I am looking for suggestions for public safety in the event of a violent incident. My facility consists of more than 250,000 square feet of mostly open galleries, theater and planetarium in three buildings on a seven acre site connected by a covered pedestrian bridge over a major highway. The facility has three public entrances and free admission. Annual attendance is about 1.4 million. There is a very effective emergency evacuation plan in place which is regularly practiced. The facility has a public address system and many staff have portable 2 way radios. Staff have a concern for their safety and the safety of visitors in the event of a violent incident, such as an act of workplace violence, robbery or terrorist type action. It is thought that some type of lock down might be appropriate to provide a safe place for visitors and staff to shelter. What are the pros and cons of trying to shepherd up to 4,000 people into a few enclosed areas during a potentially violent or life threatening situation? Any response is appreciated.
Brian Appleford Security Manager St. Louis Science Center 5050 Oakland Avenue St, Louis MO 63110 bapple@slsc.org 314-286-4657 Fax 314-286-4656
The Museum Security Network is not respoinsible for product information
From: Afoxsys@aol.com Date sent: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 13:14:19 EST
Subject: Free trial software for museums, galleries, etc
To: securma@xs4all.nl
Dear Sir, I should be most grateful if you could circulate the following information and offer to the membership of the Museum Security Network:
As the Managing Director of 365 Publications Ltd, a specialist UK software house, I am pleased to offer copies of our new database product - "Treasure Chest" - to the membership of the Museum Security Network on a no-obligation, 30-day free trial basis. Treasure Chest has been specifically designed with the needs of collectors, galleries and museums in mind and, in particular, offers users a feature which we believe to be unique amongst products of this type. This key feature is the ability to maintain a duplicate record of the collection(s) on a highly secure Internet database controlled entirely by 365 Publications Ltd. Hence, even in the event of a major catastrophe which destroys the user's computer systems and physical records, the critical data remains in safe storage on the 365 server. An additional feature of Treasure Chest is the facility for users to "flag" stolen items. Such items are then transferred to a public database which can be searched any time of the day or night by police officers, dealers and interested members of the public eager to identify possible stolen property. There is no charge for running such searches. For details of how to obtain a free demonstration copy of the software, and further details of the overall service, please contact me as follows:
Mr. A.J. Farrall Managing Director 365 Publications Ltd 6, Briar Mead Yatton North Somerset England BS49 4RE
Telephone/ fax: +44 1934 832 590
I look forward to hearing from the members of the Museum Security Network. Thank you.
Italian police hand recovered Orthodox artifacts to Russia
ROME - Police recovered dozens of stolen Russian Orthodox artifacts and handed them to a top Russian official Tuesday, who said the value of the 17th-century icons was "immeasurable." Italian authorities found about 50 Russian religious icons in February 2001 during a routine truck check near the Swiss border. Police searched the driver's home near Como in northern Italy and found more works. In total, they recovered 58 Russian Orthodox icon paintings and 26 sacred objects such as antique crosses that had been stolen from monasteries in Russia at the end of 2000. Police charged the driver, who had Russian and Italian citizenship, with receiving stolen goods. They said they did not have enough evidence to charge him with theft. The icon paintings — depicting biblical scenes and images of the Madonna and child — as well as crosses and ornamental angels are worth an estimated 500,000 euros (about US$500,000), police said. Italian authorities delayed the handover of the art to Russia until a special ceremony Tuesday at the Russian Embassy with visiting Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoi. "The importance of this find to Russian culture is immeasurable," Shvydkoi said. "This act ... represents a new level of cooperation."
ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM HEIST:
Men Sentenced For Attempted Armored Car Robbery
Defense Claims FBI Staged Crime For Information
POSTED: 6:43 p.m. EST November 26, 2002
BOSTON -- Three men have been sentenced to federal prison terms on conspiracy and attempted armored car vault robbery charges, a scheme that the men's lawyers claim was staged by the FBI to force them to give out information about a 1990 museum heist. The men planned to rob the Loomis-Fargo Armored Car Co. in Easton on Feb. 7, 1999, using a grenade, a semiautomatic rifle and semiautomatic handguns, prosecutors said. The men's lawyers, however, said the FBI staged the attempted robbery to gain leverage on the men because the FBI thought they knew the whereabouts of more than $200 million in art stolen from Boston's Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum in 1990. Stephen Rossetti, 42, of Boston was sentenced Tuesday to 51 years and 10 months; Carmello Merlino, 66, of Quincy, was sentenced Friday to 47 years and six months; and his nephew, William Merlino, 40, Quincy, was sentenced Monday to 13 years and four months. A fourth defendant, David Turner, 33, of Randolph, was also convicted with the others in October 2001 and will be sentenced at a later date. After a 16-day trial, each defendant was convicted of conspiracy, attempted robbery and two counts of carrying and possessing firearms, including a hand grenade. Rossetti was also convicted of two counts of violating felon- in-possession statutes. The 1990 theft of several masterpieces from the Gardner Museum, including works by Rembrandt and Vermeer, remains unsolved. All four men denied involvement in the museum heist or knowledge of the whereabouts of the artwork.
