Exhibiting objects in a manner that offers the best physical and visual experience for the viewer, while simultaneously safeguarding the object from crime, is the greatest balancing act for any museum professional. All objects – whether on exhibition, in storage or in transit – are continuously at risk from a variety of factors. Some are beyond our control but, for the most part, pre-emptive measures can be put in place to prevent change.
As caretakers of cultural heritage, it is our task to mitigate risks that will impact on the condition or longevity of an object. Natural disasters can only be mitigated to a lesser degree, but avoiding putting objects at risk or making them vulnerable to criminal activity is our responsibility. Protection of objects also encompasses taking measures such as reducing damage from too much flash photography or not being cared for in a climate-controlled environment. Protection of objects includes not only the day-to-day security but also conservation for the longer term.
This chapter outlines and discusses the necessary steps that can be taken to assist in protecting an object from art crimes such as vandalism and theft. The focus of this chapter is on public art museums, although many of the principles are useful for smaller organisations including commercial dealer galleries.
Art security specialist Stevan P. Layne suggests that protecting art is an exercise in futility.1 In many ways he is right, for the caretaker has to be a step ahead of the art criminal. But protection does not have to be an exercise in futility; frustrations need to be managed in both the short and the long term. With the growing pressure on public galleries and museums to encourage higher visitor numbers, and reduce expenditure, the protection of the institution’s most prized objects is vulnerable to reduction.
Collections and exhibitions are the core business of public art galleries and museums, and yet protecting objects is not always seen as a priority. Put simply, the more visitors in a building, the higher the chance of criminal behaviour occurring. Layne suggests that in an effort to pre-empt art crimes, institutions should be designed to emulate the bank vault; the security offered by a bank vault is optimal, but unrealistic and undesirable for public collections. The sterile nature of the bank vault would also be a challenge to those responsible for providing the context for exhibiting cultural heritage.
As an extreme measure, the bank vault metaphor does however offer some insight, and is a good starting point for a discussion of how cultural heritage should be managed to mitigate criminal behaviour. Unlike money, protected by the bank vault’s up-to-the minute security, cultural heritage cannot be replaced as easily if stolen or damaged.
Though it is more often than not the front-of-house staff that are responsible for physically overseeing art works, and therefore witnessing any criminal behaviour, it is those at the top of any organisation that need to have the vision and expertise to devise and implement appropriate strategies for protecting collections, whether the objects are on display, in storage or in transit. Regardless of size, organisations should have a risk management plan as well as an asset register and management plan. Collections can be the organisation’s most valuable assets, and by their very nature are often irreplaceable. Plans need to be put in place, and revisited regularly to ensure their wellbeing.
Risk management plans should cover numerous risks, capturing both natural disasters and the human variety. Art crimes fall under the latter and should, in theory at least, be avoidable. Natural disasters, though planned for through disaster preparedness and emergency response, should be very much part of an organisation’s ongoing training, but cannot always be planned for. The 2011 earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, for example, saw multiple art works destroyed, including public art, which could not be protected against the forces of nature.
That aside, art crimes can be more complex to mitigate, especially if involving firearms, threats to personnel and visitors, or inertia damage to the art work. Security staff need to know whether to chase a thief who has absconded with an art work or not. Trying to decide whether or not to give chase at the moment the theft occurs is too risky and time consuming – and usually too late. Staff members should not be asked to make a decision that others in the team might later disagree with. Putting staff at risk for an object has to be one of the most important decisions governors or senior management of an organisation must make; whatever is decided, those who govern the organisation must sanction the resulting protocol.
It is not only the works on public display that are at risk of criminal activity. The organisation also needs to have strategies in place for monitoring all works on their asset register – this captures works on loan to other organisations, those in transit, and those in storage either within the organisation’s own buildings or in off-site storage (most major museums have off-site storage with minimal staff but hopefully impenetrable security systems).
