Museum Security website statistics; over 1000 hits per week

November 23 - 27, 1999

CONTENTS:




- 5 Stolen Paintings Found
- RE:long term display of paper (Tom Dixon)
- Parties unite to keep sculptures
- Clinton promises to pressure Britain on relics' return
- Azerbaijan To Return 14 Works Of Art To Bremen Museum
- Trouble at the MFA
- Artful dodges. Art fraud and theft is a billion-dollar business -almost as big as the drugs trade and just as ruthless
- American Civil War Era Medical Books
- Greeks condemn state of Marbles
- Management of Library Security (Association of Research Libraries) Although libraries are often considered oases of quiet and decorum by the general public, they have their share of security problems

5 Stolen Paintings Found

ROME (AP) - Five paintings stolen from a Rome museum have been found, apparently after the thieves thought police were closing in on their trail.
The paintings were stolen on Nov. 15 from a room where they had been stored in the city's Capitoline Museum, which is being renovated.
Police recovered the paintings Saturday, newspapers reported. Among the pieceswere three highly regarded 17th-century works: the ``Holy Family'' and ``St. John Baptist'' by Baroque artist Giovanni Francesco Barbiero, better known as Guercino; and ``Sacred Family and Saints'' by Ludovico Carracci. Experts said it would have been virtually impossible to sell them because of their notoriety. After a telephone tip, Italian police found the paintings in the village of Bassiano, outside Rome. Investigators believed the thieves apparently thought they were about to be caught and dropped off the paintings near a basement door of a house in the village, newspapers reported.

From: Tom Dixon tom.dixon@ngv.vic.gov.au
Subject:

long term display of paper

Joseph Delci inquired about displaying art and non-art paper items for periods of 1-5 years. I would suggest he very seriously consider this and consult with appropriate experts before embarking on a tour which might well destroy the items. Generally, museums display works on paper for no more than 3 months at a time and then store them in the dark for a period of 9 months. While on display, they are assumed to be in a u.v.free environment, illumination is limited to 50 lux (5 footcandles), and is only on for a period of nominally 8 hours per day. Even with these protocols in place, the works are still deteriorating- but the deterioration is being rationed and limited.There are several strategies to increase the availability of paper or other light sensitive materials for the public while minimizing light damage. One of these is the provision of table top cases with internal lighting which comes on only when the viewer pushes a button with a 1 minute timer in it, or a passive infrared sensor could be used to turn the light on- the trick being to only supply light when it is required by a viewer. Light levels can also be significantly reduced if the physiology and psychology of how people perceive light is exploited. I worked on a Navaho blanket exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in the early 1970's where the light levels were 12 lux and they looked great- there were dark walls behind them and people were brought in through a series of rooms with less and less light and had time to adjust to the lower light levels. It can work, but takes very careful design. Remember that light damage is irreversible and reciprocal. By the generally accepted "normal museum display" ready reckoner, if your works on paper are on display for 5 years, they should then be off display for 20 years. Can you guarentee that? If you need professional advice in the Chicago area I will be glad to supply names of appropriately qualified and experienced people off list. Thomas Dixon
Chief Conservator
National Gallery of Victoria
Melbourne Australia

Times of London
Culture Questions: Elgin Marbles

Parties unite to keep sculptures

LABOUR and the Conservatives united yesterday to oppose any fresh attempt to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece. Chris Smith, the Culture Secretary, told MPs that the 2,500-year-old Parthenon sculptures were visited, free, by six million people a year at the British Museum by "people coming from all over the world to see these treasures, among many others. "I believe they should stay that way," he insisted. Robert Sheldon (Lab, Ashton under Lyne), chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee, said that if it were possible to return the 17 sculptures to the Parthenon itself, "there would be a strong case there". But he said: "To transfer them from one museum to another museum, when they were effectively saved by bringing them into this country - will you make sure that any proposal of this kind is firmly opposed?" Peter Ainsworth, Shadow Culture Secretary, said that the Tory party fully endorsed the Government's "robust" policy on the sculptures.

