The museum world is not alone in discussing the theft from the British Museum. There is much gloating, which is a typical feature of life nowadays.
The theft is reminiscent of the one that was uncovered in the Hermitage in 2006. The suspect is a member of staff who worked in the museum for many years. The objects were sold quietly by electronic means. In the Hermitage we discovered the theft ourselves and announced it ourselves which ran contrary to customary museum practices. People try not to advertise such things. The British Museum also announced what had happened, although much still remains unclear. It seems that there had been suspicions going back many years. The perpetrator has been dismissed, but it is not yet known whether he has been arrested.
A variety of conspiracy theories arise. It is possible to conclude that the museum is not protected. Issues of restitution immediately grew more acute. Talk began about the Parthenon marbles. Greece once again submitted a petition demanding their return, referencing the theft, along the lines of “You say things are better kept in museums, but that’s not so.”
A calamity has indeed occurred. People can also steal from a bank vault. In a museum there is a risk from two sides. On the one hand, things are put on show there and many people come to see them. On the other, there is the internal risk. A museum is not a warehouse, where everything is kept on the correct shelf. It is a place where things are moved around and studied; they are handled by the custodians, sent off to exhibitions…
There will always be a risk. That needs to be understood and accepted. There is a constant technical contest with the capabilities of the thieves. Lawbreakers are making advances too. The most audacious theft was from Dresden’s Grünes Gewölbe treasury, where there is a good alarm system. The robbers knocked out the electricity across the entire block from an adjoining building. The alarm failed to go off. Part of the haul never has been found; the things may have been melted down.
Monitoring does exist within museums, but it does have its limits.
In the British Museum, the person was custodian of small articles – gems and jewellery. Those are easy to carry out in a pocket, even if bags are scanned on entry and exit. When the Hermitage theft occurred, I put the question to the International Consultative Board as to what should be done in the case of a museum worker – check thoroughly or trust them nonetheless? Opinions differed. The Americans said: “Search everyone at the exit, check briefcases and bags.” The Europeans said: “You need to trust your own people.”
It is impossible to work without trust. If you don’t trust your comrade in the trenches, how can you wage war? Relations in society are built upon a combination of trust, distrust and checking. The museum is a mirror of society. When, in accordance with all the requirements, an inspection module appeared at the entrance to the courtyard of the Winter Palace, it unexpectedly caused a stir among the public, mainly, I believe, among those who do not go to the museum. They were outraged that they might be inspected… Checks take place at all the entrances to the museum. Members of staff are also checked and will continue to be. Still, it needs to be understood that there has to be a limit.
For the sake of morale in the team, a staff member has to realize that a museum object should never be taken. However, the climate within the staff depends on the climate around. It’s one thing if a person simply can’t imagine stealing something; they are trusted completely and consider that right and proper. It’s a quite another matter if they feel like an idiot for not exploiting their job they way that other people do.
There are cameras set up everywhere in the museum. On the Internet you can watch what is going on in the Matisse or Raphael Hall, at the entrance to the Hermitage or on Palace Square. There are also cameras in the storage facilities. That is a system of protection. A person should work with the things in their custody. There do not have to be three others looking on. Although in the British Museum, If I recall correctly, there is a rule in the repository that, unless it’s the custodian, three people go in together. An exemplary museum,the closest in spirit to the Hermitage. When I became director, I studied their experience.
Sometimes strange demands are also put forward by the law enforcement bodies. The Hermitage repository has been constructed in Staraya Derevnya. I hope that everyone is already aware that it is open to the public. People go there just like to the museum. The repository is fitted out with the latest technology. In some places there are five lines of protection, in others three. Of course there is an alarm system. At the entrances, there is a neat barrier protected by electronic devices. We are being told: “This is a repository. Put up a three-metre concrete wall, better still with wire on the top.” The Winter Palace is less well protected with us. The demand exists only on paper so far. At a session of the Worldwide Club of Petersburgers, in the commission on the aesthetics of the urban environment, we drew up a document for the relevant bodies saying that was impossible and unnecessary. We put forward a proposal that students of architecture should design a railing nevertheless and not a hefty wall. A compromise needs to be sought.