Works in storage are at risk of theft – insider jobs are not uncommon. Personnel have the knowledge and access to valuable collections and there are a number of well-documented cases where a staff member has slowly siphoned off objects from a public collection (which can happen in private galleries, historic houses, churches etc. as well). FBI special agent Robert Wittman estimated in 2008 that up to 90 per cent of all art thefts in museums were internal.2 In 2015, two curators in Cairo were arrested for stealing artefacts and replacing them with fake replicas to be exhibited at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. Other insider cases demonstrate that objects are simply stolen, such as at New Zealand’s National Army Museum, where 843 medals were stolen by a staff member and a national outrage ensued when the thefts were discovered. A curator from the same museum stole weapons from the collection.
These examples, and there are many more, demonstrate the ease with which objects can be taken for personal gain. These personnel were caught and punished accordingly, but what of those who have never been caught? One way to keep a tight rein on collections and hopefully avoid insider theft is regular auditing. Audits are or should be compulsory for public entities, but should also be carried out in commercial and smaller organisations such as museums operated by voluntary historical societies. Collection audits should be carried out by external bodies and are usually part of an organisation’s annual financial and non-financial audit. A random check can expose missing objects. In addition, random and unannounced checks to site collection objects should be part of every museum director’s agenda. This costs nothing but can identify missing works as well as sending a message about an organisation’s seriousness about protecting its collection.
A further measure, to avoid insider theft and damage, is having a policy around staff not working alone but rather in teams or pairs. Signing in and out of secure areas assists in tracking anything untoward at a later date. In addition, cameras (CCTV) should be placed in all storage areas/loading docks, so that staff know they are being watched; although this sounds intrusive, it is as much for their own protection as for the organisation’s. It might come across to staff as spying, but it is necessary given the number of cases, as highlighted above, that involve insider theft.
Databases, such as Vernon CMS, need to be kept up to date, to include the location of all collection items.3 Smaller organisations struggle with the cost of databases, as they often incur annual fees, but again this should be part of the organisation’s management plan and needs to be a priority if the organisation is serious about protecting its collection. Measures to protect objects can take funding away from the public area of a museum, yet they are essential. Proportionally the cost of mitigating art crimes is lower than trying to replace valuable objects – and value in this context is not just monetary but cultural and artistic, often irreplaceable. As work that is vandalised loses monetary value – though this is not usually an issue given that it is unlikely ever to be put up for sale – it is often out of circulation for extended periods of time, which can not only put future gifting at risk, but is also in danger of creating or inspiring copycat crimes. And artistically the work is never the same. James Tissot’s painting Still on Top, stolen during an armed robbery in 1997 from Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, was in conservation for two years, given the extent of damage it sustained.
Also embarrassing for institutions is insider damage; those employed to protect objects can indeed end up damaging them, though perhaps not deliberately. Again, following procedures for moving, installing and de-installing works as per the organisation’s procedures manual, as well as completing an incident report after the event, are ways of reducing such damage by ensuring that both staff and the institution learn from any mistakes.
When considering protection in the context of an art museum, it is important to analyse objects individually as well as collectively in the context of an exhibition.
Firstly, individual assessments (as part of a work’s condition report) are made to ascertain whether an item can be loaned to another institution or not. Its vulnerability, and value, will assist in making this decision. For example, we can count on one hand how many times the Mona Lisa has been loaned to other organisations.
Secondly, each work carries with it special display needs; for instance, some oils will be covered with Plexiglas (acrylic glass) to protect their surfaces, even though their artists would not originally have intended them to be glazed. Each object has an individual value – artistic and monetary – and this should be factored into preventative measures incorporated into exhibition design and layout. For example, a valuable work should not be placed out of sight of security staff so that it becomes vulnerable to those who feel the need to touch, or worse to thieves.
Furthermore, the exhibition layout needs to be considered in terms of the building entrances/exits and windows. Do not make it easy for the thief to escape. There have been numerous instances of thieves taking advantage of handily placed windows to make a quick exit. In 1961, Kempton Bunton removed Goya’s Portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London, exiting via a window; and in 1998 Gerald Blanchard used a window to enter the Schönbrunn Palace in Austria to carry out the Sisi Star Heist. Open or opening windows and skylights are a godsend for the art thief.