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/
Stolen painting sold in pub
By Heidi Bantam The painting worth R1,750 which was snatched from the EP Society for Arts and Crafts gallery in Central was sold for a mere R50 in a nearby pub.
The mysterious disappearance of veteran Dutch artist Niek Hiemstra's aquarell PontWiroin France was reported in yesterday's Herald. Epsac vice-chairman Gilroy van der Merwe said the police brought the piece to the Bird Street gallery. "They were two big chaps. I thought they'd come to arrest me," he joked. However, the officers brought out the painting and told him that a Richmond Hill resident had bought it for R50 at a pub in Russell Road. The man, who did not wish to be named, apparently bought the piece from a "slightly built, elderly black man". "He took it home and put it up on his wall. When he opened up The Herald and saw the report on its disappearance, he immediately called the police. "Apparently the guy who sold it to him often sells things at the bar. The staff there said they believed he worked for a secondhand dealer," Van Der Merwe said. The police promised the painting would be returned to Hiemstra's exhibition of portraits and landscapes "within a day or two". Epsac chairman Gerry Boulter said he was still baffled by how the thief gained access to the building. Police found no sign of a forced entry. The front door was open, but the gallery's security gate was locked and the burglar- barred windows were all closed when the theft took place.
Both the artist and the painting's buyer, who wished to remain anonymous, were relieved it had been returned. Speaking from their home in East London, Hiemstra's partner Marianne Odijk said she was overjoyed. "It's unbelievable. It's not very nice when a painting that you made and that someone else wants to buy is gone," she said. Van Der Merwe said the gallery had reimbursed the embarrassed art collector with R50.
http://www.bday.co.za/
The Art World: Preserving Iraq's patrimony
By FREDERICK M. WINSHIP From the Life & Mind Desk
NEW YORK, Nov. 27 (UPI) -- War is hell for people as well as for their past as represented by cultural remains of ancient civilizations in museums and at archaeological sites both excavated and untouched. No antiquities are more vulnerable today than those of Iraq, whose borders include the core of Mesopotamia, the so-called cradle of civilization that thrived between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. If Iraq is engulfed in war, can they be saved? Will unexcavated sites believed to be storehouses of cuneiform tablets, the earliest written records of mankind, be preserved for future generations of archaeologists? Fortunately fine examples of artwork created by Mesopotamian cultures and major cuneiform holdings can be found in museums in the West, notably in Berlin, Paris, London, and New York, acquired years ago when the Middle East was under the control of European powers and there were no legal barriers to exporting antiquities. What remains behind in Saddam Hussein's realm are important museum collections, fine examples of Islamic architecture, and some 10,000 important archaeological sites, some of them adjacent to military installations and factories that may be producing weaponry. Such sites suffered in Iraq's 10-year war with Iran and in Desert Storm in 1991 and face an even greater risk today if the nation is attacked by an American-led U.N. force. It is known there was considerable damage to archaeological material as the result of Allied bombing of Iraq in 1991, but the Pentagon did seek information from archaeologists familiar with Iraq about vulnerable sites after Desert Storm was under way. Although the Defense Department is mum about plans to avoid destruction of cultural sites in Baghdad and throughout Iraq another time around, it does have a list of sites drawn up 10 years ago. Meanwhile, more such information along with maps are being submitted to the Defense Department by concerned specialists, and the U.S. government is being bombarded by museum curators, collectors, arts patrons and attorneys with pleas to take archaeological sites into account in planning military strategy. Most of these pleas include reminders to the government of The Hague Convention of 1954 prohibiting the targeting of cultural and religious sites in times of war. The United States never signed onto the Hague Convention but gives it lip service. For example, the Defense Department issued orders during Desert Storm not to bomb fighter aircraft stationed near the Ziggurat at Ur, said to be the oldest city in the world, because the site might be damaged. Even so, some other areas of the Ur site were damaged by bombing the Tallil airbase there. According to The Art Newspaper, a monthly publication known as the bible of the international art community, the U.S. Army "now goes into battle with attorneys who advise them on what they can and cannot bomb, while still remaining on the right side of the Hague Convention." If so, this is a step in the right direction, all the more so