[CPProt.net] Are museums safe from terrorism?

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

 Are museums safe from terrorism?
By Michael O'Hare  |  August 27, 2005

THE MUSEUM of Fine Arts is planning a $100 million expansion. Exciting, but
all in all, maybe not such a good idea to further concentrate cultural
treasures in one place.

Disagreeable as it is, let's try to think like a terrorist, especially an
Islamic terrorist, flying over Boston in a stolen corporate jet with a load
of fuel, who wants to deliver it where it will create the most damage to the
evil society below it.

Various skyscrapers are in view, in any of which you could kill a lot of
people, probably hundreds, but you have to kill thousands to be in the big
leagues now . . . say, what's that building in the Fenway? It's full of
images, intrinsically forbidden, and a lot of those images are Christian,
Jewish, Hindu, animist . . . a warehouse of infidel impiety. Not to mention
unspeakable obscenity: nudity, sex, the lot.

Furthermore, these objects are unique. The library has the only copies of
some books, but the information in most of them exists elsewhere; it's very
hard to kill a book. The art in a museum, in contrast, is irreplaceable and
embodies the whole cultural history and tradition of the society you want to
do your worst to: incinerate an ''Ascension" and it's completely gone,
forever. Oh yes; on a weekend day with a blockbuster exhibition underway,
the museum will have a non-trivial number of visitors in it as well, which
moves it up the target list from a church.

Unimaginable that anyone could be so savage as to blow up a museum? Ask the
people at the Uffizi, and ask the Taliban who shelled the Buddhas, never
mind the assaults on children, bystanders, and anyone else that have by now
become banal. Islamic terrorists, organized and systematic or diffuse and
unguided, have shown themselves to deserve our worst expectations. And don't
for a minute believe that the Islamic collections in museums that have them,
like the MFA, are effective hostages against attack: Terrorists will destroy
anything and kill anyone, on the basis of a theology or ideology unlike
anything we've ever seen. The utilitarianism of terror operates, on the
evidence of public statements and behavior, are at a level that will accept
any cost to pursue an enormous nihilistic goal.

Art museums have be considered among the most attractive targets of
destruction for any group that takes the time to think of what's really
precious to the culture and traditions of its enemy. It's time to take this
risk more seriously than backpack searches and wishful thinking. What can be
done about this?

The most important thing we could be doing right away is to decentralize
collections out of the most visible and important museums. Top-rank museums
display as little as 10 percent of their holdings, so there's no reason
other than the convenience of the research staff to keep the other 90
percent in the basement or anywhere on the same premises. These study
collections, at least, could be dispersed quickly to unobtrusive and safe
offsite locations, some of them to out-of-town museums for whom they would
be enormously valuable as display items, and with good effect on the risk.

We should also think longer term as a society about the benefit of keeping
an amount of art that cannot possibly be seen in a single visit in a single
building. It takes at least four days really to see the displayed MFA
collection, and that would be a superficial overview in any case; why should
anyone have to keep going back to the same building to do so? There may be
some advantages in this concentration for security against risks like theft,
but the real risk now is quite different, and the concentration of more and
more great masterpieces in the same place is steadily raising the risk that
we could lose a whole lot of it at one time, with very modest benefits to
the art-viewing public.

The manifest psychology and stated motives of international terrorism,
coupled with its demonstrated ability to deliver really big attacks in
surprising ways, are an arrow aimed at museums, especially the biggest and
most prestigious.

Continuing to care for our irreplaceable artistic patrimony in the same way
that seemed to make sense before 9/11, including doing so with half-hearted
measures like extra guards and searches, is not good trusteeship anymore.

Michael O'Hare is professor of public policy at the Goldman School of Public
Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

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