AP — VIENNA MUSEUM: NO NEW CONTRACT

AVV 9-28 #713685

By William J. Kole

Associated Press Writer

VIENNA, AUSTRIA (AP) — The Austrian Culture Ministry will not renew a contract for the embattled director of Vienna’s prestigious Art History Museum, where a Renaissance figurine valued at $69.3 million was brazenly stolen in 2003.

Culture Minister Claudia Schmied said in a recent statement that Wilfried Seipel’s contract would not be extended when it expires on December 31, 2008. She said the search for a successor would begin in October or November.

Although Schmied praised Seipel for his 17-year leadership of Austria’s most renowned gallery — known in German as the Kunsthistoriches Museum — he has been fiercely criticized for lax security that authorities say the thief easily exploited.

The thief, Robert Mang, was sentenced last autumn to four years in prison for stealing the Sixteenth Century gold plated “Saliera,’’ or salt cellar, by Florentine master Benvenuto Cellini.

Investigators recovered the figurine after Mang led them to the forest outside Vienna where he had buried it, but the case triggered a national debate over whether the Austrian capital’s famed museums have proper security.

Schmied, noting that Seipel will reach retirement age at the end of 2009, credited him with “leaving a significant mark’’ on the downtown museum.

Seipel, 63, told Austrian media late Tuesday he considered the decision a “clean and normal solution’’ and said an extension “would only have caused argument.’’

“We have the stormy times behind us,’’ the Austria Press Agency and public broadcaster ORF quoted him as saying.

Housed since 1891 in a massive stone edifice on Vienna’s Ringstrasse, the museum boasts one of the world’s most impressive collections of medieval, Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculptures and other treasures, as well as numerous works from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Schmied said the decision not to extend Seipel’s contract was made “with the highest mutual appreciation of everyone involved.’’

But Seipel had come under intense public pressure to resign after the high-profile May 2003 “Saliera’’ heist.

Numerous members of parliament called on Seipel to step down, arguing that his poor management ultimately was to blame for the theft. At one point, Seipel did offer his resignation, but then-Culture Minister Elisabeth Gehrer refused to accept it, saying museum guards were responsible.

Mang had testified that his theft was “child’s play’’ because the museum lacked bulletproof glass and relied on obsolete security cameras and outmoded motion detectors.

The thief climbed scaffolding to reach the second floor of the museum, where he got in by smashing a window, then broke open a glass showcase, removed the figurine and apparently left the way he came.

Museum officials said guards heard an alarm but discounted it as false.