October 11, 1999
CONTENTS:
- Food and water in exhibit areas (Geoff Goodrich)
- Italian WWII treasures untraced (Jonathan Sazonoff)
- Museum Salvage Teams (William Heidecker)
- American sues Hungary for art looted by Nazis
- construction of saferooms (Steve Keller)
- articles transferred in Adobe Acrobat format (Steve Keller)
- Thief strikes Hemingway exhibit
From: "Goodrich, Geoff" ggoodrich@phxart.org
Subject: Food and water in exhibit areas.
We do not allow this as a rule during regular open hours and especially during evening events. My question pertains to those persons who claim to have need of a water bottle for medical reasons. Having done some research and queried doctors, there are few conditions that require someone to need a drink of water quickly. We have water fountains located outside the gallery areas that are quite accessible to visitors. I've managed to ban all other types of food and drink, and only lost one battle, that of baby bottles with a nipple (ouch). I would like to know how others deal with this issue of "medical condition" requests.
Thank you,
ggoodrich@phxart.org
Geoffrey V. Goodrich
Chief of Security / Facility Manager
Phoenix Art Museum
Phoenix, Arizona USA
From: Jonathan Sazonoff saz@kwom.com
Subject: Italian WWII treasures untraced
Dear Subscribers,
The Italian Government has relaunched their web-site devoted to the recovery of art missing since WWII. In Italian: The Commissione Interministeriale per le Opere d'Arte is now hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs http://www.esteri.it/attivita/dgrc/opereperse/home.htm
On another note, a Canadian art conservator forwarded an interesting page concerning forensic appraisal. I'm always amazed by the variety of approaches in painting authentication. http://www.total.net/~zsiga/forensics1.htm
Hope you find this of interest.
Jonathan Sazonoff
Pres., Saz Prod., Inc
http://www.saztv.com
Contributing US Ed.
Museum Security Network
http://www.museum-security.org/saz.html
From: "William A. Heidecker" heideckerwa@worldnet.att.net
Subject: Museum Salvage Teams
One the passages that fascinated me in Michael Fishlock's "The Great Fire At Hampton Court" was the description of the very able and valuable contribution of the Palace Salvage Squad in removing valuable objects during the fire. Now let me introduce a totally different concept before reaching a synthesis. In areas where chemical and petrochemical plants proliferate, mutual aid plans have been devised for dealing with fire emergencies. The rationale for these plans is that the firefighting requirements could strain the assets of any one plant. When a serious fire occurs, neighboring plants are quickly notified and they respond with trucks, firefighters, special extinguishing agents, and other resources. The person in charge is the senior firefighter from the site where the incident occurs. Members of the plan are well acquainted with each others' plants and they periodically train together so that in an emergency, an outside observer sees one experienced team, working under an established chain-of-command, using compatible tactics and equipment. In the U.S. at least, most municipal fire departments have abandoned all but the basics of salvage. In most countries, manpower constraints and firefighting tactics will almost certainly limit the number of firefighters who can be spared for salvage duties. We charitably assume that firefighters are sensitive to the special problems of art conservation. Each museum or historical site operates as a single entity. When fire or other emergencies strike, each is left to its own resources. Some sites have contingency plans, but the efficacy of some plans in an actual emergency is questionable. Is it practical to consider a mutual aid salvage squad for art work? (That is a question, not a statement of fact.) What I contemplate is a voluntary organization of sites that have a common need for salvage in the event of a fire or other emergency. Each member would contribute to the organization. The financial burden would be small, but the potential rewards are large. The organization would form a volunteer team, drawn from the regular staff at each participating institution. They would be provided with proper training, be appropriately equipped, and led by knowledgeable conservators. In an emergency the team members would quickly be notified, the team formed, and then would respond to the scene with their equipment. The equipment would consist of personal protective equipment, waterproof tarpaulins, and devices to help move large or heavy objects. It sounds simple, but, as they say, the devil is in the details. Clearly, it may not be practicable in areas where the number and size of the cultural institutions are small. Even in some world capitals, the logistics would be difficult, but not insurmountable. Obtaining approval by municipal authorities to operate concurrently with the fire department could be a problem. Getting the staffs of various institutions to work together could be an even bigger challenge. For each participating institution, the biggest challenge could be scheduling the time for team training. Unquestionably there are problems, but there are also opportunities. If anyone is interested in further exploration of such a notion, I would be pleased to communicate with them. Ideally, a general plan could be produced that could be adapted for use in particular locales. Even if a mutual aid salvage team is not a workable concept, perhaps a discussion would be beneficial. Is anyone interested?
