When two paintings were stolen from the Munch Museum in Oslo, many people commented that it was unacceptable that the paintings weren’t better guarded like at other museums. To which the folks who run the Munch Museum asked: Like which other museums?
In reality most art museums aren’t particularly secure unless there’s a specific reason to be. The cost is just too high if the threat is perceived to be low.
Not if the insurance company is also providing coverage against theft of the museum’s contents.
Yup. I worked briefly at the North Carolina Museum of Art in the late eighties in the security department. The Security Guards were the uniformed unarmed folks who stood at their stations in the galleries to tell people to keep their grubby little hands off the art. They were supervised on the floor by at least one roving Security Officer – the difference being that the Security Officers were technically Company Police of the museum (as well as employees of the state) and had been trained and certified as law enforcement officers at the North Carolina Justice Academy in Salemburg, NC. Behind the scenes of the galleries, during business hours, were at least four more armed Security Officers in the control center, monitoring numerous CCTVs and an extensive alarm system.
The midnight shift generally consisted of only two armed Security Officers in the building, one at the control center and the other making constant rounds (which was really, really freaky in some of those older galleries since the lights were dimmed enough to need a flashlight. Still gives me the willies to think about it.) When there were three of us scheduled for an afternoon or midnight shift, one of us would man the control center and the other two would camp out in different areas of the building, rotating duties every hour or so. All in all it was a pretty cushy job. Eerie, but cushy.
Since the NC Museum of Art is part of the state government property (or something like that) we were also backed up as needed by the Capital Police, whose jurisdiction consisted of state government property. It didn’t hurt that the nearest NC Highway Patrol post was across the street, either.
I was hired as a Security Officer but left for a better job before I was scheduled to attend the academy, therefore I did not carry a firearm. I still got the same pay, though. Like I said, cushy job. I should have kept it.
I found the art museums everyone including the guards were very friendly. They almost seemed happy to have someone ask them questions. So I think they’d be easy to distract, but as I said “what’s the point,” if I’m going to risk going to jail it better be for something easy to fence like electronics or something
I’m also wondering about the getaway plans for 10 burly armed men carrying large, unwieldy framed canvases. Even the frail unarmed hall monitors can set off an alarm, so you’ve got probably 5 minutes from when the first action happens to cruisers pulling up out front. Not to mention another 10 minutes before the chopper is in the air following any getaway vehicle.
And sure 10 heavily armed thugs can fight off a couple of cruisers of cops, but in the time it takes to do that, the 10-man SWAT team arrives.
That’s pretty much why at the NCMA there were only two living beings in the building at night. Two lone armed officers are hardly going to stop a major break-in of hefty armed thugs. But they sure as heck can pick up that red phone when an alarm goes off and call those who can.
Heh. Reminds me that I wooed my future wife while she was working as a guard in our college’s small but excellent art museum. Her weapons? A walky-talky and an official cardigan sweater. 
In general, there’s relatively little to stop you and such attacks do happen. Probably something prominant is vandalised in a world-class gallery every few years. Markxx mentions the attacks on the Mona Lisa; even just sticking with Leonardos, the National Gallery in London had someone fire a shotgun at their cartoon by him back in 1987.
My impression is that those doing so rarely try to run away and so detaining them after the act isn’t a problem. This is because the individual is either mentally disturbed or is making a political point (though few would consider either the museum or the artwork quite “world-class” in that case).
The security precautions are a calculated risk by the galleries. Vandalism does happen, but it doesn’t happen often in any particular museum, usually only one work is damaged, the offender will be apprehended and repairs can usually be done. By contrast, the safest countermeasure - putting everything behind security glass - would detract from the experience of all the other visitors. Individual works perceived to be at particular risk - like the Mona Lisa these days - can be treated as exceptions and extra precautions taken.
