Reposted from OKCFox News

It's not exactly a break-in at the Louvre, but police at the University of Oklahoma are searching for a campus art thief.

Police released photos of the suspect carrying a painting out of the Fred Jones School of Art around 2 p.m. on May 14th. Investigators say the suspect is believed to have stolen two paintings from the second floor of the building, and a third from the fourth floor.

Surveillance video caught the suspect in the act, but they have not been identified.

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Reposted from NY Daily News

A rogue in a Russian art gallery was arrested after he "seriously damaged" a priceless painting of Ivan the Terrible.

Igor Podporin was at the State Tretyakov Museum in Moscow just before closing Friday evening when he picked up a security pole and bashed the protective glass around the painting "Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan".

The 19th century work by Ilya Repin — a visually arresting large-scale canvas depicting the medieval tsar clutching the son he mortally wounded — had been "seriously damaged," Tretyakov officials said in a statement.

It added that the painting had been punctured in three places around the figure of the son, but that the most valuable part of the work —the faces of the pair — was left intact.

Podporin, a 37-year-old from the city of Voronezh, was arrested and appeared later on a Russian police video where he acknowledged lashing out against a painting that is considered a part of Russian history.

He said that he went to the museum specifically to look at the masterpiece and drank 100 grams — roughly three shots — of vodka before his outburst, adding that he doesn't normally drink vodka and was "taken over" by something.

Igor Podporin admitted to damaging the painting. (Russian Interior Ministry)

He faces a vandalism case and up to three years in prison, according to state media.

Repin's painting has been moved to the Tretaykov's restoration workshop.

It is not the first time that the work has been attacked, and that the artist repaired it himself after a religious icon painter attacked it with a knife in 1913.

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Reposted from The New York Times

Lars Andersen's business handles some of the most sensitive data there is — the names and phone numbers of children.

The owner of London-based My Nametags, which makes personalized nametags to iron into children's clothing, says protecting that information is fundamental to his business, which operates in 130 countries.

But starting Friday, My Nametags and most other companies that collect or process the personal information of EU residents must take a number of extra precautions to comply with the new General Data Protection Regulation, which the EU calls the most sweeping change in data protection rules in a generation.

While the legislation has been applauded for tackling the thorny question of personal data privacy, the rollout is also causing confusion. Companies are trying to understand what level of protection different data needs, whether this could force them to change the way they do business and innovate, and how to manage the EU's 28 national data regulators, who enforce the law.

"Once you try to codify the spirit (of the law) — then you get unintended consequences," Andersen said. "There's been a challenge for us: What actually do I have to do? There are a million sort of answers."

That uncertainty, together with stiff penalties for violating the law, has convinced internet-based businesses such as Unroll.me, an inbox management firm, and gaming company Ragnarok Online to block EU users from their sites. Pottery Barn, an arm of San Francisco-based housewares retailer Williams-Sonoma Inc., said it would no longer ship to EU addresses. The Los Angeles Times newspaper said it was temporarily putting its website off limits in most EU countries.

The implementation of GDPR has also made data protection an issue in contract negotiations as firms argue about how to divvy up responsibility for any data breach.

"Deals are being held up by data protection," said Phil Lee, a partner in privacy security and information at Fieldfisher, a law firm with offices in 18 EU cities. "If something goes wrong, what happens?"

EU countries themselves aren't quite ready for the new rules. Less than half of the 28 member states have adopted national laws to implement GDPR, though the laggards are expected to do so in the next few weeks, according to WilmerHale, an international law firm.

As with most EU-wide regulations, enforcement of the new data protection rules falls to national authorities. While the EU stresses that the law applies to everyone, one of the big outstanding questions is whether regulators will go after any entity that breaks the law or simply focus on data giants like Google and Facebook.

Lawyers also say it isn't yet clear how regulators will interpret the sometimes general language written into the law. For example, the law says processing of personal data must be "fair" and data should be held "no longer than necessary."

"It's time to put on your seatbelt and check your airbag," said D. Reed Freeman Jr., a privacy and cybersecurity expert at WilmerHale. "It's kind of like a lift-off with a rocket. It's about to launch."

Andersen of My Nametags said the law has already caused problems for his business.

He has been advised that the company website in the Netherlands has to be different from the one in the U.K. because the two countries are likely to apply the law differently, and has a dispute with a supplier over which of them is responsible for protecting certain data.

