Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> writes:

> I think you've correctly summarized it, yes.
> In the same way that you might need to deal with man pages, info pages,
> etc. None of that is specific to Emacs.

You are right Glenn.  GNOME is just not looking for the image in the
installed directory.

That's also why when an older version of Emacs was installed in /usr/,
this icon was used instead of the new one.

I'm closing the issue.

Nico