Longer-term protection for individual art works is conservation, and again it is the management team that needs to appreciate the prioritisation of works needing this. Such work has to be allowed for in an annual budget and needs to be planned. Although this could be classified as routine protection, just like providing a climate-controlled environment, works that are the victims of criminal activity often need conservation. Many organisations will have far more works needing conservation than they can ever resource.
Often conservation is driven by exhibition programming and therefore can be planned for several years out. Initiatives to involve the public as donors for the conservation of works have proven popular. Not only do they provide the necessary funds to carry out the work, but they also offer good marketing material as well as having the desired effect of educating the public about protecting objects for future generations. When a criminal or an accident damages a work, it takes priority for conservation, as there is pressure to return it to the exhibition. This kind of work can impact significantly on a conservation team. When Tissot’s Still on Top finally graced the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki again after two years’ conservation following the butchering it had received during the armed robbery, an exhibition curated around the work that it had undergone helped educate the public about the trauma the picture had been through and created good community buy-in.
Conservation is a highly skilled and scientific specialism and should not be confused with restoration; arguably some restorations carried out can be viewed as criminal as they have the opposite effect to protecting the art work. A good example of this was in 2012 when the world witnessed the Spanish octogenarian Cecilia Giménez’s destruction of Elías García Martínez’s 1930 painting of Ecce Homo in her local church. Her intentions were admirable: Giménez set out to ‘restore’ it. But instead she destroyed it; it is now popularly known as the ‘Monkey Jesus’. An amateur painter, with no formal education in conservation, it was an accident waiting to happen. In hindsight we have to ask, where was the protection and why was she not stopped? The situation could only have been worse if the painting was older or it was by a more significant artist. And though most were horrified by Giménez’s actions, thanks to social media her actions have done much for the town of Borja’s economy as visitors flock to see her ‘handiwork’.
In securing art works to the wall, or other surface, museum staff should always aim to make it impossible for a thief to remove them. There are various hanging methods available to secure works, including the popular T-Lock hanging device. Though slightly awkward for technicians to install, these are near impossible to remove without the correct security wrench necessary to undo them. Such locking devices are good deterrents for the thief.
Electronic monitors for individual works are also effective in both setting off an alarm and tracking works if they do leave the building unintentionally. DNA threads, containing information about ownership, can be woven into canvases. A successful tracking device, the thread is very difficult to see especially for the thief in a hurry. These are all ways of protecting art from the opportunist thief. Arguably a more professional thief would be better prepared with appropriate tools.
So far this chapter has focused on art works exhibited inside public art museums. However, it is worth considering sculptures installed out-of-doors, for they too are prized objects belonging to public collections. The caretakers of such sculptures face a different set of issues when it comes to protection. There are a variety of reasons for criminal activity such as the politically infused graffiti plastered over Anish Kapoor’s 60-metre (200-foot) long and 10-metre (30-foot) tall Dirty Corner (2011), installed in the grounds of the Palace of Versailles in 2015. This work was vandalised twice: the first time it was spray-painted yellow and, just a few months later, anti-Semitic phrases were spray-painted on it. At the time of its installation there was divided opinion about the work, some finding it offensive – it had been nicknamed the ‘queen’s vagina’ – and the artist suggested the vandalism was an act of French intolerance. Reasons aside, the point is that this huge steel work was vandalised.
Theft of public sculptures happens regularly. Often the thieves have in mind that they will make their fortune by melting down prized pieces, as is believed to have happened to several Henry Moore sculptures, including his Standing Figure, stolen from the Glenkiln Sculpture Park in Scotland in 2013. This is of course far from the truth, the monetary value of melted metal being a fraction of the artistic value of the work. Protecting sculptures out of doors against crimes, including such commodity thefts, requires a different set of methods; exposed to the natural environment, they need individual and regular maintenance programmes. The need for security is high, as some regularly suffer at the hands of the art vandal or thief.
