The Slovak National Gallery fired four employees because of what has been called an “overpriced” new website and announced it will take further measures such as amending internal guidelines on financial audits as of February 1, 2012, to follow-up on a partial audit recently conducted, the SITA newswire reported.
The gallery's head, Alexandra Kusá, told Culture Minister Daniel Krajcer about these measures on January 27. The ministry has ordered an expert review of the website and the gallery should seek a return of funds paid in excess of the “appraised value” of the work on the website, Eva Chudinová from the ministry told SITA.
The ministry launched an audit of the SNG website after media last December openly criticised the website. The site was designed at a cost of €24,860 by Juraj Sukop, who had received the National Design Prize for communication design in 2009.
SITA wrote that the Slovak National Gallery had ordered the website as a work of art while web designers and programmers criticised the project, claiming that the final product was not worth the money either from an artistic or functional point of view and that it could have been developed by any student for several hundred euros.
Source: SITA
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
