Gun Crazy, Part 2
Okay, we all agree that museums need to safeguard their work. (Obvious example — the Munch Museum in Oslo wasn't doing enough in that line when The Scream was stolen in 2004. Since getting it back — damaged — they've bolted it to a wall and installed security gates.) But I was a little surprised to learn last weekend from the Los Angeles Times that BCAM — the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art — has armed guards with guns displayed openly on their belts. So was the Times' critic Christopher Knight, who paid a visit recently to see what museum going is like in close proximity to live ammunition.
He says:
It's hard to imagine almost any scenario in which an art museum guard might shoot someone, but that bizarre thought keeps bumping around in your brain at BCAM. Needless to say, it has a less than salutary effect on the art experience.
A LACMA spokeswoman told the Times that armed guards "have always been part of the museum's security plan." One of them is assigned to stand watch over one of Damien Hirst's pickled beasts, this one a sheep in a tank of formaldehyde, apparently to discourage anybody from cracking the tank and releasing the toxic liquid. Whether they might also draw a gun on somebody who tried to scratch Jeff Koons' Balloon Dog is an interesting question.
Is the open show of firepower really necessary? I can't think of another museum where I've seen anything like it. (The Times quotes an official at the Smithsonian who says that at some museums guards carry concealed weapons.) I would think that the potential for screw ups would discourage the whole idea. The thieves who stole The Scream were armed. They did it in broad daylight in a gallery full of people. Would it have been a good idea for the museum guards to engage in a shootout in a crowded room? It's bad enough the painting was hurt. At least nobody took a bullet.
But what I really want to know is this — if we ever figure a way to get out of Iraq, does this mean those guys from Blackwater find work as docents?
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I have always worried about this, from many, many angles. About a year ago, ABC aired a (now canned) sitcom in which the biggest nightmare of my life took place-someone suicide bombed an art museum styled much like the Met (I'll admit, I cried and promptly turned the TV off), and I've fretted about all of this since.
From a conservational standpoint, I worry about the damage that crossfire could to to multiple, if not just one work in a given gallery. I know that the Vegas millionaire put his elbow through a Picasso that he was going to sell for $57 million got the hole fixed, I know that they fixed the toes of Michelangelo's "David" after a crazy art student attacked them with a hammer. however I wonder what effect gunpowder, etc might have on a work that is hundreds (or thousands) of years old, be it paper, marble, oil on panel, or silkscreen on canvas. Come to think of it, though, I think that art conservation now is pickier than ever (for good reason); I can't think of another time in history where people kept, saved, and cared for so much in the ways that we do now. I can, however, name a number of (old) works of art that do suffer such scars of crime and war besides "the Scream"- dating for some ancient works, for example, is somewhat verified by how battered the work is. I might just have to rethink that whole preservation/conservation thing.
Outside of the conservational issues, I feel that guns are just a strongly evocative object. With the war in Iraq, what happened at my college last April, Second Amendment rights, etc, I have personally found that guns, for me, connote danger, oppression, and loss of life. And I can't ever really feel that comfortable, seeing one, and thinking of any potential situation that could necessitate its use, that even in such a space as a museum, there is some kind of threat just looming.
On the other hand, I think that having a visibly armed guard next to a work of art is too reminiscent of the security guard in the Wells Fargo truck- it makes me feel more like the guards are protecting the monetary value of an object, not its cultural or intrinsic value.
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