I was recently at an art museum and was struck by how many priceless paintings by artists like Edward Burne-Jones were just hanging there in frames, not protected by any glass.
Kids go to these museums, many of whom are wild and rambunctious and have no respect for art. What’s to stop them from taking out a marker and doodling on a painting while no one is looking? What’s to stop a nutter from damaging one of these paintings, like that guy who tried to break a piece off the Pieta with a hammer?
Can someone explain the rationale for not protecting EVERY expensive painting in a museum with glass?
In the LONG history of museums displaying such works, they’ve figured out the balance between access and security - such damage simply doesn’t happen, except in infinitesimally rare instances.
Paintings just look better when not covered by glass. Often at an exhibition you will find that some works are covered and some not; mostly it is those on loan from private collections which are glazed.
I remember going to the museum with my class as a youngster. Whenever one of the kids would edge too close to a painting, some security guy would chime in over the PA system: “PLEASE STEP BACK FROM THE PAINTINGS”.
By the end of our tour it became somewhat of a joke to some of the kids as they would intentionally reach their hands out towards the paintings just to get a rise out of the guy on the loud speaker.
Thinking back on it, it’s pretty impressive how vigilant those security guys were.
Basically, it can be difficult to really see a painting, especially the nuances, with glass in the way. Also, with typical institutional lighting, you are guaranteed to get some glare/reflection from somewhere on the glass, making it hard to find just the right angle where if you are lucky, you can see the entire painting at once. …and only one person can stand on that spot.
Unless it’s thick glass, a determined person could smash it - possibly doing more damage with sharp shards of glass all over the painting.
This. Paintings behind glass, even the best transparent, colorless, anti-reflective “museum glass” lose something.
The Met had its nearly-complete Book of the Dead behind a thick glass wall for many years, and it was unavoidably greenish and hard to see details unless you practically pressed your nose to the glass and peered at the papyrus 18-20 inches away.
They replaced the glass a few years ago with much better stuff, but for a few magical days, there was no glass, and a lucky few got to see the complete scroll with bare eyes (and, IIRC, about a thousand guards and controlled access to the room).
I didn’t get there, and I still feel a bit like the girl in the Ray Bradbury story who was locked in a closet and missed the fifteen minutes of sunshine on Venus.
Galleries with priceless works tend to be very high on security. The galleries I’ve visited are littered with CCTV cameras that are being monitored by security in a small room on site (possibly a broom closet). Although people may think ‘nobody is looking’ they are being watched constantly.
Around the very precious art work you will probably find a velvet rope a couple of feet away from the painting as a warning to not get any closer. If you step past this you’re likely to hear a voice over telling you to move away or the radio of a close by security guard coming to tell you off and throw you out.
There are various reasons why the paintings aren’t behind glass, the lighting could cause a reflection on the glass preventing you from viewing the work properly, also if the glass was to break it could cause damage to the work.
Also some paintings are alarmed in case of theft, so if you got close enough to scribble on it with your Sharpie the alarm will go off anyway.
I remember visiting a museum with my father – it might have been the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC – and my father was making a point about one (glass-less) painting, gesturing enthusiastically toward it. This brought over one of the museum guards in very short order, who told him to stop waving his arms around near the painting.
They keep a close eye on them.
I’m also reminded of a writer who interview Frank Frazetta in his home. They ended up playing ping pong in a room lined with the original copies of several of his iconic paintings. Frazettta unintentionally swung wide and banked a shot off one of his paintings. The ping pong ball had a streak of paint from one of Frazetta’s classics on it. He just laughed it off.
Moral: Don’t play ping pong in the room that you hang your Vermeers and Picassos in.
I’m surprised anyone could visit any museum and not notice the highly obtrusive security guards EVERYWHERE. Who will follow you around sometimes. CCTV is nice for art theft I guess, but the point is VISIBLE security for vandalism. They won’t prevent a determined nutter, but I’m sure they deter plenty of jerks and wiseass teens.
I’ve also been in many museums–more in Europe ISTM–where if you lean in too close an alarm goes off.
The security guards aren’t always watching and many of them are far from intimidating (they are often dressed like clerks at a hotel and many are women). What scares me are kids on field trips who might want to harm paintings as a “prank” to impress their friends. As others have noted, glass alone may not stupid a determined nut with tools.
But I guess that just doesn’t happen (a good thing) as I haven’t seen or heard of a single example of it. That Wynn fellow sounds like a spoiled prick.
Do Museums use copies very often? I’ve heard the priceless original is in a vault and they display a high quality copy.
may be an urban myth. But, I’m pretty sure this got reported after a big night time robbery. The thieves got worthless copies.
I also heard the same thing during WWII. The London museums displayed copies and the originals were in underground bunkers. Safe from aircraft bombers.
Instances are vanishingly rare and dictated by special circumstances. Occasionally an acknowledged copy will be included in temporary exhibitions in cases where a particular work is important to the argument that the curators are making, but they haven’t been able to borrow it. (Two examples from the National Gallery in London from recent years. For their big recent Rembrandt exhibition, they were only able to borrow The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis for part of the run, so substituted it with a life-sized photo for the remainder. Then their Leonardo blockbuster obviously couldn’t get The Last Supper, so displayed an early life-sized copy instead. Which is in distinctly better nick than the original, to boot.)
Museums will sometimes display replicas of stuff elsewhere as a comparison/substitute. But always clearly labelled as such.
A myth. Indeed what happened with the London galleries is an extremely famous part of the folk memory of the Blitz and is very well documented.
The Crown Jewels were moved to a secret location in a country house and the Tower closed to the public for the duration (and indeed used as a prison for German spies).
Most famously the entire contents of the National Gallery were moved to a slate mine in Wales, initially leaving an empty building. However, in a morale-boosting move, the gallery was then used as a venue for a celebrated series of lunchtime concerts of classical music. In order to symbolically maintain its role as an art gallery, the director Kenneth Clark arranged a programme of small exhibitions of contemporary art, usually based on the work of the official war artists. He also instituted the policy of bringing a single famous Old Master back from Wales each month to display in splendid isolation for the duration of that month. The whole point being that that was a risk limited enough to be worth taking.
The other major museums and galleries also evacuated the main parts of their collections and basically closed down.
When we were visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York a couple years ago, I was amazed by the brushwork on some of the Van Gogh paintings. I bent in to get a really close look at one of them, and got a sharp warning from a guard who seemed to appear out of nowhere. If I had had malicious intent I definitely could have managed to damage the painting before anyone could stop me, but I’m pretty sure that nobody was going to accidentally touch any of the art in that room.
Like others have said, the chance that people will tear them up out of malice or insanity is relatively small.
If you want to see unprotected artworks, go to Rome. They have Michelangelos, Caravaggios, Raphaels and the like just hanging or standing there in dozens of churches and cathedrals, usually without much more than a velvet rope or mild barrier of some kind. No big security systems, I’m sure.
I don’t think one can underestimate the moral deterrent effect of a guard, even if they look like “clerks” and are “women.” Heaven forfend! Women guards! They’re not supposed to tackle anyone, just meant to let people know they’re being observed.
Google isn’t heing me now with the name, but I’ve seen an ancient native building in the American Southwest completely defaced with graffitti by a high school group left alone for an hour.