U.K. Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham has tried to ease concerns, saying the most important thing is for companies to try their best to comply with the law and work with authorities to correct any problems.

"We pride ourselves on being a fair and proportionate regulator and this will continue under the GDPR," Denham said in a blog post. "Those who self-report, who engage with us to resolve issues and who can demonstrate effective accountability arrangements can expect this to be taken into account when we consider any regulatory action."

The new law comes at a time when advances in technology make data more valuable, and therefore raise the stakes in protecting it.

The ability to analyze everything from consumer purchases to medical records holds enormous potential, with suggestions that it will make us healthier, improve traffic flows and other good things for society. At the same time, it provides business with huge new opportunities for profit, with some experts putting the value of the global data economy at $3 trillion.

That potential is underscored by changes in the list of the world's most valuable companies, which was once dominated by energy and industrial companies. Now Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook hold five of the six top spots.

"Data is the new soil," said Adam Schlosser, the project lead for digital and trade flows at the World Economic Forum. "It serves as a foundational element for growth."

But with that potential comes concern that data can be used for private gain, threatening personal privacy rights.

Allegations that political consultant Cambridge Analytica used data harvested from Facebook accounts to help Donald Trump with the 2016 presidential election offered a tangible example of the fears highlighted by privacy campaigners.

Andersen fears that "dodgy operators" will continue to flout the rules, but he hopes publicity around GDPR will help demonstrate that he takes data protection seriously — that he recognizes the information behind those nametags decorated with cupcakes, unicorns and smiley faces is something to be safeguarded.

"In terms of pieces of data that you don't want to go astray, your children's information is kind of the core of that," Andersen said. "In a way, that's why we as a company have been successful — (by) trying to treat our customers as parents in the way I would want to be treated as a parent."

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Reposted from The Himalayan

As most of the museums damaged in the 2015 earthquakes are being reconstructed, curators and museum experts have stressed the need to install modern safety equipment.

Reconstruction of four museums, which are operated by the Department of Archaeology, is under way at present. But, authorities concerned have not bothered to instal equipment to improve safety and security of the museums and artifacts or valuables  kept inside them.

The National Museum at Chauni, along with three museums located in Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Lalitpur house hundreds of highly valued artifacts and other objects of archaeological importance. But, none of these museums are completely open to visitors due to security reasons and poor management.

According to Chairman of International Council of Museums, Nepal, Bijay Kumar Shahi, museums in Nepal must be upgraded and digitalised to attract more visitors. “We have not been able to show the world what we have. What can we expect from our museums that have not even updated basic information on their websites? he asked.

“Although we have realized the importance of updating our museums, we have not even received sufficient budget for reconstruction, let alone up-gradation of the museums,” said Chief of the National Museum at Chauni Jay Ram Shrestha.

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Reposted from Security Management 

​How will online trust change over the next decade? That was the focus of a new nonscientific canvassing of 1,233 individuals by the Pew Research Center and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center, which found that most experts think “lack of trust” won’t be a barrier to society’s reliance on the Internet.​

The survey partners asked 1,233 individuals, including technologists, scholars, practitioners, strategic thinkers, and other leaders: “Will people’s trust in their online interactions, their work, shopping, social connections, pursuit of knowledge, and other activities be strengthened or diminished over the next 10 years?”

Forty-eight percent of respondents said they think online trust will be strengthened, 28 percent reported that trust will remain the same, and just 24 percent said trust will be diminished. 

“Many of these respondents made references to changes now being implemented or being considered to enhance the online trust environment,” according to Pew. “They mentioned the spread of encryption, better online identity-verification systems, tighter security standards in Internet protocols, new laws and regulations, new techno-social systems like crowdsourcing and up-voting/down-voting, or challenging online content.”

For instance, Adrian Hope-Bailie, standards officer at blockchain solution provider Ripple, participated in the survey and said technology advancements are bringing together disparate but related fields, like finance, health care, education, and politics.

“It’s only a matter of time before some standards emerge that bind the ideas of identity and personal information with these verticals such that it becomes possible to share and exchange key information, as required, and with consent to facilitate much stronger trusted relationships between users and their service providers,” Hope-Bailie explained.