The most worrisome aspect of visitors doing damage isn’t due to malicious vandalism; it’s from touching the artwork with bare hands or flash photography. The oil from skin and harsh lighting can do some serious harm. You’ll never find anyone in the museum handle the artwork in any way without a pair of cotton gloves (although once a piece gets to the Conservation Lab I suppose the protocol could change.). Seriously, there are specific positions of “Art Handlers” whose job descriptions are exactly that.
The summer I worked at the NCMA they had an exhibition of “NC Folk Art” which pretty much consisted of pieces the curators found out and about in the state by simple folks who had no concept that what they’d concocted was “art” (I’m not so sure it was art, either, but then I’m not a curator.) There was this one piece that was a booth constructed of simple lumber and painted with white outdoor housepaint. It had a speaker system with some strange recorded music and a plain, 60 watt GE lightbulb at the top.
One Sunday morning before the museum opened and only my boss and I were there, I was making a round through the folk gallery and noticed that the bulb had burned out. Since it was Sunday there were no conservators (the pros who repair the art) or art handlers scheduled to come in. So my boss decided that under the circumstances, as long as he put on a pair of cotton gloves and found the same lightbulb in the maintenance room, he could fix it before the museum opened to visitors. Seriously, I laughed my ass off.
When I was in Damascus in 2000 I visited a museum, perhaps the National Museum of Damascus (as it’s called). Anyway, the place was absolutely deserted. And, as was typical of all Syrian tourist attractions, woefully understaffed.
I was wandering through room after room of paintings when what should appear right in front of me but an original Salvador Dali. The room was rather isolated and set up in such a way that there were absolutely no sight lines to my position. It was almost as if they had hung it in a broom closet. I stood a foot away and stared at it for about 10 minutes. For that entire time nobody came around. So I cut it out with a razor blade and stole it.
Just kidding. But I sure thought about it! Also, while Syria is a rather poor country I couldn’t discount the presence of an unseen pinhole security camera. And who wants to disappear within the Syrian penal system? I imagine the prisoners don’t spend a lot of time sitting around bickering whether they should watch “Lost” or “American Idol” on the community TV.
In a parallel universe where the crooks were actually happy about having to shoot it out with the cops, I can see you forcing your way through this.
The problem with most crooks in armed confrontations and stand-offs is that they fail to advance on law enforcement positions.
Time and range play into police hands. The worst case scenario for the cops is criminals that attack quickly and pursue… like they were an angry mob from ‘28 Days Later’.
You’ve got unpleasant odds when handling the first responders, but the situation is hopeless once you let backup show up.
Even when the SWAT van is showing up, if the first responders are dead and can’t tell them where to deploy, their tactical situation sucks. Disembarking from a SWAT van under fire is a horrible position to be in.
Pet peeves: Why doesn’t anyone ever take out the traffic and police choppers? Helicopters are pretty fragile. Isn’t there a fairly big area you could toss bullets at to get them stuck in the air intake?
And what about causing may mayhem locally to distract authorities? Can’t someone get original and firebomb City Hall, the local pediatric hospital or something to fake the cops into going the wrong direction? What about 6 or 7 bombs placed strategically with timers set for the same time?
And what about EMP blasts and/or cellular jamming? How hard can it possibly be to set up a cell phone jammer to take out the backup dialer on the alarm panel at the same time you cut the telco line in?
Am I just reading too many comic books?
Oh no! He completely changed the artist’s vision by replacing the General Electric Reveal bulb with a Sylvania Cool White! :rolleyes: 
I’ll bet that wasn’t the first time he’d put on the white gloves to change a light bulb.
And there’s the dilemma: how do you set things up so that the art is accessible and easily viewed, yet still keep it secure?
For the most part, museums seem to have decided that it’s easier to prevent escape than to keep people from grabbing the artwork off the walls. So, security tends to be slanted in that direction. As noted above, this doesn’t do much to prevent vandalism; about all you can do for that is take notice of obvious loons and watch them closely before they pull out the jug of acid.
I didn’t see if anyone had linked to this before, but Wikipedia has a page about vandalized works of art. I remember when Rembrandt’s Night Watch got the acid toss; what a jackass.