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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. "
Most art objects are stolen to order, they are not crimes of opportunity. When a 'collector' is prepared to chough up enough cash professional thieves will invest the time and effort to defeat the security.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Sensors at the exits, guards in the parking lot, etc.
Not to mention that when you get guns pulled on you you generally try not to get shot. Even if it ends up costing you something priceless (which still ends up as being less precious than human life, no matter how fine the art).
Why is that "Funny"? It's not that uncommon, you know. /another AC
It's not like 99.9% of the population are going to be able to tell the difference between a decent copy and an original. Rather than being funny, it sounds like one of the better ideas.
Deleted
Yep there are some real whiz bang gadgets out there, but it all boils down to having a comfortable security station with a talented group of people watching the video screens and monitoring the alarms zones and then effectively communicating events to the floor guards.
In reality what you get is a run down closet in the basement with a single bored guard, with little training, getting minimum wage. It negates the thousands of dollars spent on gadgets. Did you see anything in the article about staff and staff training? No - just gadgets.
At night you can get away a minimal number of guards because you can set up cameras systems to automatically shift to a video spot based on motion detection. During the day this isn't an option. It requires constant screening of all video stations.
There's more to security than installing alarms.
Any work of art (or any physical object) will be lost at some point. Maybe not today, maybe not this century, but for any artwork, at some point, the circumstances will will collude to lose it it some manner. Increasing the efforts to counteract that may delay the inevitable, but will not prevent it.
So, what do you do? Encase the piece in extreme layers of security to stave off its inevitable dissolution - but then also greatly hinder any real appreciation of the work by spectators? It's not easy to enter a contemplative frame of mind facing a painting at four or five meters, through ten cm of safety glass and surrounded by armed guards.
Or, we accept its eventual destruction or loss as inevitable, relax the measures a bit, and let people appreciate it - _really_ appreciate it, up close and undisturbed - while it lasts.
If I'd been a sappy touchy-feely type, I'd made a comment about how that is a lesson for life as well, but I'm not, so I won't.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Yeah, but thieves often cut paintings free of their frames to make them easier to move, hide, etc. It's kind of a lost cause to bug a painting, unless you put the locator in an indispensable part of the canvas itself, and I don't think many curators would do that to a pricless masterpiece.
Plus, to bring it back to someone else's point, most major art thefts are going to involve ginormous insurance liabilities. Those insurance companies don't want to encourage wary thieves to go poking through the Mona Lisa with a pair of tweezers.
John Hancock wuz here.
Well, since you asked ...
Seriously, I don't see a problem with GP's idea. Last time I was at Le Louvre, admittedly in the late 80's, the Mona Lisa was behind plexiglass, reflected on two mirrors, and physically located at least a storey away (to me, a grade 9 student at the time, it seemed pretty cool). If it's that important, that's what the museum will do. For whatever reason, The Scream was not priceless enough to warrant this.
This is the part that impressed me: 9 Closed-circuit TV cameras . . . Anti-integration makes things difficult for the bad guys; it means they will have to break two systems instead of one.
Redundancy is a Good Thing. Heterogeneous redundancy is a Better Thing. Here endeth the lesson.
www.wavefront-av.com
Yes, I'm quite sure that if we wer to lose the Mona Lisa, society would simply melt away. You are placing much too high of an importance on art. I love art. I go to the art museum at least once a month. In any new city the art museum is one of my first stops. No piece of art is so important that even one life should be traded for it. Yes, it would be a shame if the entirety of our society were lost, but that isn't very likely is it? Also, if something so catastrophic were to occur that all art were destroyed, I'm pretty sure all of use would be dead too. If we did survive, what would it really matter if we had the originals or some postcards of the Mona Lisa? People inevitably die, but so does art. Paintings won't last forever, they fade, they crack. Same with sculptures, same with photos. It's inevitable. Society's survival does not require art. New art will be created. That's what people do. I have a feeling that the pain of long dead artists will mean little to the few survivors of nuclear annihilation.