How can out-of-doors sculptures be target hardened? Human presence is the first line of defence, though not always possible. Criminals will often wait until the dead of night to make their move when no one else is about. CCTV cameras can work if they are monitored. Publicising the fact that cameras are watching can be a very effective way of warding off the would-be criminal. Fences and plinths can work, but by their very nature many sculptures made for an outside context are there for the public to get close to. Fences can be an invitation to climb over. To protect bronze sculptures from incurring long-term damage by graffiti, a wax coating can be applied. Like works exhibited indoors, the removal of any graffiti from sculptures needs to be done by those trained to do so. Well-intentioned efforts to remove graffiti quickly have led to non-qualified personnel using abrasive methods that can cause further corrosion and therefore are not good for protecting the sculpture in the long term.
It is not always possible to protect works out of doors, though research has proved that if the works exist because the community has driven the project, then members of that community take greater ownership of them and the level of damage is reduced. Bristol ardently protects the works by local artist, Banksy. And though community initiatives might be the way of the future, they do not take away the issue for all the historic sculptures and monuments that are potentially at risk. The care and regular checking of sculptures often falls under the brief of parks and recreation staff within local government bodies. Teaming up with art museum professionals could prove useful for the works’ long-term protection.
There is no doubting that human presence is an excellent deterrent for art crimes. As security art specialist Dick Drent suggests in the next chapter, the human factor is the strongest link in the security chain.4 As already noted, preventative measures are preferable compared to solving a crime after the event. But how does a museum, large or small, empower its staff to protect its objects? There should be a team approach, again led from the top of an organisation. All staff are responsible for protecting objects, whether they are security floor staff, educators, curators or conservators. Staff workstations are usually located throughout a building and all staff, both front of house and back of house, need to be acutely aware and committed to the safekeeping of objects. A holistic approach is advantageous, especially in small organisations that do not have the luxury of a security team, and costs next to nothing.
There has been a move in recent times by larger museums to outsource security to private companies. For private guards it is simply a job as they may not have a personal vested interest in the works on display – unlike the permanent staff. Staff get to know the collection and are quick to identify any changes that might occur, which is fortuitous for the protection of a works. In 2015, London’s National Gallery planned to outsource 400 gallery assistants to a private company, and strike action followed. However, in April 2015 the National Gallery announced: ‘The National Gallery believes the proposed changes are essential to enable us to operate more flexibly, therefore we have appointed Securitas as our partner to manage some visitor-facing and security staff services. In addition, the National Gallery has announced it will pay the London Living Wage.’5 Paying the London Living Wage goes some way towards acknowledging the significance of securing some of the nation’s most valuable objects.
Small and mid-sized museums and galleries can find it useful to combine the role of security guard with gallery assistant, in the role of ‘visitor hosts’. Not only is it more interesting for individuals to have a more varied role, but they are additionally empowered with knowledge about what they are protecting. Including such staff in exhibition and collection training sessions gives them greater knowledge, which they can then disseminate to visitors. The traditional negative exchange – reprimanding those who touch – can be turned into a more positive experience by the gallery assistant or visitor host explaining both the work and why touching it is not a good idea. The perception of the combined role is more about helping visitors rather than being the militant security guard. It takes a different mind-set from the more traditional role. Visitor engagement is increased and enhanced; and though they might not give the impression of stern uniformed guards, the staff members are very much keeping an eye out for any miscreant behaviour. Additionally these personnel are members of the museum team and feel more included, as opposed to subcontracted uniformed guards. Visitor hosts, because they spend more time within exhibitions, will often pick up any damage that has occurred very quickly. Plus, a visitor host is generally busier with the added public relations role, so there is less time for sitting in a gallery space – which is not a good look! It takes more effort and organisation but can be very beneficial on several levels.
