First off: bastard! I knew it was a wind up but when you said you'd got footage at the end of the post I had to scroll down to see. I feel so rick-rolled I need to shower.
Second off: heist movies are the best. I love them equally. That you mention Rififi and can count the number of times you've seen it... Kudos. I only learned about it during the madness when I was locked up binging The Americans. What a film.
Third off: (the last one, I promise) great article. I really enjoyed it.
Fourth off: (I lied, there's more. No actually there isn't, but the distraction worked long enough for me to load your attention into four panniers and cycle away whimsically while whistling "This is the self preservation society" in a jaunty key).
I worked in museums for 28 years as an exhibition designer. Here are a few thoughts:
Popular culture would have us believe that museum security is all armed guards, pressure sensitive floors, and laser beam triggered silent alarms. Nope.
Museum security work is dull. Astonishingly dull. I’ve seen gallery staff bunking off behind seldom visited showcases. I’ve witnessed docents sneaking into stairwells for a crafty smoke. One security guy I used to work with (a former military police officer) set up a reading nook behind a fake wall where, on any given day, he would spend hours just sitting there with his paperback. Or napping.
Another former colleague would sneak a miniature, battery operated TV into the gallery with him which he would listen to via an earpiece.
It doesn’t take much to move a gallery TV camera slightly to the right or the left, or to move it up, just enough for an angle to change. A sudden poke with a walking stick will do. And unlike in the movies, where the intrepid detective gets someone to zoom in on a detail of something or other on the person of the gallery thief after the fact, there is no such thing as “enhance that frame right there!” Most closed circuit TV systems are simply not capable of capturing images of a high enough resolution to provide the authorities with any footage that’s of any real quality.
In the control room, that change of a camera angle might not get noticed for days, perhaps even for weeks, if it gets noticed at all. In any given closed circuit TV monitoring room and depending on the size of the museum and the scope of the system, whoever is on duty at any given time can be faced by as many as 30 monitors or more. The pictures are fuzzy. Many views don’t change that much over the course of hours. Guards get bored. Their eyes see what they want to see instead of seeing what’s there and what’s happening, which often isn’t that much. Things get missed. Shift changes cause disruption. Movement that ought to arouse suspicion or interest gets ignored or overlooked. Or worse, dismissed.
The thieves in this instance are not amateurs. Weeks, perhaps months of planning and preparation went into this robbery. As has been noted by others, they were well equipped and thoroughly prepared; they knew precisely what they were looking for and where those items were. In all likelihood they had studied the weaknesses and opportunities in gaining entry to the gallery and they were familiar enough with the showcase design to understand how to quickly and effectively gain access. In all likelihood they also knew or had calculated the response time and direction of travel that gallery staff would need to potentially intercept their endeavors. And they had enough wherewithal to plan their exit and make a swift and effective departure.
Amid the speculation about the items taken from the Apollo Gallery at the Louvre being broken up, another possibility is that the items were stolen to order. The issue with breaking down an item of jewelry into many hundreds or even thousands of pieces is the likelihood that at some point, one or more of the stones will come under the scrutiny of a suspicious jeweler or dealer who wants nothing to do with stolen goods. It’s important to understand that precious stones that were cut and polished 400 or so years ago have quite distinctive characteristics in terms of their surfaces when compared to stones that have been cut and polished more recently because the mechanical processes of diamond cutting have changed.
As for gaining access, again, popular culture has us believing that gallery thieves only strike at night and that they are dressed from head to toe in black Lycra when the reality is that it is far easier to gain access to a museum by simply showing up at the front door carrying a ladder and wearing overalls with a clipboard tucked under your arm or, in this case, by posing as maintenance staff on a quite street on a Sunday morning.
From a liability point of view museum administration staff often tell their staff not to engage or tackle anyone with ill intentions. This explains why the various Just Stop Oil protesters who have been supergluing themselves to gallery walls of late or throwing canned soup at framed works are seldom intercepted by museum staff and wrestled to the ground for the cultural vermin that they are.
