Slashdot Mirror
Securing Pricelessness
DeliBoy writes "In light of public discussions over security after The Scream was stolen, CSO Online offers an interesting look at museum security. The article details a system designed without budget restrictions intended to secure a painting in a public gallery. Interesting how the consultant balances public access with the need for security, comprised of redundant vibration sensors, overlapping microwave and infrared motion sensors, and an old-fashioned guard. "
Perhaps putting micro-transmitters in the frame might help.
This would give the police the ability to track the picture right after it was stolen. But there is the risk that the thieves would know about this technique and cut the picture from the frame.
I'm a little concerned about the loss of large collections of priceless art due a bombing of a museum. This might be the destruction of the building with a bomb, missle, or aircraft. Or even the loss of the museum when the city around is destroyed by an atomic weapon.
It seems that there should be plans to get, say, a hundred paintings maybe several hundred feet underground within ten minutes should authorities determine that a nuclear event is imminent. Especially for the collections like the National Gallery in Washington DC, the National Gallery in London, the Louvre in Paris, the Uffizi in Florence. Any of these invaluable collections could be lost forever just because some schumck found a quarter-pound of plutonium at a Russian garage-sale and decided that it was the 'will of Allah' to do such a horrible thing.
Please don't tell me that I'm prejudiced. You may have noticed that almost all of the truly horrible things that happen unprovoked in the world today happen because some asshole decided that it was the 'will of Allah' that such a thing should happen. We don't yet have any warning about these kind of actions. But an atomic bomb coming by ICBM will give us at least ten minutes warning even if we couldn't do anything to stop it. We might as well have the ability to protect things that are really important, like priceless art. It sounds extreme now, but it won't to the people looking at the paintings 500 or 1000 years in the future. Imagine if 'The Birth of Venus' by Botticelli had been burned by Savornella instead of having been hid for a few years.