embattled director of wexner center for the arts resigns 1234759540

Gaëtane Verna, executive director of the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University, has resigned effective immediately. Her resignation follows a report by the Columbus Dispatch revealing a $1.1 million deficit for fiscal year 2024 and a formal letter of no confidence signed by more than a dozen employees. The letter cited high turnover, organizational dysfunction, financial instability, and reputational harm under Verna's leadership, which began in August 2022. Senior vice provost Trevor Brown will guide the transition until an interim leader is named.

philadelphia art museum board firing director daniel weiss 1234770394

Daniel H. Weiss, the new director of the Philadelphia Art Museum, gave his first extensive interview to the Philadelphia Inquirer, defending the museum's board after the controversial firing of his predecessor, Sasha Suda. Suda was terminated in November for alleged misappropriation of funds, including a $39,000 salary increase over two years, which she claims was authorized and is now the subject of a lawsuit. Weiss, formerly president and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, stated the board does not need radical restructuring but acknowledged the museum faces a financial deficit and needs to address its widely ridiculed rebrand from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to the Philadelphia Art Museum (acronym PhAM). He has begun a listening tour with staff to assess problems, and the marketing chief who led the rebrand has since resigned.

Tate reveals the main reason for its lower attendance figures

Tate museums have experienced a significant drop in attendance, with Tate Modern seeing 25% fewer visitors in 2024 compared to 2019, Tate Britain down 32%, and Tate St Ives down 37%. While domestic visitor numbers have recovered to 95% of pre-Covid levels, international visitors are at only 61%, particularly among European 16-to-24-year-olds, whose numbers fell from 609,000 in 2019-20 to 357,000 in 2023-24. The Art Newspaper's research, combining government data and Tate's internal studies, shows that external socioeconomic factors—including a one-tenth drop in EU visitors to the UK overall—are the primary driver, not curatorial programming as some critics have claimed.

Private Art Schools Enter a Period of Turbulence

Les écoles d’art privées traversent une zone de turbulence

A wave of bankruptcies and judicial reorganizations is hitting the private art education sector in France. Following the closure of the École d’art de Montreuil, the Académie des arts appliqués (AAA) in Dijon and the École supérieure de design in Troyes have both entered receivership. These institutions are struggling with severe financial deficits, unpaid staff, and a sharp decline in student enrollment, with some schools seeing their student bodies shrink by two-thirds in just four years.