Clinton promises to pressure Britain on relics' return

United States President Bill Clinton has pledged to intervene on Greece's behalf in its ongoing battle to retrieve the Elgin Marbles from Britain. Mr Clinton took Greeks by surprise when he made the promise as he toured the ancient Acropolis during a one-day visit to Greece. The Elgin Marbles comprise of 17 figures and parts of a 160-yard frieze from the ancient Parthenon. The marbles were taken in the early 19th century by Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Greek Culture Minister Elisavet Papazoe said President Clinton promised he would persuade Britain to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece during a one-hour tour of the Acropolis. She said the US leader had pledged he would raise the issue with British Prime Minister Tony Blair when the two men meet at an international conference in Florence today. As he surveyed the 5th century BC Parthenon, Mr Clinton was heard to say if it was up to him the Elgin Marbles would be returned to Greece immediately.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-21nov1999-31.htm

Azerbaijan To Return 14 Works Of Art To Bremen Museum

BAKU, Nov 18, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev has ordered that 14 works of art stolen during World War II be returned to a gallery in Bremen, Germany, the government daily Baku Worker reported Wednesday. According to a presidential decree signed Tuesday, a Soviet war veteran tried to sell the works, which bear the stamp of the Bremer Kunsthalle, to Azerbaijan's National Museum in 1947, after which they were confiscated. Twelve of the paintings were stolen in 1993 but were later recovered in Washington, where they remain, the decree said. "Once its national independence was restored, Azerbaijan intended to return these works to their rightful owners, the German people," Aliyev wrote. German Embassy officials in Baku said that the two paintings in the National Museum, which included a work by Raphael, would be handed over immediately, while the remaining 12 would return at a later date. ((c) 1999 Agence France Presse)
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=110849

Trouble at the MFA

The resignation last week of Theodore Stebbins, the Museum of Fine Arts' respected curator of 22 years, is just the latest in the talent drain that has afflicted the MFA since director Malcolm Rogers's violent reorganization of last June - the museum's equivalent of the French Revolution. At that time, 18 positions were abrubtly eliminated, and some of the best-known heads in the art world rolled. The repercussions have caused other staffers to head for the exits and more than one donor's checkbook to snap shut. Ironically, Stebbins was supposed to be a beneficiary of the reorganization. But in his resignation letter he questioned his continued ability to have ''the kind of strong voice curators have traditionally had in developing exhibitions and publications, guiding acquisitions, selecting staff, and shaping policies.'' Malcolm Rogers, whose indefatigable and imaginative efforts have enlivened the art scene in Boston and the region, is not known to brook too many other strong voices. The fear is that expertise, scholarship, and respect may be going through the museum door along with the talent that has left, all in the name of corporate reorganization. Still, museums, like all institutions, have to change and adjust to new realities. It may be that Rogers's ''one museum'' concept will improve the MFA. But the methods of achieving it have been nothing less than a public-relations disaster.
This story ran on page A14 of the Boston Globe on 11/22/99.
c Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.
boston.com/dailyglobe2/326/editorials/Trouble_at_the_MFA+.shtml