It’s good that no gallery staff or visitors were harmed in Sunday’s event at the Louvre and it’s tragic that the items in question are now gone. But Sunday’s robbery highlights other important issues, in that museum security as a whole leaves much to be desired and that all any lock or alarm buys you is whatever the response time is from hamstrung museum staff and the arrival (or not) of law enforcement.
Another issue is that of longer term security and safety of precious items. In this day and age of 3D scanning and CNC capability, for the purposes of display there is no good reason why items cannot be duplicated, with the copied items placed on display while the originals remain relatively safe in a bank vault.
This is actually a really solid insight into this situation. About 20 years ago, I used to volunteer at a relatively small art museum that a wealthy donor gave a collection of artifacts from ancient China to worth tens of millions of dollars. The museum had no idea what they really had. This was at a time when Chinese relics were not prized in the West but being that I worked with several very wealthy Asian businessman - I knew that these pieces were PRICELESS. I took photos of several jade pieces and sent them to a collector I had designed a website for. He offered me $500,000 to steal two of the pieces from the collection. There were dozens. They would have never noticed I am certain of it. Alas, my conscience just never would allow it and most of this collection, save for a few prestige bronzes that were large enough to draw the untrained eye into the museum, were placed in a storage basement in a climate-controlled area to collect dust. Several times over the 2 years I volunteered at the facility, I contemplated how easy it would be to take the freight elevator down there and just 'get lost' and end up in the storage unit and slip a few of the smaller pieces into my backpack. I could have retired from this theft. I think about it often. I called a friend that still works there and asked about the collection a couple years ago. He said they are still down there in storage. Still collecting dust. The curator still has no idea what they have.
I hope someone makes a heist movie about this. Right now a lot of people are speculating that the 'girl boss mary sue' diversity hire that was put in charge of the louvre is somehow involved. she literally downgraded all the security to the point that made this heist possible. seems convenient to me. too convenient.
First off: bastard! I knew it was a wind up but when you said you'd got footage at the end of the post I had to scroll down to see. I feel so rick-rolled I need to shower.
Second off: heist movies are the best. I love them equally. That you mention Rififi and can count the number of times you've seen it... Kudos. I only learned about it during the madness when I was locked up binging The Americans. What a film.
Third off: (the last one, I promise) great article. I really enjoyed it.
Fourth off: (I lied, there's more. No actually there isn't, but the distraction worked long enough for me to load your attention into four panniers and cycle away whimsically while whistling "This is the self preservation society" in a jaunty key).
muahahahahaha yes you got the rick rolling aspect of it! i am glad i am not the only person that remembers when the internet was awesome!
I worked in museums for 28 years as an exhibition designer. Here are a few thoughts:
Popular culture would have us believe that museum security is all armed guards, pressure sensitive floors, and laser beam triggered silent alarms. Nope.
Museum security work is dull. Astonishingly dull. I’ve seen gallery staff bunking off behind seldom visited showcases. I’ve witnessed docents sneaking into stairwells for a crafty smoke. One security guy I used to work with (a former military police officer) set up a reading nook behind a fake wall where, on any given day, he would spend hours just sitting there with his paperback. Or napping.
Another former colleague would sneak a miniature, battery operated TV into the gallery with him which he would listen to via an earpiece.
It doesn’t take much to move a gallery TV camera slightly to the right or the left, or to move it up, just enough for an angle to change. A sudden poke with a walking stick will do. And unlike in the movies, where the intrepid detective gets someone to zoom in on a detail of something or other on the person of the gallery thief after the fact, there is no such thing as “enhance that frame right there!” Most closed circuit TV systems are simply not capable of capturing images of a high enough resolution to provide the authorities with any footage that’s of any real quality.
In the control room, that change of a camera angle might not get noticed for days, perhaps even for weeks, if it gets noticed at all. In any given closed circuit TV monitoring room and depending on the size of the museum and the scope of the system, whoever is on duty at any given time can be faced by as many as 30 monitors or more. The pictures are fuzzy. Many views don’t change that much over the course of hours. Guards get bored. Their eyes see what they want to see instead of seeing what’s there and what’s happening, which often isn’t that much. Things get missed. Shift changes cause disruption. Movement that ought to arouse suspicion or interest gets ignored or overlooked. Or worse, dismissed.