because of new weapons that can carry out pinpoint destruction without harming nearby structures, amply demonstrated during the Afghanistan invasion. However, if the war begins with a saturated bombing attack on Baghdad, as expected, what is to prevent the destruction of the National Museum of Antiquities, the Abbasid Palace, the Martyr's Mosque and the archaeological sites of Jemdat Nasr and Abu Salabikh? And what of Babylon, Iraq's chief tourist attraction 60 miles south of Baghdad, where Saddam might have secreted some of biological warfare laboratories among the semi-restored ruins? Other monuments that must be taken into consideration are the site of the Assyrian capitals of Ninevah, Ashur, and Nimrod, the city of Mosul with its important museum of Assyrian and Islamic artwork and four historic mosques, the Roman city of Arbil, the old caliphate capital of Sammara with its many architectural treasures, the royal Abassid dynasty capital of Al Fallujah, and Kerbala where the most sacred of Shiite Muslim shrines is located. An initiative to save these sites is being headed by Arthur Houghton, an authority on Middle Eastern antiquities and former curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum in California. It is advising U.S. Air Force attorneys who in turn advise military commanders planning the attack on Iraq on what should not be bombed in the name of saving mankind's most ancient patrimony. Another ad hoc group, the American Council for Cultural Policy," head by former Metropolitan Museum attorney Ashton Hawkins, has come forward with assistance to the U.S. government in rebuilding Iraq's cultural institutions should the invasion of Iraq and the ouster of Saddam take place. Hawkins claims he is working with the Iraqi Antiquities Service, a tricky operation considering that the service is an agency of Saddam's government. Could it be that even Iraq's dictator is interested in preserving evidence of his nation's glorious past?
http://www.upi.com/
DCMS Press releases:
ARTS MINISTER PLACES TEMPORARY EXPORT BAR ON AN IMPORTANT DRAWING BY MICHELANGELO
Minister of State for the Arts, Tessa Blackstone, has placed a temporary bar on the export of Study of a Mourning Woman, by Michelangelo, a drawing recently discovered pasted into an album at Castle Howard. This will provide a last chance to raise the money to keep the drawing in the United Kingdom. The Minister’s ruling follows a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art that the export decision be deferred. This reflects the drawing’s outstanding aesthetic quality and importance for study; it is believed to be one of one of Michelangelo’s rare earlier works and its unusually excellent state of preservation clearly shows the variety of his penmanship. The deferral will enable purchase offers to be made at the following agreed fair market price: A drawing, Study of a Mourning Woman, by Michelangelo, deferred at the recommended price of £7,500,000 (including VAT) until after 28 January 2003. The deferral period could be extended until after 28 June 2003 if there is a serious intention to raise funds with a view to making an offer to purchase.
Anyone interested in making an offer to purchase the drawing should contact the owner’s agent through:
The Secretary, The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2-4 Cockspur Street, London SW1Y 5DH
ARTS MINISTER PLACES TEMPORARY EXPORT BAR ON A PORTRAIT OF THE LIEUTENANT GENERAL, THE HON ROBERT MONCKTON (1764), BY BENJAMIN WEST
Minister of State for the Arts, Tessa Blackstone, has placed a temporary bar on the export of a portrait by Benjamin West of the Lieutenant General, the Hon Robert Monckton (1764). This will provide a last chance to raise the money to keep the portrait in the United Kingdom. The Minister’s ruling follows a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art that the export decision be deferred. This reflects the outstanding importance of the sitter as one of the most prominent British officers to take part in the Seven Years’ War for the control of the Americas, and the significance of his role in the capture of Martinique. The deferral will enable purchase offers to be made at the following agreed fair market price: A portrait of Robert Monckton by Benjamin West, deferred at the recommended price of £775,000 (including VAT) until after 28 January 2003. The deferral period could be extended until after 28 April 2003 if there is a serious intention to raise funds with a view to making an offer to purchase.
Offers from public bodies for less than the recommended price through the private treaty sale arrangements, where appropriate, will also be considered by Tessa Blackstone. Such purchases frequently offer substantial financial benefit to both parties by the sharing of tax advantages. Anyone interested in making an offer to purchase the portrait should contact the owner’s agent through:
The Secretary, The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2-4 Cockspur Street, London SW1Y 5DH
more: http://www.culture.gov.uk/role/press_releases.html