Artful dodges

Art fraud and theft is a billion-dollar business - almost as big as the drugs trade and just as ruthless.
JOYCE MORGAN reports.
The photograph in the Christie's catalogue is the picture of innocence: a child's yellow pedal car, the sort Noddy might ride around Toyland. The scale model 1950s Austin is collectible, but not hugely valuable. When the car appeared in its Melbourne auction catalogue in July, Christie's estimated it would fetch between $3,000 and $5,000. But a world away in London, alarm bells were ringing.
The Art Loss Register, an international database of stolen or missing objects, routinely scans catalogues of major forthcoming auctions around the world. On page 15 of the Melbourne catalogue it found the pedal car, a perfect match for one registered as stolen in Britain last year.
An the toy wasn't the only item in the catalogue to cause alarm. Some valuable porcelain consigned by the same vendor to the auction appeared to match porcelain stolen in Britain at about the same time as the little Austin. The 20 lots of porcelain - including 19th-century bowls, plates, a vase and tea sets - were expected to fetch more than $22,000.
Neither the little car nor the porcelain went under the hammer. The Art Loss Register went into action, informing Christie's and setting in motion a series of investigations that have led to the recovery of a large amount of stolen art and antiques and provided leads on more than 40 burglaries in Britain.
An illicit pedal car might not have the dollar value or cachet of the "glamorous" art thefts of films such as The Thomas Crown Affair and Entrapment, yet it has focused attention on the underbelly of the less glamorous decorative arts end of the art market.
It was the first time the Australian arm of the renowned auction house had received such a notification from the register, says Christie's managing director, Roger McIlroy. Neither the auction house nor the vendor had any idea of the possible history of the goods until then, he says. The items had all been purchased in good faith from a single London dealer by an Australian who had then consigned them to auction.
"It was just the result of our catalogue coming out that somebody in London said, 'Hang on a second'. We are very conscious of not handling things that are not of good title."
Establishing the history of such works going for auction is problematic. While vendors must sign a declaration that the works are unencumbered, McIlroy acknowledges, "Unfortunately, after, that there isn't a lot you can do".
Christie's has retained the pedal car and the porcelain and is awaiting proof of ownership from Britain.
The long journey of the little Austin raises questions about the apparent ease with which stolen antiques and works of art can move across national boundaries and enter an unsuspecting art market, and about Australia's role in a global network of art theft.
Such questions will be debated in Sydney next month at an international conference, organised by the Australian Institute of Criminology, that will bring together the art world and crime investigators.
The gathering takes place against a background of growing concern about the extent and increased sophistication of art theft and fraud. The international market for stolen art is estimated to have a turnover of $US500 million to $US1 billion ($775 million-$1.5 billion), according to the institute, making it the world's third biggest illegal trade, behind drugs and arms.
Greed and ignorance are the twin pillars on which art crime is founded. But obsession and covetousness may also play a role, given that most art thefts involve works stolen to order. Somewhere in the world there are nearly 400 works by Picasso, 280 by Joan Miro, 250 by Marc Chagall and 185 by Salvador Dali that have been reported as stolen. The present holders cannot publicly display them or loan them to art galleries. So who acquired them and why? Why does anyone want to possess a work they alone can secretly enjoy, like some indecent obsession?
The thrill of the scam could be a factor, according to Bob Montgomery, a professor of psychology at Bond University. He likens the dynamic to that operating with problem gamblers.
"Once they get hooked into it and have to start obtaining their funds illegally, getting away with the fraud or the theft or the con becomes rewarding in itself ... I can imagine someone saying, 'Look how clever I am, I got away with it, and no-one knows'."
Detective Sergeant Bryan Hanley, an art crime specialist, has no doubt that Australia is part of a global network. "This idea that we're an isolated island is for the pixies. There's no doubt there are works coming in. We've seen statues coming out of gardens in Britain ending up in Brisbane ... Some people might say they're isolated instances. But as we scratch the surface, it's the tip of the iceberg."
Queensland-based Hanley, who has a fine arts background, was recently awarded a prestigious FBI scholarship to study the policing of art and cultural property and related crime overseas which will take him to the Los Angeles Police Department and law enforcement agencies in Europe. He sees art crime as an international problem where theft, receiving, fraud and forgery are highly organised and intertwined.
