German museums burglaries continue

[BIG]

https://new.coinswee...-wave-of-burglaries/

 

https://museum-fuer-...um-of-East-Asian-Art

 

 

 

 

 

[PNSSHOGUN]

This is unbelievable: 

 

[BIG]

Insider job??

 

https://www.bbc.com/...rticles/c3gqq7xy5xdo

[BIG]

https://www.asisonli...eting-small-museums/

[Lewis B]

On 9/7/2024 at 2:55 PM, BIG said:

Insider job??

 

https://www.bbc.com/...rticles/c3gqq7xy5xdo

Most certainly.

 

Its unfortunately the level of security needed these days to ensure items are secure is not affordable for small museums, making them easy targets. A sad state of affairs.

[Rivkin]

On 9/7/2024 at 6:19 AM, BIG said:

https://www.asisonli...eting-small-museums/

 

This guy broke two main rules of a museum curator:

a. When taking an item replace it with a copy. In this case its almost impossible to prove something happened and you can always claim what was sold outside is a poor man's copy.

b. Never sell the stuff yourself on ebay. Have a wife drop it off at the local antique store, sell it to collectors you know, put it in auction as a property of a deceased gentleman, but just don't place it out there for years in sight of people who know more than you do.

 

Stealing at western museums is phenomenal in scale. One of many reasons the institutions don't hire from the "outside" crowd and have an iron code of corporate loyalty.

Money-wise the greatest offenders are weird purchases at auctions - those are considered a "fair market", and as long as the board preapproved the purchase funds there is no questioning in regards of why its so expensive. In modern art its a nightmare since a piece of dirty cloth can easily cost 100mil dollars, but even in arms and armor there are purchases which raise eyebrows... 400k for a pretty but run of the mill Edo period's armor suit...

Next, in large museums there is also always weird deaccesioning where an item is sold from storage funds as "19th century copy" and a year layer it becomes a star lot at Christies.

Replacing with copies or simply carving out individual diamonds, unless the catalogue has a very detailed picture of how the item looks like - it does not even register on the internal rumors radar.

The culprits next to never face the actual prosecution: if rumors are getting into press the curator in question simply retires.

 

By comparison, a system practiced in Krakow and other similar places while looking medieval does yield some results. You are not just supposed to be from the "inside crowd", but a proper noble from a family connected to a museum for multiple generations.

It gets a bit funny, like directors of the two major museums are husband and wife, and the husband is not a noble so everyone jokes about it, but at least they feel the pressure not to bring shame to the family and end in a nasty manner a guaranteed, respected, though poorly funded multi-generational profession. You would think the system to be anti-meritous; in actuality its complicated. For example, nobility controlled museums can easily hire a Jew for a second-line curatorial position, though he'll never become a chief curator. Compare this to western museums which remain notoriously resistant to this brand of people, unless a particular candidate has every single i crossed. Ideally, reserving main positions for nobility means the nobility is not inclined to consider lesser staff as competition, and instead is interested in the actual talent so the works produced by the department could add to the family's prestige and reputation.

I've seen however also the reverse situation - nobility staffed museum sound asleep, producing the required quote of publications just like a typical "western" museum crowd - such and such sword, this long and wide, plus six paragraphs lifted from the wikipedia and finished with some complexly worded and utterly irrelevant summary. 

 

Its hard to say what's the best system - I think in the end the issue is that no social construct can regulate itself long term and needs an external evaluation...

Generally, I would consider putting a nobleman with some evidence of brain and ambition in charge as a plus rather than minus. In my personal experience aside from a Russian "court" which can be quite insufferable, I had it significantly better with counts and ritters compared to a riffraff whose brain got fried from a mere fact they are a Curator sitting in what used to be a duke's chair.