Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

For me, Penrod is the culmination of the year’s major activities.  Once Penrod is put to bed, Security is coasting toward the end of the year.  Sure, we just had the 125th anniversary gala (I left before the auction ended), but it was just another party to us.  We’ve done a hundred parties – smile, keep drinks out of the galleries, corral Freiman’s group on the 2nd floor – same old, same old.  I’m talking about the heavy lifting.

The end of the Roman Art exhibit started the year for us.  As usual, visitors waited till the last weekend to come see the show.  The line looped completely through all the first floor galleries.  We kept the visitors occupied and relatively happy while they waited two hours to see the show.
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It wasn’t Security Camp, but I recently got to travel to Boston with Protection Services director Pam Godfrey for a museum security conference.  The International Foundation for Cultural Property Protection and the Fogg Art Museum hosted participants from the US and Europe for four days of lectures, certification sessions, networking, and technology demos.  Lecturers included Noah Charney from the Association for Research into Crimes against Art, Ellie Bruggeman from the Museum Security Network, founding director of IFCPP Steve Layne, as well as representatives from museum and library facilities on the Harvard campus.  We heard a lot about emergency response planning, workplace violence, and art theft, along with taking side trips to Harvard and the Museum of Fine Arts.

The great thing about this conference, and the National Conference hosted annually by the Smithsonian, is that they are oriented around museums and other cultural institutions, such as libraries and historical properties.  Other conferences, such as the ASIS annual shindig, are huge and cover the whole spectrum of security issues, including securing nuclear facilities.  Not much fissionable material here at the IMA, except Mindy when contractors want to bend safety rules.

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I was down in exhibition holding the other day, talking with some of the Installation guys about a Tim Hawkinson piece called Moebius Ship. The piece is huge - about 9 feet across - and the conversation brought to mind how Contemporary art poses unique challenges to Security staff that aren’t usually an issue with more traditional art.

Contemporary art is frequently made up of everyday materials and items familiar to normal, everyday people. As such, visitors are not always sure how to react to the art and oftentimes behave contrary to what we would wish. IMA has artwork composed of everything from TVs (Nam June Paik), projectors (Kara Walker), and common furniture (Vito Acconci, Bill Woodrow) to electronic signs (Jenny Holzer) and neon lights (Robert Irwin, soon). We even have flat art on the floor instead of on the wall (Adrian Schiess). Visitors want to sit on the furniture and play with the electronic equipment. They want to TOUCH the stuff, for crying out loud!

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Rules. Everybody’s got ‘em, from Mom’s house to the big house. The Golden Rule, the infield fly rule, and the Rule of Thirds. Robert’s Rules of Order, rules of engagement, and the Rule of Law. Look both ways before crossing the street, keep your elbows off the dinner table, no playing ball in the house.

The IMA is no different. The museum’s “gallery rules” are rules for proper behavior around the artwork so that the collection is maintained in the best possible condition for generations to come. Most of the rules are common sense, if you stop and think about it. I mean, if Mom won’t let anyone eat pizza on her new sofa, do you think we want anyone near the Monet with a Double Decaf and a sticky bun? Think again, buck-o.

No touching is the Numero Uno rule we have. We humans are such tactile animals that we want to touch everything, from the shiny surface of Donald Judd’s Untitled, 1967 to the rough surface of Robert Indiana’s LOVE sculpture.

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I don’t know if anyone has noticed but gas prices are insanely high, so I’ve been spending more time at home on the computer and less time doubling down at my favorite southern Indiana casinos. Which brings me to one of the special projects I’ve been working on: finding alternatives to the gas-powered vehicles Security uses to patrol the museum campus. Actually, “finding” alternatives has not been that hard, “getting” them on the other hand…

For instance, I found this nifty piece of automotive hardware that our officers would just love to drive. The Tesla Roadster is an all-electric vehicle capable of 0-60 in 4 seconds and a top speed of 125 mph, good even compared to internal combustion cars. Who wouldn’t want to be seen tooling around the IMA campus in one of these drop-top babies? Alas, the $100K price tag would be difficult to slip into the capital budget without any CFO having an arterial incident. And really, where could the Tesla hit top speed… maybe by the Lilly House, but why bother?

More suited to our needs would be the Miles ZX40, a steel uni-body construction, all electric four-door able to hit a blazing 25 mph top speed.

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