"They go hand in hand. Inevitably, all this crime is organised. It must be because most of it is stolen to order ... so you might have a work that was stolen, its ownership can be legitimately moved by exploiting international and domestic weaknesses or loopholes in legislation. You have to cast your net far and wide."Dr Neil Brodie's slide show is full of photos of faraway places, but they are hardly the sort you'll find in glossy tourist brochures. They are mostly of holes in the ground.
That is often all that is left after looters have plied their trade, removing statues, pottery, jewellery and other items of cultural heritage, says the co-ordinator of the Illicit Antiquities Research Centre in Cambridge, England. The business is hardly new, but technology has aided the removal and transportation of antiquities, which forms a substantial part of the trade in illegal art.
"For centuries people have been grave robbing with simple spades and picks, now they're using bulldozers and dynamite ... previously inaccessible areas like Central Asia and the high Andes are easier to get to. There's a huge amount of destruction going on in Cambodia, Nepal, Tibet and China. There's a hell of a lot of looting in China that's coming out through Hong Kong and Singapore."
Two decades of unrestrained looting in China have been blamed for a shrinking supply of antiquities along Hong Kong's Hollywood Road antiques belt, and increasing numbers of fakes being sold. Brodie estimates as much as a quarter of so-called Chinese antiquities on the market are fakes. Edmund Capon, director of the Art Gallery of NSW and an expert in Chinese art, believes the faking of Chinese antiquities is endemic.
"Early Chinese art is awash with fakes. Hong Kong is full of them and some of them are very, very plausible," says Capon.
With such a large volume of looted material moving around South-East Asia, how much ends up in Australia, rather than the more traditional markets of Europe and North America? Brodie does not know. However, he says, the popularity of collecting antiquities, once the preserve of the upper classes, has expanded the market dramatically.
"It's gone down-market in a way. Now everybody can afford to own a small antiquity and have it on their mantelpiece. People think it's an intellectual thing to do, to impress their friends, to own a piece of history."
Yet the cultural damage caused by the unrecorded removal of artefacts is irreparable. Ignorance is one of the biggest obstacles in combating the trade in illegal antiquities.
"Few people know what's going on. If they see antiquities in a shop down the road, they don't stop to think where they've come from or what destruction it's causing," Brodie says.
Concern about the amount of illegal material flooding the market prompted the adoption of a UNESCO convention in 1970 stating that unprovenanced artefacts appearing after that year should be regarded as illicit and not be purchased by public or private collectors. Not that this has stemmed the tide. Brodie cites several recent studies that suggest the sheer volume of material coming on the market means it can only have been looted. He suggests anyone considering buying an antiquity should ask for documentary proof that it was in circulation before 1970. It's a somewhat arbitrary date, Brodie acknowledges, but "you have to draw the line somewhere".
"Dealers will say they don't have documentary proof, you'll have to take it on trust. But you've got to say that's not good enough. It there's no documentary proof, we'll assume it's been looted since 1970."
Brodie is critical of the role dealers play in the unwitting circulation of illegal antiquities. He refers to a recent British case where looted antiquities were shown to have passed through the hands of many reputable British dealers.
"It was two or three stages removed. They'd say they had no reason to suspect it was stolen - and probably they didn't. But they are all part of a network and the network is facilitating the distribution of stolen material. You have to question the morality of the network."
A little pedal car is not the only vehicle on the files at the Art Loss Register. So, too, is James Bond's Aston Martin: the car in which Sean Connery chased celluloid criminals in Goldfinger and Thunderball has fallen into the hands of the real-life ones. The vehicle, stolen from a Florida collector two years ago, is one of 120,000 items on a register that grows by about 1,200 items each month.
About half the works listed are prosaically called "flat art" - consisting mainly of paintings and prints; the rest largely comprises decorative and ethnographic items. Oriental rugs, Rolex watches and silver coasters are also listed, because auction houses sell such items, says Anna Kisluk, director of the Art Loss Register in New York.
Since 1991, when it was established with the support of the big auction houses and the insurance industry, the register has assisted in the recovery of goods worth $US85 million. Last year about a quarter of its recoveries were in a country other than that in which the theft occurred. The figure is likely to be higher this year, reflecting the growing ease with which stolen art is transported across borders.