One technology that respondents were asked about in particular was blockchain and the role it might play in fostering trust on the Internet. Blockchain is a digital ledger system that is encryption-protected and used to facilitate validated transactions and interactions that cannot be edited.

Other experts, however, were less optimistic about the future of trust in online interactions. Vinton Cerf, vice president and chief Internet evangelist at Google, and co-inventor of the Internet Protocol, participated in the survey and said that trust is “leaking” out of the Internet.

“Unless we strengthen the ability of content and service suppliers to protect users and their information, trust will continue to erode,” he explained. “Strong authentication to counter hijacking of accounts is vital.”

Overall, the survey found six major themes on the future of trust in online interactions:

1. Trust will strengthen because systems will improve and people will adapt to them and more broadly embrace them.
   

2. The nature of trust will become more fluid​ as technology embeds itself into human and organizational relationships.
   

3. Trust will not grow, but technology usage will continue to rise, as a “new normal” sets in.
   

4. Some say blockchain could help; some expect its value might be limited.
   

5. The less-than-satisfying current situation will not change much in the next decade.
   

6. Trust will diminish because the Internet is not secure, and powerful forces threaten individuals’ rights.
   

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From Pinnacol Assurance, IFCPP's Workers Comp Insurance Provider

Wildfires spread fast. They move at a pace of up to 12.5 miles per hour, and they cause a staggering amount of damage.

Last year, Colorado suffered 967 wildfires, which burned 111,667 acres of land. The costliest in Colorado history, the 2012 Waldo Canyon fire resulted in $450 million in insurance losses.

Already forecasters are predicting this could be the state’s worst wildfire season in at least five years, following an unusually dry winter.

Protecting your workers and your workplace against this summer hazard should be a priority. Here are six ways you can keep your employees safe in the face of an encroaching wildfire.

1. Establish evacuation routes.

Choose well-lit routes and designate exits where people should leave the building in the event of a wildfire evacuation. Make the instructions as specific as possible, and post them in a place where all employees have access to them.

2. Create an emergency action plan.

If you do not already have an emergency action plan for wildfires, make one. Here is what it should cover:

• Plans for employees who stay behind during an evacuation to shut down the plant or provide other critical emergency services.
• An overview of duties expected of employees designated to provide medical support.
• An assembly location where employees should gather post-evacuation.

3. Put someone in charge of declaring an evacuation.

In the event of a wildfire, one of your employees should monitor the news and weather reports and determine whether a workplace evacuation is necessary. Direct them to use the Colorado State Forest Service’s Current Wildfire & Information & Fire Restrictions and Colorado Wildfire Information Resource Center to guide their decision-making.

4. Make an employee alert system.

Come up with a way to alert employees in the event of an evacuation. Ideas include an alert on a public address system, via smartphones or on portable radio units. Make the alarm auditory, visual and tactile, if possible, to alert all employees.

5. Create defensible space zones around your building.

Adding defensible space to your landscaping can limit the damage of wildfires. “Defensible space” refers to the area between your business structure and the encroaching fire. Selecting the right plants, trees and mulches for this space can reduce or slow a fire’s burn rate. You want the area largely clear of flammable and combustible materials. The Disaster Safety site offers a detailed description of how to add defensible space zones along with a list of the best greenery options for the Rocky Mountain region.

6. Consult Pinnacol’s Fire Safety Inspection Checklist.

A fast-spreading wildfire could spark a fire within your building. Consult our checklist to ensure you are prepared to deal with any fire that may occur. 

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Reposted from NBC Miami

The underground art world is thriving with pieces from all different countries getting smuggled into the United States. South Florida has become a hot spot for stolen art, according to federal agents.

Hialeah artist Abel Quintero is aware of this growing black market of art, that’s why he takes an extra step to protect his works of art.

“I sign and use my own thumbprint,” Quintero explained. He marks his contemporary art pieces with his own thumbprint to avoid the spread of fakes. The rising number of fakes and forgeries has worsened with technology. This has prompted the Department of Homeland Security to train its agents to detect bogus art works that try to pass as the real thing.

“Frankly, I think Miami is a big risk. There is a serious, strong art community here. Any place where you have galleries, museums…I think you’ll probably see a larger amount of the underground art market,” explained Special Agent in Charge Mark Selby, Homeland Security Investigations.

