It could happen in the blink of an art-lover's eye: The Grecian urn falls, a crayon scribbles across Monet's waterlilies, the Venus de Milo sprains an ankle.
Just as risk is part of life, insurance is part of art. Although museums typically take great care to keep their works secure, they also turn to insurance to safeguard a financial return on art, for which fickle values can range from exorbitant to priceless. "The art market is like the stock market," said Thomas Sokolowski, director at the The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. "You just never know."
Certainly, no one at Boston's Gardner Museum knew that 13 important paintings (including a Rembrandt and Vermeer) would be stolen a few weeks after it decided against buying insurance. Although losses such as the 1990 Gardner heist are rare, they prove how valuable insurance can be for museums. Unfortunately, such losses also reveal how expensive it can be for museums to insure their exhibits.
"In terms of many institutions, a lot of them do not insure their permanent collection," Sokolowski said. "The costs are exceedingly expensive." He cited as an example the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where holdings are valued at hundreds of millions of dollars -- far too much to afford insurance. When the price gets that prohibitive, museums dedicate their resources to protecting their art the best they can. Smaller museums such as the Warhol do insure their permanent collections. Sokolowski said the Warhol has only made one claim over a damaged work in its history. Unwilling to disclose specific figures or the work that was damaged, he said the insurance company, Huntington Block (now Aon/Huntington T. Block), paid off the claim with a five-figure sum.
Unlike other forms of insurance that are perhaps more standardized, the policies taken out by museums can be totally customized to each institution's needs and philosophies. Yet, insurers are happy to have museums as customers. Of the three different kinds of fine arts insurance -- personal collections, commercial and museums -- a representative of Acordia Northeast, an insurance firm turned down by Gardner, said the fewest losses happen at museums. With professionals trained to protect art on staff, museums make very good customers for insurers.
"One of the reasons that cultural institutions are very desirable for insurance is they're one group who probably care more than we do about the loss," said Scott Smith, a manager for loss control at Chubb Insurance's Philadelphia office. A major player in art insurance, Chubb formalized in 1991 the kinds of customized policies museums usually require, Smith said. Regardless of the institution's size, museums rarely buy total insurance coverage, often choosing instead blanket policies that are flexible, if not comprehensive. Working for one of eight insurance companies that provides coverage for most of the country's major museums, the Acordia Northeast rep added that "90 percent of loss in the art world are transit losses." Thus, all traveling exhibits -- like the "Monet & Bazille -- A Collabortion" exhibit which runs from Feb. 23 to May 16 at the High Museum of Art -- are insured, and done so under legal liability. The greater risk that comes "every time a work gets packed up, put on a plane and taken to another climate" is one Sokolowski understands from experience.
The effort that goes into protecting traveling exhibits, especially international ones, is often tremendous. Special couriers are usually required, who tend after the traveling works as if they were a dying patient. Blockbuster exhibits like the Monet or Cezanne exhibits of a few years ago cost millions just to transport to different venues.
This conference provides a forum for issues in regional disaster preparedness and response. The goal is to provide participants with a framework for planning disaster response in their communities, including information about relevant state, regional, and national resources available to assist in planning and response. Case studies from a variety of perspectives offer practical information on responding to disasters affecting large areas. A special focus is FEMA's (Federal Emergency Management Agency) Project Impact, designed to break the cycle of disaster-rebuilding-disaster by emphasizing preparation/prevention, such as building safer buildings, strengthening existing infrastructures, and developing and maintaining detailed disaster response plans. Collaborative strategies are an important element of the approach.
Conference speakers are: Darryl Barksdale, Planner and Grant Administrator, Georgia State Historic Preservation Office; Hilary A. Kaplan, Conservator, Georgia Department of Archives and History and Director, Southeast Regional Conservation Association (SERCA); John Ketchum, Program Coordinator, FEMA; Kent Kocher, Local Government Assistance Coordinator, Mississippi Department of Archives & History; Lynn Wampler, City Administrator for Fayetteville, Tennessee, a Project Impact Community; Jane Long, Director, National Task Force on Emergency Response, Heritage Preservation; Frank Willis, Mayor of Florence, South Carolina, a Project Impact Community.
JERUSALEM (March 24) - The art world may be subject to the same piracy besetting the video and record industry here in Israel, a copyright infringement expert said yesterday, following a raid on three Jerusalem art galleries. Jerusalem police yesterday accompanied lawyers and private investigators on a raid of three Lucien Krief galleries and served indictments against Krief, his manager, and two artists accused of copyright infringement. The private investigators were hired by internationally acclaimed photographer Neil Folberg, who alleges that paintings sold in the three galleries were directly copied from his photographs. Folberg, the author of the book And I shall dwell among them: Historic synagogues of the world, owns a gallery in Jerusalem and sells his photographs of synagogues around the world for about $2,000 a piece. Police and investigators seized about a dozen paintings and various documents from the three galleries, located in Mea She'arim, the Old City, and near the King David Hotel. "The paintings in Krief's galleries are nearly identical copies of the photos from my book," Folberg said. "It's impossible to miss the fact that they are copies. The image, the composition, the angle, the lighting, it's all the same," Folberg said, noting they were on sale for up to $6,000. Krief yesterday said that even if the artists did use Folberg's work for "inspiration" for their paintings, it did not constitute any violation of the law, especially since details were changed. "If I painted a picture of the Western Wall from the same angle that you took the picture, is that copy?" Krief said, adding he has not sold any of the paintings, and had not known whether the artists - Russian immigrants - might have used other works. Folberg, who is suing the four respondents for NIS 1 million, said it is his image that is protected, and not the medium. Krief yesterday filed a complaint with the police against the private investigators raiding the store, and warned he might countersue Folberg for libel. He said that if Folberg had notified him of the problem instead of hiring private investigators, he would have withdrawn the works. Gilad Corinaldi, a jurist on the case who works at a copyright expertise law firm, said yesterday's raid opened the door on a new phenomenon: art piracy. "This is something new, and most artists will not bother to take action, because they don't know their rights, don't have the time or money," he said, noting that with the high demand for select pieces, we might be seeing more of this in the future. Corinaldi pointed out that Israel is notorious for copyright violations on computer, audio, and video disks, and is on the United Nation's blacklist for countries that fail to take action against copyright infringement for intellectual property. He said millions of dollars are lost each year on piracy, and there is no proper police protection against infringements, as noted in former state comptroller Miriam Ben-Porat's 1998 report, which recommends setting up a special police unit. "In Israel there are only patents, not copyrights for intellectual property such as disks, videos, computer programs, or art," Corinaldi said. "And with art, there is no way to seal it, to protect it from being copied."
WAUPUN, WISCONSIN -- A burglary at a local history museum had police searching for a thief of history. Somebody broke into Waupun Heritage Museum last week and took several antiques that were on display. Missing are a double-barreled shotgun, two 1840 percussion rifles, six World War I and World War II service medals, six Civil War bayonets and three swords. In addition, glass display cases were smashed and the contents of dry-chemical fire extinguishers were sprayed throughout both stories of the building. "When I went down to see it, the mess was even worse than I thought," said Gene Buchholz of the Waupun Historical Society. "There is powder from the fire extinguishers all over everything. It's going to take forever to clean up." Buchholz said he wants to find out why the alarm system at the museum didn't activate. The museum, normally open on the third Sunday of each month, will remain closed until further notice, Buchholz said. He said he hopes that dealers and gun enthusiasts will be on the lookout for anyone trying to sell the items stolen from the museum.