shelved. The Centre Pompidou has yet to comment.
French police have arrested nine people – including two members of staff at the Musée du Louvre – in connection with a suspected €10m ticket fraud scheme at the Paris museum. France 24 reports that the scheme primarily targeted Chinese tourists; according to Euronews, the scam involved the sale of fake entry tickets and the overbooking of tours. The Guardian reports that authorities have seized more than €957,000 in cash, including €67,000 in foreign currency, as well as €486,000 from bank accounts. Adding to the museum’s woes, several rooms were forced to close on Friday due to a water leak, which Le Parisien reports, has affected a ceiling painted by Charles Meynier in 1819.
The Irish government has become the first in the world to provide artists with a basic income in a permanent scheme, the BBC reports. The Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) initiative will provide 2,000 eligible artists – chosen via an anonymised random selection process – with €325 (£283) per week for a three-year cycle. Irish minister for culture Patrick O’Donovan said that the scheme would reduce the need for artists to find alternative work, allowing them to focus on their artmaking and ‘sustain [their] careers’. The initiative comes after a pilot scheme introduced in 2022 during the pandemic which, in O’Donovan’s words, ‘consistently demonstrated both the positive impact it has had on those in receipt of it and how difficult it is to work as an artist’. He also called it ‘a gigantic step forward that other countries are not doing’.
In museum appointments the Hepworth Wakefield has announced that Olivia Colling and Laura Smith will be its new co-directors, with Colling as executive director and Smith as artistic director. The duo have led the museum as interim co-directors since last year, after Simon Wallis left to become secretary and chief executive of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Colling and Smith have worked at several major museums including the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Tate. In New York, Debra Wimpfheimer will be the next director of the Queens Museum. Wimpfheimer is currently deputy director, having joined the museum in 2002. Before that, she held senior roles at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. She will take over the role from Sally Tallant, who takes over as director of the Hayward Gallery in London in July.