“There’s people that walk through our doors every day, bringing items to get appraised, bringing in items to get converted into cash and a lot of times we turn them away,” Kodner explained.

Art and cultural property crime -- which includes theft, fraud, looting, and trafficking -- has estimated losses in the billions of dollars annually. At one point, the federal government said it’s the third highest grossing criminal trade behind drugs and guns.

Thieves also smuggle in historical artifacts stolen from other countries.

Homeland Security officials said they have been able to find and return more than 8,000 stolen items in the last 10 years. Thieves are taking precious items, Agent Selby said. Earlier this year, someone at Miami International Airport tried to smuggle a Corinthian helmet which dates back to 500 B.C.

“There’s a lot of history that’s being stolen from countries all over the world. A lot of it ends up here in the United States,” said Agent Selby. "Once they remove those items, they haven’t had a chance to be studied where they were found. It’s lost forever. There’s no way you can get it back.”

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Reposted from NBC Los Angeles

A bomb threat forced the closure of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and La Brea Tar Pits Museum, but nothing dangerous was found and the facilities were set to reopen Saturday.

The threat was received at 10:45 a.m. Friday about the facilities in the 5800 and 5900 blocks of Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile district, according to Los Angeles Police Department Officer Tony Im, who said the threat came in the form of "an automated voice recording" that warned of an explosion to occur at a specific time, reported to be 2 p.m.

That deadline passed, but according to Im, an LAPD squad with bomb- sniffing dogs was conducting a thorough sweep of the area.

The facilities were closed for the rest of the day, and all programming was canceled due to the security threat, said museum security officials who assisted police in the investigation.

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Reposted from WAMU

D.C. is full of free museums, but the Phillips Collection isn’t one of them. The modern art museum a private institution, and it costs $12 to get in. But from Memorial Day through Labor Day, visitors who are 30 and younger can get in for free.

The promotion isn’t just a fun summer perk, however — it’s part of a much broader effort to diversify both the institution’s audience and staff. According to a spokeswoman for the museum, the Phillips has a dearth of visitors under 30. It’s a fairly common problem for museums around the country.

Makeba Clay, a longtime museum consultant in D.C. and, as of last month, the Phillips’ first Chief Diversity Officer, is in charge of this initiative. The Phillips is the first museum in D.C. to hire someone in such a role at the executive level.

Investing the resources to hire a senior staffer to focus solely on diversity and accessibility is a growing trend in tech and higher education, but the Phillips is one of the first art museums in the country to do so. Clay can count on one hand the number of people she knows with similar jobs in the museum world.

As Clay sees it, she has more than enough work to do already. Art museums have a conspicuous and well-catalogued problem with diversity.

“Within the art museum world, I think in the last three or four years, people have started talking about the need to have a strategic focus on inclusion and issues of access and accessibility,” Clay said.

A 2015 study by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation found a severe lack of racial diversity in the staff ranks of art museums nationally. Twenty-eight percent of museum staff are from minority backgrounds, but the majority work in security, facilities, finances or human resources. In the directly arts-related fields, which include curation, conservation, education, and leadership, that number drops to 16 percent.

Phillips Collection director Dorothy Kosinski believes these findings are at odds with the inclusive and progressive identity that many arts organizations project.

“Art is a vanguard industry that takes pride in its role to represent progressive ideology and risk-taking, yet the management lacks the representation from different life experiences that are a vital part of the arts’ dynamism,” Kosinski wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed. “The survey catalyzed a major movement toward a more diversified art and museum world.”

It will take more than talk alone to fix the problem. Clay said that one of her first priorities is to partner with more community colleges, historically black colleges and local educational organizations to expand their pool of internship and fellowship applicants. She’s already working with the University of the District of Columbia and the Rotary Club, of which she is a member.

Clay was born and raised in upstate New York, where she grew up frequenting museums and performances with her family. She’s been living in D.C. for about two decades, and has, she said, “been to almost every cultural institution that exists here.” She consulted for the Smithsonian Institutions and suggested they hire for a role like her current one, but as far as she knows, they haven’t followed her advice.

“The Phillips is just a gem,” she said of her new home. It was founded in 1921 by Duncan Phillips, making it the oldest modern art museum in the country. The museum is still housed in Phillips’s Georgian Revival home on 21^st Street Northwest near Dupont Circle.