Volunteers are very much part of the art museum team. In few other professional areas is it acceptable to have volunteers responsible for such valuable items, and yet in the museum world it is almost expected in many instances. Some volunteers are exceptionally good and often well qualified for the job. The problem occurs, from an organisational perspective, when too much is expected of them, including when a crime is committed. As John Kerr notes in his comprehensive book The Securitization and Policing of Art Theft (2015), a London mid-sized independent museum cannot afford stewards in each gallery room so 140 volunteers take on the role, making it a struggle to convey security messages to them.6 Whether paid or unpaid, personnel should be visible at both entrances and exits. The value of these positions can be enhanced by their added role of welcoming and thanking visitors.
Public art museums exist to collect, protect, exhibit and educate about artefacts. Although tightly interrelated, each of these areas has to be balanced. Traditionally the idea of protecting art was to stanchion (rope) works off so that the visitors could not get too close and cause damage. In some instances stanchioning works was a status symbol of how popular a work was, and the artist’s success measured by the need for crowd control. William Powell Frith’s Derby Day, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1858, had to have a rail erected in front of it to keep the throng a practical distance from the large Victorian painting. Although stanchions create a barrier, they are also a signal to would-be thieves that behind the stanchion is a valuable work: stanchions make it easier for the art criminal to assess what is worthy of stealing.
Another popular method of distancing the viewer from art works, with varying degrees of success, is the floor plinth – a slightly raised area often camouflaged in the same colour as the floor or the wall. But both plinths and stanchions have been the cause of people tripping and falling into an art work. The recent craze for taking ‘selfies’ has further increased the risk of this; but it is not only when people have their backs to the art works that plinths can be a problem. An extreme case in 2015 saw a 12-year-old boy stumble on the platform barrier and put his fist through a seventeenth-century painting by the Italian artist Paolo Porpora on exhibition in Taipei. The incident raised several issues including the so-called usefulness of the barrier. With the work valued at US$1.5 million, the episode quickly became international news and, as is so often the case, significantly increased visitor numbers to the exhibition. But the same reports noted nothing about the can of drink the boy was holding – it also went through the painting. Drink and food are potentially big risks in a museum context. Museums need to have a policy of zero tolerance of food and drink along with restricting oversized bags (that knock into objects), umbrellas and walking sticks (used to point out, but also to pierce or stab, something interesting), and so on.
Lines strategically painted on the floor are intended to act as barriers. In reality, they are often ignored unless the line sets off an alarm – startling the contemplative viewer. Alarms alert security staff to warn the viewer that he or she is too close. This is a negative policing experience for both personnel and visitor. (During the summer at Florence’s Uffizi gallery alarms sound almost continuously, spoiling any chance of a contemplative appreciation of the works on display.)
Clearly, none of these methods can protect a work fully. Museums need constantly to ask the question, why do visitors get too close to an art work? Dissuading visitors from getting too close to an art work requires reducing temptation; often the information provided on labels is in too small a font size, making it difficult to read unless the visitor leans closely in. Also consider the background colour of a label; a current trend is to match it with the wall colour, making it incredibly difficult to read from a reasonable distance. There are many useful style guides that suggest appropriate font size and type as well as suitable amounts of information. The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington suggests the average reading time of a label is just two seconds, so it is imperative to make the information relevant and easily legible.7 The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. also provides extensive information about label design.8 In short, institutions need to make printed material easy to read, as some visitors will spend more time engaging with the text than viewing the actual work.
Secondly, limiting visitor numbers can alleviate overcrowding and decrease the potential for damage. So finding the right number of visitors is worthwhile. Institutions have different capacities, and finding the optimal number is not an easy task. But balanced against this is the fact that, as Kerr notes, ‘the risk of theft is lessened by the huge numbers of visitors who help the location self-police’.9
In some instances, maximum visitor numbers are dictated by limits put in place by the fire or safety regulations. Staggering visitors to blockbusters protects the objects and offers a better visitor experience. It does entail more administration for the organisation, but the short- and long-term benefits can outweigh this extra effort and expense. Thirdly, aggressive use of stanchions and plinths can limit damage if an accident occurs. And lastly, organisations need to protect and secure not just the interior but also the exterior of their building, both day and night – for one is no good without the other.