There are no few people who want to liquidate museums and take everything in them for themselves. Strangely enough, that is also a consequence of museums having come into vogue. People visit them, delight in what they see there. Museums, especially in the West, have become a part of social life. Art has grown in price. To be honest, the prices, especially for contemporary art, are inflated. Fantastic sums of money are circulating all around. With that background, people get the impression that there is a lot in the museum sphere. In recent times, it has become customary to see money as the main thing. If something has been stolen, acquired or restored, then first and foremost they write about how much it cost.
A second sign of the times is that the return from business should be at least 200%, and a successful person simply has to be rich. The atmosphere in society influences life in museums. They are part of a world where the main thing today is money, commerce. A museum worker is not a successful person, while the things around them are valuable. Temptation arises. The British fellow and our own staff member, both of whom had worked in the museum for many years, proved unable to resist it. The principle of honesty and decency can be overcome, if you see that such things happening everywhere.
Criminal fields arise around museums. One of them is contractors and builders. People constructing a cultural institution try to pick up big commissions so as to earn lots of money. The Hermitage is constantly taking previous builders to court. It is hard to find honest contractors for a construction project. Moreover, no-one wants to get involved with state money and the serious monitoring of the way it is used. It is the same thing with restoration work. Criminalization occurs on the one hand through theft and on the other through the monitoring process. Monitoring increases the risk, so that means you need greater returns. Which opens up the possibility of collusions between two sides.
One more misfortune is the sale of illicit tickets. In Italy that is widespread, especially for the Vatican Museums. There is also a world that exists in parallel to the Hermitage of guided tours, tickets and services that are not agreed with the museum. Fake tickets are easy to detect. People buy real museum tickets and sell them on for three times the price. If you look for tickets and guided tours of the Hermitage in the Internet, then a few bogus websites will come up first. Illicit guided tours are a breach of the museum’s economic rights. All around the world, museums themselves conduct guided tours. It is their right to present the collections the way they consider proper.
There is one more criminal sphere that is not so large in our country as in the West, and that is art dealers. The New York Times carried a major article about the struggle between the Wildenstein heirs. A famous family of traders in art. People who have created a world of big money and monetary prestige. There are battles and court cases going on over that money. Now the talk is not about that, but about what an enormous quantity of things are being sold “under the counter” and resold on the free Swiss markets, where it is not necessary to ascertain the identity of buyer or seller. The magazine Zvezda published “Conversations with Nikolai Ilyin”, a major museum specialist and advisor to the Hermitage Director. They included many a tale of how things are bought, resold and stolen… All that affects museums one way or another.
Museums are not very well protected by the law either. The State Duma has held the first readings of amendments to the law on culture. The purpose of the amendments is to ensure the indivisibility of museum collections. Confiscation of items has taken place for various reasons. In Soviet times, on government orders they were handed over, transferred to other museums and sold off. Then strict rules were instituted in the law on culture, laying down the conditions under which a museum could be deprived of day-to-day control over an item – only in the event of an object being kept in poor conditions, or if museums agree between themselves. Then all that got watered down; the rules ended up in the Civil Code and vanished from museum legislation. Now we are trying to get them back in there.
The idea is that confiscating things from museums should be as difficult as possible. Of course, a political decision may be taken, but political decisions should not become a matter of routine, when everyone will be making a selection. Church property immediately comes to mind, but that is just a small part. Museums contain things that come from the territory of other countries. Now it is not only Greece and Turkey that are starting to demand their own things from everybody. We are encountering no few demands of the kind too. Demands for various trophies from previous wars, displaced treasures from Germany and Japan. There are also demands from previous owners: if you gave things back to some people, then give us ours. Demands from one museum to another… If we share out what one took from another, then the process will be never-ending.
The indivisibility of museum collections is a matter of principle. They should be protected by law, by strict restrictions. A museum collection is a living organism, with blood running through its vessels. You cannot cut anything from it, and additions need to be made cautiously.
I have to repeat time and again:museums are custodians of memory, of the history of the existence of a people, a nation, a country. Memory is more important than all material assets.
This material was published in the Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti newspaper, No161 (7490) on 30 August 2023 under the headline "Memory is dearer than material assets".