The thieves in this instance are not amateurs. Weeks, perhaps months of planning and preparation went into this robbery. As has been noted by others, they were well equipped and thoroughly prepared; they knew precisely what they were looking for and where those items were. In all likelihood they had studied the weaknesses and opportunities in gaining entry to the gallery and they were familiar enough with the showcase design to understand how to quickly and effectively gain access. In all likelihood they also knew or had calculated the response time and direction of travel that gallery staff would need to potentially intercept their endeavors. And they had enough wherewithal to plan their exit and make a swift and effective departure.
Amid the speculation about the items taken from the Apollo Gallery at the Louvre being broken up, another possibility is that the items were stolen to order. The issue with breaking down an item of jewelry into many hundreds or even thousands of pieces is the likelihood that at some point, one or more of the stones will come under the scrutiny of a suspicious jeweler or dealer who wants nothing to do with stolen goods. It’s important to understand that precious stones that were cut and polished 400 or so years ago have quite distinctive characteristics in terms of their surfaces when compared to stones that have been cut and polished more recently because the mechanical processes of diamond cutting have changed.
As for gaining access, again, popular culture has us believing that gallery thieves only strike at night and that they are dressed from head to toe in black Lycra when the reality is that it is far easier to gain access to a museum by simply showing up at the front door carrying a ladder and wearing overalls with a clipboard tucked under your arm or, in this case, by posing as maintenance staff on a quite street on a Sunday morning.
From a liability point of view museum administration staff often tell their staff not to engage or tackle anyone with ill intentions. This explains why the various Just Stop Oil protesters who have been supergluing themselves to gallery walls of late or throwing canned soup at framed works are seldom intercepted by museum staff and wrestled to the ground for the cultural vermin that they are.
It’s good that no gallery staff or visitors were harmed in Sunday’s event at the Louvre and it’s tragic that the items in question are now gone. But Sunday’s robbery highlights other important issues, in that museum security as a whole leaves much to be desired and that all any lock or alarm buys you is whatever the response time is from hamstrung museum staff and the arrival (or not) of law enforcement.
Another issue is that of longer term security and safety of precious items. In this day and age of 3D scanning and CNC capability, for the purposes of display there is no good reason why items cannot be duplicated, with the copied items placed on display while the originals remain relatively safe in a bank vault.
This is actually a really solid insight into this situation. About 20 years ago, I used to volunteer at a relatively small art museum that a wealthy donor gave a collection of artifacts from ancient China to worth tens of millions of dollars. The museum had no idea what they really had. This was at a time when Chinese relics were not prized in the West but being that I worked with several very wealthy Asian businessman - I knew that these pieces were PRICELESS. I took photos of several jade pieces and sent them to a collector I had designed a website for. He offered me $500,000 to steal two of the pieces from the collection. There were dozens. They would have never noticed I am certain of it. Alas, my conscience just never would allow it and most of this collection, save for a few prestige bronzes that were large enough to draw the untrained eye into the museum, were placed in a storage basement in a climate-controlled area to collect dust. Several times over the 2 years I volunteered at the facility, I contemplated how easy it would be to take the freight elevator down there and just 'get lost' and end up in the storage unit and slip a few of the smaller pieces into my backpack. I could have retired from this theft. I think about it often. I called a friend that still works there and asked about the collection a couple years ago. He said they are still down there in storage. Still collecting dust. The curator still has no idea what they have.
Let's go get them.
Locks are for honest people.
None dare call it insurance fraud!
on No Kings weekend.
just wait until the guy from pawn stores makes his lowball offer after consulting with the expert.
Incredible feat. I wonder how the media will cover this one without losing face for those affected.
You forgot That Man From Rio (1964); Le Casse (1971); The Sicilian Clan (1969); and Ronin (1998)!
LOL ... Hollywood is going to have to change the way it makes its blockbusters. It's like France can't catch a break.
I hope someone makes a heist movie about this. Right now a lot of people are speculating that the 'girl boss mary sue' diversity hire that was put in charge of the louvre is somehow involved. she literally downgraded all the security to the point that made this heist possible. seems convenient to me. too convenient.
The jewelry will be ransomed. They are worth much more to France than to a fence.
Well done *stands and claps*