American sues Hungary for art looted by Nazis
By Michael Roddy
BUDAPEST, Oct 5 (Reuters) - An elderly American woman sued the Hungarian government on Tuesday for the return of art masterpieces looted by Nazis from the Jews and now held by Budapest museums, lawyers said. Martha Nierenberg, granddaughter of Baron Mor Lipot Herzog, who once had a mansion on Budapest's most prestigious boulevard filled with a collection valued today at $10-20 million, filed the suit in Budapest City Court, attorneys said. The suit seeks the return of parts of the 2,500 piece collection, looted by Nazi SS commander Adolf Eichmann as he oversaw the extermination of Hungary's Jews in 1944. ``The Hungarian government has reneged on all their promises to right this wrong,'' Nierenberg said in a statement released by New York public relations firm Rubenstein Associates. ``They seem to believe that they can detain my family's works of art, which have become the last prisoners of World War Two. ``They think because I am 75 I will not pursue justice. But I won't allow Eichmann to claim victory from his grave, while Budapest mocks the restitution efforts of other nations.'' The collection includes El Grecos, Cranachs and Van Dycks, some of which have wound up in Hungary's Museum of Fine Arts and National Gallery, both in Budapest, the lawyers said. Eichmann, whose SS exterminated or deported some 600,000 of Hungary's pre-war Jewish population of 800,000, shipped the best pieces of the Herzog collection to Germany under the ``Hungarian de-Judafication Programme.'' Many works recovered by the Americans after the war were shipped back to Hungary by train in the late 1940s, but were placed in museums instead of being returned to their owners. Any attempts at recovering them were stalled under communism and the effort was only revived after communism collapsed in 1989, attorneys said. ``The Hungarian government has just been killing time,'' said Peter Szakonyi, a public relations agent in Budapest working in cooperation with lawyers and the U.S. public relations firm representing Nierenberg. Szakonyi said negotiations between Nierenberg, who lives in Armonk, New York, and the Hungarian government to reach an amicable settlement had been going on for four years, without result. ``These items (the paintings) were not nationalised,'' Szakonyi said. ``They were deposited with the Museum of Fine Arts and the National Gallery and so their legal status is clear -- they were never nationalised so they belong to the heirs.'' Glenn Young, an attorney for the U.S. firm of Squires, Sanders & Dempsey, handling the suit for Nierenberg and the New York-based Commission for Art Recovery, said the Hungarian government had indicated it would not return the works. ``We only got sympathetic statements...and finally they said they would not give the art work back,'' Young said. An official in the Hungarian prime minister's press office, who asked not to be named, said the government had not yet received official notification of the suit and could not comment.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.
From: IntlArtCop@aol.com
Subject: construction of saferooms
I've gotten three inquiries this week regarding the construction of saferooms by my clients. One wanted a saferoom that is bullet resistant and the others were more concerned about building a room that is structurally secure and can be used to house the most important items in a collection in a hurricane or, in some cases, possibly a tornado, (although there is rarely enough warning to take things to a saferoom in a tornado.) This is a good question. We design art storage rooms all the time but they really aren't secure enough to withstand a tornado. What should the specifications be for a really hardened room? I thought I'd share some information with your readers in case they find this useful in their museum or possibly in their own homes. Since the recent hurricane here in the East, which I assume is the cause of the inquiries, I am considering a saferoom for storage of critical business records and equipment should we evacuate again in a major storm. Check out one of FEMA's sites at http://www.fema.gov/mit/tsfs01.htm. They have complete plans and specifications suitable for construction for a tornado quality saferoom. Their plans do not provide for waterproofing as might be needed in a hurricane but since a tornado is the worst storm known, presumably it would withstand a weather assault adequately to protect works of art as long as they are in garbage bags or otherwise protected from any small amount of water that might leak in. While not formally waterproofed, they are not likely to get too wet as well as they are built. Since you could pay thousands of dollars to have an architect (or security consultant) design such a saferoom for you, I thought you might like to know that plans are available for free, compliments of the U.S. taxpayers. While this set of plans is not suitable for a security control room, we might take some of the design concepts and construction methods and apply them to our security control rooms. Bullet resistant sheeting added to the cement block (CMU filled) rebar reinforced walls, the poured concrete ceiling, etc. is pretty adequate for providing a safe place for the guards who must stay in a museum in a criminal assault or a major storm. Of course, control rooms need penetrations in the walls like windows and doors and air ducts but the FEMA plans give you a good place to start when looking for a basic plan.
