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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. "
i wonder how they will be calibrating all these many things to fire the right alarm. a mischievious person might get some kicks by raising false alarms every now and then, as all he has to do is to point a finger near the painting. i also wonder how they will test it, and keep it maintained without a large time overhead.
Comment from the article, kinda interesting.
My experience with Museum Directors and Curators is they like to show painting without intrusiveness, such as a low rail or rope. One thing that is less intrusive than placing a low rail/rope across the painting, is putting pressure sensors undernest the flooring that are wired in an alarm point system. This can be addressable to the painting name, gallery and location. Which is capable of notifying the control room security staff as well as the guard in the gallery. Example: if the alarm should be activated the camera would automatic override the monitor that the security staff may be looking at to and give immidate location of the painting as well as the orgin of the alarm right on the monitor. It is also possible to have your CCTV system program to follow movement such as room to room. The options are unlimited with today technology.
P.S. Because of todays technology, the trend is now away from breaking after hours into museum-its now armed robbery during public hours.
Alton Malcolm
Chief of Security
Before anyone comes up with theories about manic collectors being behind of it all - there isn't a single case in history where a stolen painting was found in the basement of an art aficionado. It's mostly about blackmailing the insurance company in charge - it makes sense for them to pay 2 millions to the thief instead of paying 10 millions for the loss.
I don't read replies by ACs.
Wolverines, I say. Lots and lots of hungry wolverines. And guards with BFGs. Better yet, why not put valuables on a fast-moving slide that can pop up in the air and hang off the ceiling upon alarm, so access takes awhile. Even two-three minutes could make a difference. A simple set of rails on the ceiling and a pre-tensioned draw-cable could do it. Imagine a garage door opener spring and cable drum on steroids.
and then catch those theives. Of course, some basic "preventive" security is must. some RFID also will help.
Just secure a thick sheet of glass/lexan/plexiglass between the pictures and the people!
DUH!!!
Your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Sure, if budget is no object...but it is.
I build an alarm system for a major campus art museum back in the day. This was no small affair - we were replacing an old system that never worked well. The old system had vibration sensors on all the panes in the skylights. Unfortunately these sensors were not only unreliable but also worked in groups of a couple dozen sensors for a skylight area and all sensors had to be calibrated together - a very time-consuming process as it involved after-hours work up on a 30-40 foot airlift (with all tools on teathers to protect the art, of course) and also involved removing the diffuser panel under each of the glass panes. Needless to say the skylights were soon unprotected. We replaced these with redundant infrared motion detectors covering all skylight entry points.
Also, the old system had sensors in groups so when an alarm went off (or went bad) you only got a general area of the problem. We replaced this with about 150-200 individual zones. Every door and every motion detector was on a separate zone. In addition, we had a custom made map of the museum with lights for each alarmed door or zone so the central guard could immediately see where the alarm was coming from. Problems were easy to fix - no hunting down a bad switch from among 20 or 30.
We had several pan/zoom cameras with motion-detection capability. A time-lapse recorder ran constantly and sped up to full-speed when motion was detected.
The security room was upgraded with steel walls and bulletproof glass. In addition, being a campus-run museum, a duplicate alarm receiver was installed at police dispatch (no maps, just a printer showing alarms).
The central guard could control all the lighting in the museum and speak to or listen to anywhere in the museum through the intercom/speaker system.
There's more but all-in-all it was a heck of a system and fun to build.
The end result: management cut back all but one of the off-hours guards (the one in the control room) and eventually cut that person as well since, after all, the alarms went to the police station anyway...
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Being Norwegian I was quite interested in this, as were the Norwegian media. The largest Norwegian television-channel, NRK, interviewed a biographer of Munch's. When asked what he supposed Munch would have thought of this theft he replied something like (and I'm translating off the top of my head here):
If it were on one of Munch's better day's he'd probably say something like: "The Geniality of the artwork lies in the Thought and the Act, not in the Result. The Thought caused the Act, and I did it. The work itself is of little importance." But, Munch was a temperemental man so he might have been livid.
