Displaying items by tag: employees

Parisian museumgoers anxious to see Musée d'Orsay's new exhibition featuring artistic depictions of the world's oldest profession will have to wait. Due to a strike from workers protesting plans to keep the museum open seven days a week, the institution was forced to remain closed today.

The Musée d'Orsay announced the closure on Twitter. According to the New York Times, the museum is currently negotiating with strikers and does not know when it will reopen.

A brazen art crime has been uncovered in Uzbekistan. As the "Guardian" initially reported, several employees from the Uzbek State Art Museum have been found guilty of systematically selling original artworks and replacing them with fakes over a 15 year period.

Mifayz Usmanov, the chief curator of the central Asian country's premier art museum, was sentenced to nine years behind bars for his involvement in the daylight robbery. Two restorers were sentenced to eight years each.

About a third of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art & Design’s 465 employees are slated be laid off as soon as mid-August as the longstanding art institutions prepare to merge with the National Gallery of Art and the George Washington University.

The Corcoran issued a layoff notice to all of its employees last month, but the Corcoran expects about a third of them will actually be laid off as of Aug. 16, which is the effective date affiliated with the notice.

Unhappiness over jobs, pay, and pensions has led workers at numerous museums, galleries, and heritage sites across the UK to go on strike. The walkout has affected some of the country’s biggest art institutions including the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, and Tate Liverpool. The National Portrait Gallery released a statement apologizing to patrons and explaining that it was “necessary for some gallery rooms to be closed” due to the strike.

Walkouts are expected to continue through the weekend. Employees of the Natural History Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum are expected to participate in the strike but the institutions will remain open to the public. Workers at national heritage sites, including Stonehenge, are planning to take action on Sunday, June 2, 2013.

The nationwide strike is part of a three-month campaign over an ongoing dispute about workers’ rights. The PCS union, the largest civil service union in the UK, is planning a national strike to take place at the end of June.

Pickpockets have always been most prevalent at locations that attract a high volume of tourists such as the Louvre. However, the pickpocketing problem at the French museum has gotten so severe that 200 members of the institution’s staff staged a walkout earlier this week in protest of the pickpocket gangs that target visitors. The museum reopened to the public on Thursday, April 11, 2013 with a squad of approximately 20 uniformed police officers patrolling the grounds.

The police officers were recruited in response to staff concerns. Many Louvre employees have endured violent altercations with pickpockets including being spat at, insulted, and hit. Many of the criminals return to the museum repeatedly after being barred from the premises. Museum officials hope that a strong police presence will deter pickpockets from setting up shop at the Louvre, which sees about 10 million visitors each year.