The register recently identified jewellery, stolen in Switzerland, that turned up two months later in a Hong Kong auction house. Kisluk recalls a 19th-century gold snuff box, stolen from a Paris museum in the 1980s, being offered for auction in New York two years ago.
Kisluk believes the register has acted as a deterrent. When the organisation first began systematically screening auction catalogues, it identified one in every 3,000 lots as being stolen. That figure is now one in 8,000 lots while the number of lots screened has increased to 400,000 a year.
The Sydney artist John Firth-Smith was flipping through The Wentworth Courier's real estate pages about three months ago when an advertisement brought him to a halt. On the living room wall of a ritzy property up for sale was a painting that looked remarkably similar to his own abstract work Lucky Bones.
"My first thought was that somebody might have bought that painting thinking it was my work and had paid a considerable amount of money for it," says Firth-Smith.
The artist went along to an inspection and took some photographs of the painting, which appeared to be unsigned. He then had his lawyer, Adam Simpson of Simpsons Solicitors, contact the apartment owner alleging the work was an unauthorised copy and an infringement of copyright.
"Our big fear was this was going to be a factory-line production in Indonesia pumping out reproductions," says Simpson. The visual arts scene is rife with rumours of Asian factories churning out copies of work by well-known Australian artists. Simpson now believes the work was created in Sydney, although exactly how and why is still being ascertained.
The apartment owner has handed over the work, which indeed was unsigned, to Firth-Smith. The problem with such a work is that unless it is destroyed it can end up back in the market as the "genuine" article.
Stuart Purves, of the Australian Commercial Art Dealers Association, recalls a curious case. Ten years ago he saw an unsigned work in the style of a major Australian artist. A year ago he saw the same work again, but with a significant alteration: the signature of the major artist had been added.
"I was able to produce evidence that it wasn't the genuine article, and fortunately they [the owners] were wonderfully co-operative. They took the painting to a restorer and had the signature taken off."
But that is not always the end of the story. There is nothing to stop the painting being sold in the future to a less scrupulous new owner who gets it re-signed and attempts to pass it off as the work of a more important artist.
"I am much more concerned about fakes and fraud than theft," says Purves. "Theft is terrible but the making of fakes and frauds is dangerous because it preys on the delicate cultural base of this country by people who use it for greed."
In Australia, unlike Europe and North America, fraud and fakes are of much more concern than stolen art. The relatively small size of the market here means selling stolen works is problematic. Not that art theft is unknown. Two years ago, a statuette called Virgin in a Condom was stolen while on display at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art. The figure, by the British artist Tania Kovats, has never been found. Picasso's $2 million Weeping Woman was stolen while on display at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1986 and later recovered in a locker at Spencer Street railway station. A decade earlier, an entire exhibition of 28 works by Grace Cossington Smith was stolen from Sydney's Macquarie Galleries. The works have never been found.
Yet several high-profile cases have highlighted concern about the extent of fraud in the Australian art market: Lauraine Diggins Fine Art of Melbourne acknowledged it had inadvertently sold a number of fake paintings last year. The dealer contacted her clients, refunded the money and alerted police; Sydney painter William Blundell admitted last year he had made thousands of works in the style of artists ranging from Brett Whiteley to Claude Monet. Many were sold on privately and at auction as the real thing after Blundell sold them as copies "for decorative purposes only" to the late Sydney art dealer Germaine Curvers.
Purves believes the number of fakes in circulation is probably tiny compared with the number of works painted and resold, but the existence of any is a cause for concern. "If somebody asks your opinion and your opinion is that it's a fake they can say 'Thank you very much, I'll have the work back now' and walk out the door. I would like to be able to put the fake work under arrest ... and give them to the police - but at the moment we can't."
Robyn Sloggett has probably seen more fakes than anyone else in Australia. The chief conservator at Melbourne University's Ian Potter conservation centre regularly discovers them when owners bring in their works to establish who has painted them. "Most of the works we see that are dubious are created after the fact, created to fit the known genre of an artist."
