June 27, 2001
CONTENTS:
- On The Trail Of Stolen Art
- Theft Leaves Collector Scrambling for Pens
- Re: HALON AND OTHER GAS FIRE SUPPRESSION SYSTEMS
On The Trail Of Stolen Art
Melik Kaylan, Forbes.com
In the United States today the trade in illegal art and antiques is exceeded only by that of guns and drugs. A report issued last week by the International Council of Museums stated that more than 100,000 objects with a combined worth of hundreds of millions of dollars were stolen from churches and museums around the world since the 1980s.
Responding to the report, the London-based Art Loss Register pointed out the obvious: Most of the stolen art comes to London or America. Some of it goes to museums, but much of it is bought secretly by private collections for a fraction of market value. And this at a time when the focus on the uncovering and repatriation of hot art--from the Holocaust, the Soviet era, illegal digs at ancient sites, etc.--is at an all-time high in the U.S.
full story: http://www.forbes.com/2001/06/27/0627hot.html
Theft Leaves Collector Scrambling for Pens
PARIS (Reuters) - A French collector was left scrambling for exhibits after a robber assaulted him and made off with his collection of 1,000 antique pens, just days before the opening of a museum dedicated to the art of writing.
Bruno Lussato, 70, was severely beaten by a burly man wearing a motorcycle helmet who burst into his house on Friday and stole the collection worth an estimated $460,000, the daily newspaper Le Figaro reported.
Prize items included a silver filigree Waterman pen from 1898 and an 1821 Sheaffer prototype, the paper said on Tuesday.
Undeterred, Lussato bought 100 antique pens over the weekend and vowed to press ahead with the inauguration of the museum on Thursday, Le Figaro added.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010627/od/pens_dc_1.html
Date sent: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 09:49:55 +0100 (BST)
From: Boylan P P.Boylan@city.ac.uk
To: Museum Security Network securma@xs4all.nl
Subject: HALON AND OTHER GAS FIRE SUPPRESSION SYSTEMS
I agree very much with Colin Pearson.
When the late Trevor Walden moved to Glasgow as Director in 1972 he found that the specification for the new Burrell Collection museum - at the final design stage following an architectural competition - provided for extensive gas suppression fire systems in the reserve collection storerooms etc. As I remember it no decision had been made as to which gas was to be used: I think they were still trying to decide between carbon dioxide and a synthetic such as Halon.
Finding that nobody seemed to have any reliable information on what happens when such systems are used in a museum context he insisted on extensive practical testing, using a specially made small test building roughly 5 metres square and 3 metres high if my memory is correct. Sensors were set to measure both temperatures drops and - not least - blast pressure on the walls and roof in a sealed room, such a closed and locked museum storeroom.
I don't think that the results were ever formally published, but I well remember Trevor telling me that the internal air movement swept a lot of the replicas of small & medium size works of art used in the experiments off the shelves and onto the floor (and of course breaking them). More alarming still for a museum with one of the most important medieval stained glass collections in existence, and much ancient and historic glass works of art as well, they logged a drop of temperature of around thirty Celsius degrees in less than two minutes (enough to shatter just about 100% of the glass collection).
They found that they need not have wasted money on the pressure gauges for the walls, since the test building more or less exploded, blowing apart the corner joints! (I understand that with commercial gas suppression installations nowadays it is more or less standard practice to build blow-out plugs into the outside walls.)
Patrick Boylan