The Court of Accounts in France has accused the Louvre of spending too much on acquiring art and not enough on security, reports Le Monde. On 6 November France’s highest audit authority published a report assessing the Louvre’s policies between 2018 and 2024 and concluding that the priorities of Laurence des Cars and her predecessor as director, Jean-Luc Martinez, were misguided. Written before the heist that took place at the Louvre on 19 October, the report points out that instead of ensuring that the fire safety plan was completed or that cameras were installed in all the galleries, the museum was focusing on high-profile projects and on acquiring artworks. (Only seven per cent of the museum’s collection is on display at any given time.) The auditors pointed out that the museum had ‘abundant resources that it should prioritise for […] urgent works’. The Louvre has accepted most of the Court’s recommendations.
Getty Images has lost a landmark case against an AI image generator. In January 2023 Getty Images sued Stability AI, alleging that its image-generating tool, Stable Diffusion, was being trained on copyrighted work owned by Getty, and was therefore liable for copyright infringement, trade mark infringement, database right infringement and passing off. Though Justice Joanna Smith granted that Stability AI was liable for trade mark infringement in some instances involving Getty and iStock watermarks, she dismissed Getty Images’ claims of copyright infringement and passing off, stating that ‘an AI model such as Stable Diffusion […] does not store or reproduce any Copyright Works’.
Sasha Suda, the director and CEO of the Philadelphia Art Museum, has been dismissed, Philadelphia Magazine reports. Suda, who is three years into a five-year contract, is said to have been informed of her termination for ‘cause’ by email on 4 November, though that cause remains unexplained. Suda had recently led a divisive rebranding of the museum, including the changing of its name from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to the Philadelphia Art Museum, which, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports, was never approved by the museum’s board. The Art Newspaper reports that the museum is being led by deputy director of curatorial affairs and conservation Louis Marchesano while an interim replacement is found. Suda, previously the director of the National Gallery of Canada, took over at Philadelphia after the museum’s previous head, Timothy Rub, had stepped down. The end of his tenure was criticised for his handling of staff unionisation efforts and of allegations of sexual harassment.
Twenty-nine tour guides employed by Paris Musées – the organisation that oversees 14 of the city’s museums – went on strike on strike on 4 November to protest against ‘indecent pay’, Le Monde reports. The strike, which follows previous actions by museum workers in June and September that forced many museums to close, was organised by the Cultural Workers of the City of Paris association and is supported by the national trade union General Confederation of Labour. The association says that the workers’ €13 per hour wage has ‘remained unchanged since 2008.’ In response to the ongoing strikes, Paris Musées had offered a salary increase of up to 16 per cent, raising wages to approximately €15.08 per hour – much less than the €26 per hour that workers have demanded – and agreed review salaries in three years’ time.
The Trump administration has dissolved the federal team in charge of investigating cultural property and reassigned its agents to immigration enforcement, reports the Denver Post. The Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities programme, established in 2017 by the Department of Homeland Security, was in charge of coordinating and supporting investigations involving the trafficking of cultural property. It was also tasked with helping facilitate repatriations of looted objects. One Homeland Security staffer told the Post that instead of investigating the provenance and trafficking of cultural property, they had ‘just spent a month cuffing guys up, throwing them in a van from one jail to another’. Homeland Security had spent years investigating two Thai relics linked to the disgraced antiquities dealer Douglas Latchford in the collection of the Denver Art Museum. The museum told the Post it had not heard from the federal government since December.