Works can also be manufactured to fit a provenance, where some of the provenance is known but the work is missing. Provenance is a work's pedigree or history - who created it, where it has been exhibited and who has bought and sold it. It is one of the key things an auction house or dealer will look at when accepting a work for sale.
"It can be a case of someone looking through records and identifying a missing work and suddenly a work appears on the market that matches the detail of that missing work ... they've filled a gap in the market where there is some description of provenance," says Sloggett. "You also get works purporting to be studies, so there's a known work and suddenly a study of that work comes on the market."
Then there is the creation of bogus provenance. It's all very well to be able to paint a "convincing" Van Gogh, but without a "convincing" history, the work is unlikely to enter the legitimate art market. This is where the forger's talent can come into its own: the fraud is as much about fake documentation as fake art.
This was an essential ingredient in a dramatic case in Britain earlier this year. A court heard how paintings in the style of such well-known artists as Braque, Matisse and Giacometti, were passed off as the real thing with the aid of false provenance. The mastermind behind the scam, John Drewe, had infiltrated the archives of some of the world's leading art museums, altering records and leading the heads of the Tate Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum to admit they might never know how much of their collection had been affected.
So how does a fake get into circulation? Sloggett believes the entry point in Australia is not the major auction houses, which will refund the money if within five years a buyer can establish the work is by another artist.
"It's the secondary market that things are coming into. It will be sold, say, in a clearing auction in Hobart or Ballarat or the Gold Coast ... people will think they're getting a bargain, think it comes from some family who don't know what they've got and it will get snapped up as a bargain," she says.
People often bring less discretion to the purchase of a work of art than they would to buying a used car. They buy first and ask questions later, she says. Some get caught up in the heat of a buoyant art market or are lulled into a false sense of security because they buy from reputable sources.
How many fakes are in circulation is not known. And not everyone wants to know. Some are embarrassed at being duped. Others don't want to risk their investment. Imagine, for example, you buy what you think is an Arthur Streeton. It turns out not to be. What do you do? Acknowledge this and lose money when you sell the work, or keep quiet, make money and sell it on once again as the genuine article?
Coo-ee Aboriginal Art Gallery's Adrian Newstead recalls a man visiting him a couple of years ago with what he claimed were early central desert Papunya paintings. Newstead, convinced they were fakes, alerted the major galleries and auction houses. The works have not been sighted since, but that doesn't mean they won't resurface.
"The big problem with fakery is those paintings might be stored and they turn up again for some unsuspecting player in five years time ... or they may be taken overseas and sold," says Newstead. "If the painting comes onto the secondary market it might be even harder to detect."
Indigenous art has unique difficulties. Questions of authorship and authenticity are contentious and culturally significant issues peculiar to the Aboriginal arts industry, says Newstead, president of the Australian Indigenous Art Trade Association. Several Aboriginal people may work together on a painting that is attributed to the owner of the Dreaming.
"This is no different to the way most European artists work, especially artists who need assistance in terms of installation and printmaking. They don't acknowledge the assistance they get either and yet there seems to be a double standard being applied to indigenous people. [People] are demanding a candour of Aboriginal people of a nature they have never demanded of European artists," he says.
The use of Dreaming stories by anyone other than the owner is a form of cultural theft that goes to the heart of Aboriginal culture, says Newstead.
"In Aboriginal culture, they [artists] only depict images because they have the right to. They have to go through initiations, they have to be given the stories ... so what is [this form of theft] saying to Aboriginal youth who are being brought up to respect the fact that they are not to paint these images unless they've been through the law? If any old Joe Blow can paint it, what is the bloody point in going through the law and getting deeply immersed in your culture?"
The National Indigenous Arts Advocacy Association is developing a new labelling system to protect consumers from inadvertently buying fake indigenous art such as the Indonesian-made didgeridoos being manufactured "by the trailer-load", which a Cairns conference was told about earlier this month.
As the experts gather in Sydney next month to look at the murky nature of art crime, one thing seems clear. Whether it's a pedal car or a Picasso, the old maxim still applies: buyer beware.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/9911/20/text/spectrum1.html