Hope you find this material useful.
Steve Keller, CPP
Museum Security Consultant
steve@stevekeller.com
From: IntlArtCop@aol.com
Subject: articles transferred in Adobe Acrobat format
We have begun to transfer all of the articles I have written over the years and all of the forms and materials I've prepared such as Incident Report Forms, Property Passes, etc. into Adobe Acrobat format because we get so many inquiries and requests for reprints and we are tired of translating things to different word processor formats. Many of our things were originally written in PageMaker or Illustrator or similar programs that the user doesn't have, so this all got very difficult to adminsiter. Some of our clients use Mac and some PC.
The purpose of this post is to tell those of you who have not heard about Adobe Acrobat about this fantastic program so you can get it. Every day I find more and more material on the Web in Acrobat format (.pdf files).
( this message, though in my opinion very important, has been abbreviated, Ton Cremers)
Hope this tip helps you with your training and other projects.
Steve Keller, CPP
Museum Security Consultant
Thief strikes Hemingway exhibit
Two plates on loan from Cuba missing
BY ADAM RAMIREZ
aramirez@herald.com
Two ceramic plates, part of an Ernest Hemingway exhibit on loan from Cuba, were stolen from a fishing museum in Dania Beach, the Broward Sheriff's Office said Wednesday. The pastel-colored plates were gifts from Cuban artists meant to personalize the International Game Fish Association's Fishing Hall of Fame's six-month tribute to the famous author and fisherman. A visitor noticed the two plates were missing about noon Tuesday. They were taken from two columns in a gallery at the IGFA's Fishing Hall of Fame and Museum. ``This is a real shame -- we are extremely disappointed that our trust was violated,'' said Cheryl McDonald, marketing director at the relatively new museum. ``The thieves also violated the trust of the generous people who contributed to this exhibition.'' The Cuban government declined to comment on the incident. BSO detectives are investigating. The exhibit, ``Papa: A Tribute to Ernest Hemingway,'' opened July 21 to celebrate the author's 100th birthday. Hemingway spent many years fishing in Key West and outside Havana at Finca Vigia. The exhibit included artifacts from his Cuban home, where Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea, a story cited when he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. The Cuban government converted his home into a museum after he committed suicide in 1961. The colorful, eight-inch plates, depicting aquatic scenes, are called Alegoria del Mar (Sea Allegory) by Isaac Chavez and Peces Tropicales (Tropical Fish) by David Martinez. The police report does not put a monetary value on the art -- listing them as ``priceless.'' The plates were not part of Cuba's permanent collection, but were among several original pieces of art by residents included in the loan, including Hemingway-inspired drawings by Cuban schoolchildren. Tuesday, museum guest Harold Flagg, 73, noticed the plates missing and ``came out of the showroom yelling something was missing and had been stolen,'' BSO Deputy Richard Cooper wrote in his report. There are no security cameras inside the gallery. About the time the theft was discovered, the IGFA board of directors was meeting upstairs and had just voted to purchase cameras for the 60,000-square-foot museum. Hemingway was one the founders of the IGFA and served as its original vice president, Parker said. The exhibit in Dania Beach celebrates Hemingway's passion for fishing and big-game hunting. Cubans revered Hemingway for writing about the common man. The Old Man and the Sea described a courageous Cuban fisherman, Santiago, and his epic struggle to catch a giant marlin.
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