[MSN] Damaged-art claims rise at overcrowded museums

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Damaged-art claims rise at overcrowded museums

Lending art to museums is an increasingly risky business.

Museums are no longer staid institutions where scholars and appreciative 
fans come to view and ponder serious works of art. These days, fund 
raising has turned museums and galleries into entertainment venues, with 
sometimes perilous consequences for delicate artworks and collectibles, 
insurance experts say. And, they add, budget cuts have left some museums 
with inadequate security to handle bigger crowds and protect the art. 
The upshot, these experts say, is that they are seeing more claims for 
artwork damaged at museums.

In February, radio network Clear Channel Communications Inc. hosted 
Martinifest, a promotional event featuring all the martinis you could 
drink for $30, at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Guests threw up next to the 
Dale Chihuly glassworks. Several young men clambered on and groped 
"Standing Woman," leaving the bronze sculpture by 20th-century American 
artist Gaston Lachaise slightly damaged. Another statue also was later 
found to have a damaged patina.

Earlier this month, a 1909 antique German Steiff teddy bear said to have 
been owned by Elvis Presley and on loan to an English children's museum 
was torn to pieces by the museum's guard dog. The toy bear was valued at 
about $75,000.

And at the Pompidou Center in Paris recently, a show titled Los Angeles 
1955-1985 saw two fragile borrowed objects slide from the wall and shatter.

"These things are happening a lot more than they used to," says Dorit 
Straus, world-wide fine-arts manager at Chubb Corp., a major insurer of 
fine art for museums and individuals. Ms. Straus and other experts say 
art thefts make headlines, but increasingly, crowds and carelessness 
pose greater threats to art objects on loan to institutions. "Things 
happen even in the best museums," she says.

The consequences are compounded by the sharply rising value of many 
pieces of art. The fastest rising category, post-World War II and 
contemporary painting, saw prices grow an average 17.7 percent annually 
in the past five years, according to the Mei/Moses Fine Arts Index.

Insurers say collectors too often don't check whether their policies 
cover risks such as vandalism that exist when works of art are on public 
display. Instead, lenders assume the institution or gallery has adequate 
insurance, but this isn't always the case, insurance experts say. Art 
insurance typically runs 10 cents to 15 cents annually per $100 of 
insured value, and more in earthquake- or hurricane-prone areas.

Museums acknowledge that they are more crowded these days as they stage 
blockbuster exhibitions and events, in part because higher attendance 
allows many museums to apply for bigger financial grants. Other museums 
that sponsor events by corporations and charities include the 
Philadelphia Museum of Art, which rents out its Rodin sculpture garden, 
and the Detroit Institute of Arts, which hosts events in its Diego 
Rivera room.

"But our museums are doing an excellent job of installation and crowd 
control so that works of art remain safe," says Millicent Gaudieri, 
executive director of the Association of Art Museum Directors.

Some museums are changing their policies to minimize risks. David 
Gordon, chief executive at the Milwaukee Art Museum, says he would no 
longer host an event, such as Martinifest, "where alcohol is the main 
attraction."

"Now I have to personally approve anything that is out of the ordinary," 
Mr. Gordon says. Clear Channel, which put on Martinifest, "had assured 
us that they had procedures in place, and the procedures did not work," 
he says.

Clear Channel acknowledges that more people showed up at the event than 
had been expected, but says the museum was responsible for security at 
Martinifest, not the company.

Some collectors have witnessed damage first-hand. Michael Mendelsohn, an 
art collector and art-estate planner in Purchase, N.Y., says he once 
lent a sculpture by folk artist Howard Finster to New Jersey's Newark 
Museum. The sculpture was a plexiglass box studded with synthetic 
pearls. "When we got there, some little kid was pulling the pearls off," 
Mr. Mendelsohn says. A guard standing 15 or 20 feet away did nothing, he 
says, but the "horrified" museum director roped it off after he was alerted.

"It didn't kill the whole piece. But any collector is very particular, 
and it wasn't in the condition we gave it to them," he says. A Newark 
Museum spokeswoman says she couldn't find a record of the incident.

Museum visitors increasingly are touching and handling the art, a 
phenomenon that Mr. Gordon of the Milwaukee museum attributes to younger 
generations spending more time in front of computer and TV screens.

In February, a 12-year-old boy visiting the Detroit Institute of Arts 
with his sixth-grade class plucked a wad of gum from his mouth and 
deposited it on a 1963 canvas by Helen Frankenthaler, "The Bay," a 
painting estimated to be worth $1.5 million or more. The work had to be 
removed for restoration. The child "picked the worst piece of art he 
could have picked" -- an unprimed painting, says the museum's director, 
Graham W.J. Beal.

"They think they are shopping," says Rosamund Felsen about some visitors 
to her contemporary-art gallery in Santa Monica, Calif. "The artist 
could have been working for years on this; it's not like buying a car." 
Ms. Felsen says she's noticed visitors have begun bringing very young 
children and dogs into her gallery. "I don't mind the dogs so much 
because usually they are better behaved than the children," says Ms. 
Felsen, herself a mother of four.

One of the biggest risks for art collectors lending a piece is in the 
transportation, insurers say. Mr. Mendelsohn, the New York collector, 
recalls movers showing up to transport one of his best pieces, a 1938 
William Edmonson carving of a mermaid, for a touring exhibition. The 
piece, by the first African-American artist to have a solo show at New 
York's Museum of Modern Art, had an insured value of about $750,000, but 
the mover was carrying it to the truck wrapped only in a blanket, Mr. 
Mendelsohn says. The collector told the mover to take the sculpture back 
inside, and not to remove it until it had been properly packed.

Before moving or lending any valuable art work, insurers recommend that 
collectors contact their insurance broker or agent, who can provide 
advice and referral to special art movers and shippers, and make sure 
there are no gaps in coverage. Some will even check out the security of 
the borrowing institution, they say.

Hub International Ltd. and Huntington T. Block, a unit of Aon Corp., are 
some brokerages that have expertise in insuring fine art and 
collectibles. Major insurers in the field include Chubb, AXA SA, 
American International Group Inc. and Allianz AG's Fireman's Fund 
Insurance Co. Unlike other types of coverage, a good art insurance 
policy compensates the insured not just for the cost of repair or 
replacement value of a piece that is damaged, but also for its 
diminished value after a repair. In the case of sets, such as a triptych 
or silverware, a damaged or missing piece could diminish the value of 
all the objects in the set.

Ella Fontanals Cisneros, a Miami collector of contemporary and Latin 
American art, says she requires museums to meet a rigorous set of 
conditions, including temperature control, insurance and security before 
lending her art. If they can't meet any one of them, there's no deal. 
"We are very, very careful," she says. "There is a risk that you have to 
take, but you can control the risk."

http://www.post-gazette.com/