From: Rick Allen fallen@emory.edu
Subject:

American Civil War Era Medical Books

A man in the Central Texas area is peddling some very expensive Civil War-era medical books. His account of how he acquired them and why he wants to sell them is possible but, overall, extremely unlikely. Anyone aware of a seller or library with reported thefts in this genre? I'd like to talk with them.
Sgt. Rick Allen
Emory Police Department.
1784 North Decatur Road
Atlanta, GA. 30322-0550
404-727-5559
404-727-8039 Fax
http://www.emory.edu/EPD

Greeks condemn state of Marbles

BY DALYA ALBERGE, ARTS CORRESPONDENT
THE British Museum's overcleaning of the Elgin Marbles in the 1930s was even worse than has been realised, the Greek delegation of archaeologists and scientists who examined them last month said yesterday. "The problem is even more serious than had originally been surmised", they said, alleging that the Museum's scraping of the marbles, in a bid to whiten them, had led to an excessive loss of material. "The consequences of this intervention on the sculptures . . . are incalculable and irreversible. The excessive friction and scraping applied to the sculptures caused in certain cases a partial alteration and even distortion of their form." A number of sculptures, they believe, lost features that were an important part of their identity.
Their findings supported those of the historian William St Clair, who claimed last year that the sculptures had been damaged, but whose interpretation has been rejected by the museum as exaggerated. The museum accepts that its treatment of the Marbles was misguided: the cleaning was prompted by Lord Duveen, who was funding a purpose-built new classical gallery to house them and contemporary records suggest that he had bullied staff into attempting to whiten them by scraping.
Michael Daley, director of ArtWatch UK, has, however, accused the Greeks of treating some of their sculptures even more harshly since then, in full knowledge of the earlier controversy. He says that workmen scraped sculptures on the Hephaesteum temple, using steel chisels that were much harder than the copper chisels used by the British Museum. He will be publishing details in Art Review magazine, alleging that the restoration was "far more intrusive and radical" than anything done at the British Museum.
Hearing of the delegation's findings, one Greek observer said: "They are devastating. The museum cleaned the Marbles for the sake of cleaning them." The Greeks had overcleaned sculptures in 1953 in an attempt to safeguard them rather than "to beautify something of exquisite beauty".
http://www.the-times.co.uk/

http://www.arl.org/spec/247fly.html

Management of Library Security (Association of Research Libraries )

Introduction

Although libraries are often considered oases of quiet and decorum by the general public, they have their share of security problems. A SPEC survey issued in January 1999 sought to discover how ARL libraries assure the safety and security of persons, library materials, physical facilities, furnishings, computer equipment, etc. Forty-five of the 122 members of ARL (37%) responded to the survey.

Survey Results

Planning. Planning for security varies greatly among respondents. Thirteen respondents (29%) reported having a general statement of philosophy or purpose concerning security, while only 18 (40%) have developed security plans. The average age of these plans is 8.25 years, but a few of the plans are reported to be no longer in effect. Only nine libraries reported having a regular schedule for reviewing and updating their security plans. In their planning activities, respondents used a variety of strategies and resources. Most libraries (27 or 60%) used literature searches and reviews. Twenty-two libraries (49%) examined the security programs of other libraries. Twenty-one (47%) used consultants or consulted with vendors. Sixteen (36%) attended conferences, workshops, or seminars. Seven (16%) conferred with local security resources, such as campus security units. Managerial Personnel. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents (29) have a designated library security officer. Ten of these officers (36%) appear to focus entirely or primarily on security, as evidenced by the word "security" in their job titles. Other categories of staff have security duties as part of their job: assistant directors for administrative services (22%); facilities managers (11%); access services personnel (11%); administrators (11%); and other job titles (14%), which include director, collections services; assistant director, public services; preservation librarian; and special projects librarian. Administrative oversight for security programs is handled in a variety of ways, with administrators often in charge of security within their functional areas. For example, the assistant director for collections is held responsible for collections security.

