Wilfried Seipel to Lose His Directorship at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum

Benvenuto Cellini, Saltcellar, called the “Saliera,” Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Wilfried Seipel, well known in international museum circles as the longtime director of the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum, will be out of that job by the end of next year.
The Associated Press reports:
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 statement that Wilfried Seipel’s contract would not be extended when it expires on Dec. 31, 2008….Seipel…has been fiercely criticized for lax security that authorities say the thief easily exploited.
The figurine, a rare gold-plated saltcellar (above) by Benvenuto Cellini, was recovered last year.
Seipel was part of a formal cooperative partnership forged in 2001 with Tom Krens of the Guggenheim Foundation and Mikhail Piotrovski of the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.