As simple as it may sound, many visitors want to get up close to a work because they want to see how it is made. They are interested in the brushwork, the thickness and application of paint, and so on. For good reason, levels of illumination have to be kept low to protect a work from exposure to ultraviolet light and light sensitivity (and each individual work has a different requirement). Some institutions might consider increasing the lighting level but rotating works more regularly to protect them. It is generally accepted by conservators nowadays that a work can be safely exhibited for three out of 12 months under controlled lighting.10 The only way to completely protect a work in a public museum is to keep it in dark storage, but this offers little to the visitor apart from the knowledge of its protection! To pre-empt damage within an exhibition, better lighting, even if it is only directed at the label, offers a better experience for the visitor.
Fundamentally museums want audiences to enjoy their visit. Public money (and the generosity of philanthropic donors) makes a museum’s existence possible. Getting the balance right can be a challenge, especially if the building’s design is not fit for purpose. For example, historic homes with a myriad of rooms and nooks and crannies housing large and valuable collections struggle with protecting objects within their limited budgets and personnel. Yet the human factor is integral to protection, whether it is those working the floor or watching CCTV monitors.
The ideal solution is to pre-empt any criminal behaviour, and that only happens with a combination of staffing and devices such as alarms and CCTV surveillance. It is a 24-hour task, and protocols have to be established and adhered to without exception. For example, the long-standing unsolved Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft of 1990 saw two criminals, dressed as police officers, enter the building out of hours. The guard who came to the door let the ‘police’ enter, as he was not sure if the rule about uninvited guests applied to the police or not. Ostensibly he broke the protocol, and the 13 stolen works are still at large to this day.
Arguably, too much emphasis is now placed on cost-cutting measures and hosting blockbuster exhibitions in our large public art museums. The focus should also include the need to protect cultural heritage for future generations. The idea and reality of exhibiting valuable items in a bank-vault-style building might not be appealing to all, yet it can provide the necessary security to protect and safeguard artefacts. By not hiding CCTV cameras, much in the same way a bank does not, would-be criminals are sent a clear message that they are being watched. ‘Big Brother’-style spying is not ideal, as institutions want visitors to feel comfortable in a museum setting; however, it is without doubt an excellent way of catching art criminals, and the footage is the necessary evidence needed for a conviction. With a touch of irony, New Zealand artist Michael Parekowhai’s Kapa Haka (Pakaka) sculpture is a life-size Māori security guard, dressed and poised in a stance as the quintessential security guard so often seen in museums and galleries around the world. Parekowhai made a series of 15, some now in private collections. These sculptures can be seen as objects of art or stand-in security guards. Kapa Haka (Pakaka) is symbolic of the presence that a uniformed guard has to protect cultural heritage but at the same time of the fact that these jobs are often filled by those from marginalised racial groups and paid the minimum wage for protecting an institution’s most prized objects.11 The figure’s stance is deliberately intimidating so that visitors will obey the rules when in a place of cultural importance. Parekowhai raises the status of the poorly paid security guard to one of artistic grandeur; the dual role of the sculpture could also be viewed as doing away with human presence and replacing it with technology and fake security guards, as methods of protecting art. The security guard is the art work in this instance, making us question the value we place on art and its protection.
Perhaps it is a combination of all these methods, in subtle but effective ways, which is required by cultural institutions in order not to dilute viewer experience but rather to encourage engagement and education, as well as ultimately protecting objects against the gamut of art crimes that continue to occur regularly.
Penelope Jackson is an art historian and curator with a special interest in historical and contemporary New Zealand art crime, and a founding Trustee of the New Zealand Art Crime Research Trust. The former Director of the Tauranga Art Gallery, she has published widely and curated exhibitions, such as the award-winning ‘Corrugations: The Art of Jeff Thomson’ and ‘The Lynley Dodd Story’ for the State Library of Western Australia.