Day-to-Day Management.

Respondents reported a variety of methods for managing security on a day-to-day basis. Thirty respondents (68%) have manuals (including emergency manuals) that contain information on security issues, and most of the libraries (87%) felt that staff knew about and had access to these manuals. Fourteen respondents (32%) do not have such manuals. Although most libraries reported providing training for staff on library security (75%), 35 libraries (80%) do not have programs for publicizing security information to library users. Most libraries (32 or 71%) use special security personnel (building monitors, exit guards, etc.). Several libraries reported FTE data on security personnel. Seventeen percent of these FTE were student workers, while 83% were regular security personnel working as library or campus employees or contract employees (the Library of Congress--with its huge professional police force--is not included in this count). Thirteen respondents (29%) have no special security personnel, apparently depending on library employees for most or all of their front-line security. Most libraries (84%) reported receiving some security assistance from their parent institutions, largely through campus police, occasional facility walk-throughs, etc. A very few reported an inadequate response from campus security. Other assistance came from sources such as campus human relations, custodial staff, campus recreation (CPR classes), and university counsel.
Controlling building exits is a major challenge in many ARL libraries. The most common method of exit control (used by 43 or 96%) is the magnetic detection system. Next is the use of library staff at service desks near exits (38 or 84%). Eighteen libraries (40%) use video cameras at exits. Seventeen (38%) use special security personnel. Of course, many libraries use a combination of approaches, the most prevalent being magnetic detection systems and library staff at service desks (16 or 36%).
Monitoring building activities, record keeping, and compiling inventory are important components of security programs. Thirty-four libraries (76%) use some form of electronic monitoring (video cameras, card keys, motion sensors, etc.), but, surprisingly, 11 libraries (24%) reported using no such equipment. Though most libraries (34 or 76%) have a regular process for generating reports of losses, security breaches, injuries, etc., only 14 (31%) regularly keep statistics on number and type of incidents, mutilated materials, etc. Twenty-four respondents (53%) take regular inventories mostly on an annual basis of collections, furnishings, etc., for security purposes, including inventories of high-value items alone. Twenty-one libraries (47%), however, do not.

Evaluation.

Twenty libraries (47%) were happy with their current security programs, but 53% were not, and most of them planned to make changes in the near future. Agendas varied widely and included most frequently: developing security plans, updating present documentation, changing to card key systems, increasing electronic surveillance, and increasing staff training. The security challenges that responding libraries mentioned run a fairly predictable gamut: At the same time, several respondents reported areas where their security systems were working well. Notable successes were:

Conclusion

The security problems that have plagued the large, unsupervised spaces of ARL libraries for years, such as theft and other kinds of misbehavior, remain a challenge today. Although some libraries appear well organized in their security programs, many lack up-to-date written security plans, effective data gathering, and complete inventory procedures. A number of libraries have not taken advantage of the latest developments in security technology--electronic surveillance, card keys, etc.--and remain dependent on more traditional strategies, such as staff monitoring and magnetic exit control systems. Developing effective security systems can, of course, be expensive. Too much emphasis on security can create a negative atmosphere for some library users and, if they are responsible for security enforcement, an intolerable situation for some staff. But nonetheless, every library needs a security program adequate for their situation. This checklist is meant to assist libraries by suggesting inexpensive strategies to improve security.
Does your library have:
This SPEC Kit was prepared by George J. Soete, ARL/OLMS Organizational Development Consultant, with the assistance of Glen Zimmerman, ARL Senior Program Officer.
SPEC Flyer (ISSN 0160 3574) c 1999 by the Association of Research Libraries. ARL grants blanket permission to reproduce this information for educational use as long as complete attribution is given. For commercial use, requests should be sent to the ARL Publications Department, Association of Research Libraries, 21 Dupont Circle, Washington, DC 20036. SPEC Kits and Flyers are available by subscription and single issue.