And it wasn't exactly the only example of The Scream ("Skrik"), as there are several other versions made by Munch around the world. Still, I wish the thieves all possible good luck in selling the best-known image in the western world without being found out :)
"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."
I believe he means indestinguishable (sp?) by someone standing a few feet away looking it it (EG: a collector), not someone with a lot of time and money pouring random chemicals on parts of the painting to determine the age.
ND
This statement is forty-five characters long.
You are merely restating the grandparent post in a way that sounds contrary. The recurring sentiment is, the medium is not the message. This is most definitely false, as even a moment's thought will reveal that there is no medium that doesn't affect its message to some degree.
So, to summarize: While it's a great antitheft idea, showing copies of art in a museum defeats the purpose of having museums.
Colin Smith: 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.
Yep, it's widespread and very useful, because then the original can remain with the professionals while the amateurs get something that's 99% as good. I remember going to the British Museum and seeing one room where they had reproductions of Michelangelo's David, Trajan's Column, and 5 or 6 other famous sculptures. I never would've been able to see the originals. I'm not sure how you'd copy paintings though.
Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe.
During the meeting I suddenly realized that the nice little painting hanging on the wall wasn't just a print... it was a real, live, authentic Monet.
I asked about it and the security guy shrugged. He said that like most museums they had far more art in storage than on display, and so they often used it in office decoration.
I mean, the thing didn't have so much as a plastic covering to protect against coffee spills. I remember thinking that there'd be no way I'd want such a thing in my office.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
This statement is a false axiom; it leads to contradictions. Let me give you the correct axioms: A thing only has value as a means to do something - it is always relative. Let's for instance say that I'm in a triage situation after a major car accident - 30 cars hit each other on the autobahn, lots of wounded, and I have a roll of tape, which can be used to stabilize the position of the heads of people so they can breathe. There's roughly fifty wounded, and I've only got enough tape to bind up 25 of these. In this case, I may let a person die to save the piece of tape necessary to bind them up. Here, I value their life below a piece of tape - and it is a correct decision, because that piece of tape can be used to save another life.
The judgement scales up to more abstract situations. We do not have infinite resources pushed into health care - another case of putting a higher value on "things" (money) than lives. Every skyscraper built has some construction workers die - it's "part of doing business", We as a society has limited resources, and some people will actually die as a result of this. It is brutal, and it is an inevitable result of living in a real world.
As for the value of Mona Lisa vs human life: I've actually got a figure for the value of human life, from military operations. That's $2 million plus training costs for the individual. As far as I know, this is in rough (give or take a factor of 3) agreement with the values assigned in other contexts where we actually have to calculate with human lives due to limited resources.
I don't know the value of the Mona Lisa - but I know that The Scream was valued (apart from "priceless" ;) at about $80 million. We as a society run by demand and supply has ended up with a market value (the relative value in the free situation) of at least ten people for that one painting (and Mona Lisa is definately more expensive).
A person is what creates things.
Can't argue with that, except when it's a monkey that makes the art and an abstract painter that sells it ;-)
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
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.
Interestingly, I work at Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg VA, and just got back ten minutes ago from a tour of the Maier Museum with a student discussion group I lead.
The Maier is the 1950's version of exactly what you describe. It was built in 1951 as a bomb shelter for the National Gallery in case of nuclear attack on Washington. There was a fleet of trucks always at the ready outside the gallery to grab the most "valuable" artworks and run them down to the Maier. The building is basically a blockhouse, although it has been spiffed up a lot since.
With advances in technology, it became clear in the 1970s that this just wasn't going to work. (Not to mention Lynchburg has a large number of nuclear industries here like Framatone, so we're a huge target anyway.) They quietly abandoned the whole thing about then and formally gave it up in 2001, but there's still a clause in the contract that we'll take art from the Gallery if there's a major concern. Given the inherent problems of moving very fragile art quickly, I suspect that nobody is really interested in doing something like this.
BTW: The Maier now focuses on American art from RMWC's collection. It's a damn good museum, especially given the size of the college.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"