[MSN] Head of Culture Agency calls to improve security at museums

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Head of Culture Agency calls to improve security at museums

ST.PETERSBURG, August 14 (Itar-Tass) -- Head of the Federal Culture and 
Cinematography Agency Mikhail Shvydkoi has called to improve the 
situation in respect to museums and change methods of work with the 
museum personnel. Shvydkoi spoke at an extraordinary meeting of the 
Presidium of the Union of Museums of Russia on Monday. "This does not 
mean that all the museum workers are stripped of the presumption of 
innocence, but that should change the relationship and the situation in 
museums," Shvydkoi said.

"The Hermitage incident is a result of underestimation of the social 
impact, low salaries that provoked people, who had priceless values 
within reach, to crime, " he said. There were many other factors not 
merely of disciplinary character that provoked the crime, he added.

Svydkoi called to ensure museum security, improve work with museum 
personnel and fulfill museum security instructions. " We have a good 
system of catalogues and storage, all we need is to comply," he said. He 
underlined the importance of compliance with the president’s 
instructions on comprehensive inventory of cultural values belonging to 
Russia's museum fund. " The president’s instructions apply to every 
museum that will have to do unpleasant things, but it can't be helped. 
At issue is the fate of the museum community, and we should defend this 
community," Shvydkoi said.

Head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Law in mass 
communications and Protection of Cultural Heritage Boris Boyarskov 
called to create instruments of public control over the situation in 
museums in order to make museum activities more open and transparent 
both in the field of financing and inventory. "The Hermitage theft was a 
hard ordeal to all of us. We should radically change the attitude and 
employ new technologies for control and storage of museum exhibits," 
Boyarskov said. According to the figures released by his agency, around 
50- 100 incidents of museum theft are reported every year.

The chiefs of the biggest Russian museums who attended the extraordinary 
meeting of the Presidium of the Russian Union of Museums have made 
recommendations for ensuring safety of museum collections. The meeting 
was convened following theft of 221 exhibits from the Hermitage, whose 
total value was put at approximately 130 million roubles.

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