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. "

Comments

Securing Pricelessness

[Anonymous Coward]

Security - $699

Museum Ticket - $17

Pricelessness - Priceless!

too complex for practical use..

[dwipal]

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 Article

[hypermike]

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

Re:Comment from Article

[Anonymous Coward]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3588282.st m

A notable example of a brazen daylight robbery was the recent theft of "The Scream".

This is the same thing as what is happening to car theft these days. The alarm systems and locks are so good that the way to steal a high end car is while its owner is in it.

In both cases, the result is that better alarms have caused much greater danger to the people involved. Progress? Maybe not.

Re:Comment from Article

[Binary Boy]

The problem with moving art is that's when it's most vulnerable. Working in a similarly top-notch museum, I can pretty much assure you that in such a major emergency, nothing is going anywhere.

The biggest risk seems to be takeover robberies these days, as the article aludes to. Museum guards are not typically armed, at least not in public, and they certainly are not trained to resist armed intruders in daylight with visitors around.

Nighttime security is relatively easy - but balancing daylight security with the public's interests (casual, non-militarized galleries) is a toughy. Even in a place like where I work - a heavily fortified site on a easily defended hill overlooking Los Angeles - I can imagine with the right balls and some big guns, you aren't going to be stopped by museum security. You may have the SWAT team responding by the time you hit the gates, but I can imagine a quick exit route or three.

Not that I've ever thought of such things.

But again, other than a few national treasures - the Constitution in DC, several copies of Magna Cart - the risk of moving them in an emergency is not worth it.

By an old-fashioned guard

[Anonymous Coward]

...do they mean one that always opens doors and pulls our chairs for the ladies, or one that shakes his fist at teen-aged whippersnappers?

Here's an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Put a fake on display, and hide the real one somewhere else.

Didn't anyone tell him?

[cephyn]

Keller likes to alarm windows and fasten them closed whenever possible.

Didn't anyone tell him that proprietary closed windows models are inherently insecure and that an open-window solution is the better route?

manic collector

[nbert]

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.

Re:manic collector

[Odin's Raven]

there isn't a single case in history where a stolen painting was found in the basement of an art aficionado.

Yes, you're quite correct. I keep my stolen paintings in the attic.

--Arthur Aficionado

RFID Chips?

[e9th]

Why not embed them in each artwork? I bet there's a way to do it in most pieces without damaging them.

Sensors at the exits, guards in the parking lot, etc.

Rats

[filtur]

I was hoping this was going to be an article about people getting caught in comprising positions.

But the problem was

[dzym]

But I thought the problem was that the museum did NOT have an unlimited budget for security?

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).

Re:But the problem was

[Cecil]

really? you really think your more important to the world than say, the mona lisa or something like that?

Who isn't? Maybe that homeless guy on the street who calls me names. Other than that though, all people will over the course of their lives perform some action that will further the human race in some miniscule way. That is more than can be said about the Mona Lisa. It may inspire someone, perhaps, but there is little evidence that it would do so more than any other painting or piece of artwork.

There are some things worth dying for. A single piece of art isn't one of them. What if Picasso had died young while trying to save someone else's prized painting? It makes absolutely no sense to value a thing above a person. A person is what creates things.

If only...

[linuxwrangler]

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...

What would Munch think of it?

[MasterDirk]

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 :)

Re:Of course that's nothing...

[tomhudson]

Actually, anyone saying they were Securing Pricelessness would probably have the humour-deprived legal monkeys at MasterCard sending them a Cease and Desist... like these guys http://www.attrition.org/news/mc/

It's getting to you can't even speak without infringing someone's bs copyrights : "drivers wanted" (VW), "do the right thing" (Quaker Oats), "just do it" (Nike), "hello, world" (SCO).

Re:Put guards outside

[hayden]

Snipers nest with a view of the door...or at least someone outside the place to see the getaway.

Bloody campers.

Re:Indeed

[Lord_Slepnir]

I'm not sure how you'd copy paintings though

Here's an idea