While Clay has big plans for improving institutional diversity and accessibility, this summer’s special 30-and-under admission offer is, in her eyes, a solid first step. Staff will survey the young visitors who take advantage of the offer about their interests and expectations.

“There are few institutions that have really thought about this in a very comprehensive way,” she said, “which is how the work needs to be done.”

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Reposted from Artsy

Art forgeries are surprisingly common, to the point that scandals hit the news regularly. No one is safe from deception—forgers can be skilled enough to dupe experts at some of the world’s most prestigious museums. So what do these institutions do when valuable objects within their collections are challenged as being fake?

Among the most famous disputed works is the Getty Kouros. Last month, after years of debate and controversy, the Getty Museum finally conceded that its ostensibly ancient Greek statue is actually a modern forgery, and removed it from view. The museum had purchased the kouros—the art historical term for a statue of a nude youth—in 1985 for around $9 million.

Historians began questioning the statue’s authenticity the moment it emerged onto the public scene. The museum attempted to address forgery concerns in 1992 when it hosted a colloquium of scholars and scientists. Some experts asserted that the statue’s unusual and anachronistic style evidenced its modern origin. Critics also pointed to significant stylistic differences between the statue’s head and its feet, which made it difficult to trace to any known ancient Greek workshop. But others argued that the statue was real, and that its eclectic style was not sufficient to rule the work a fake. Lacking scholarly consensus, the authenticity of the work remained in limbo. 

When art historians disagree over an artwork, sometimes scientific analysis of the object’s material can definitively date the piece. But it isn’t always so simple. Scientific analysis initially confirmed the Getty Kouros as an ancient object prior to the museum’s purchase, primarily because researchers found evidence of a chemical process that (they thought) could only occur naturally over centuries. Only later did scientists realize this process could be replicated in a lab. Skilled forgers are known to use age-appropriate materials to create fakes, and the forger in this instance artificially aged the marble.

The kouros' provenance is also murky. It appeared on the market in 1983 when dealer Gianfranco Becchina offered the work for sale. (Becchina later became infamous for dealing in looted works.) He provided documentation that purportedly traced the statue’s excavation back to Greece in the early 20th century. But there is no site of origin or excavation documentation to validate this claim, and provenance documents from the dealer turned out to be fabricated.

Until recently, however, the statue remained on view, next to a wall label reading “Greek, about 530 B.C. or modern forgery.” It was only in April, after major renovations at the Getty Villa, that the kouros disappeared from view and was placed in storage. “It’s fake, so it’s not helpful to show it along with authentic material,” Timothy Potts, the museum’s director, told the New York Times.

This is not the first time a museum has wrestled with the authenticity of a work in its collection. Collectors have been duped for millennia, and the forging of antiquities actually dates back to antiquity itself. The number of forgeries grew during the Renaissance, when collectors began aggressively acquiring ancient art. 

As the Getty Kouros saga shows, one of the difficulties in classifying a work as a forgery is that attribution is fluid. Experts disagree over authorship, opinions shift over time, and technologies develop to reveal new information. Not surprisingly, authentic works have been downgraded, only to be reattributed later. Famously, the Metropolitan Museum of Art downgraded a Velázquez work, bequeathed to the museum in 1949, from a work created by the painter himself to one by the “workshop of Velázquez” in 1979. Forty years later, in 2009, the Met re-authenticated the painting as a real Velázquez. The attribution, made after the artist’s signature style was revealed by a cleaning and technical study of the piece, was proudly accompanied by academic publications and press releases.

Unfortunately, the Met has also unwittingly displayed forgeries, such as a group of Etruscan terracotta figures. The three figures, purchased between 1915 and 1921, were ostensibly discovered in an Italian field, but were actually created in a workshop. The works were put on display in 1933 and remained there for nearly three decades, during which time scholars voiced concern about the attribution.

Scientific analysis eventually confirmed this skepticism. Researchers found that the Met’s figures included a pigment that wasn’t used by the Etruscans. In 1961, the museum officially announced that the works were forgeries. The figures once identified as “5th Century B.C.” were relabeled as “modern.” Like with the Getty Kouros, the Etruscan warriors went into storage, only viewable to scholars and students.

One of the most alluring forgeries can be found at the British Museum: a crystal skull, known as an Aztec symbol of death. There are a number of crystal skulls in private and public collections, fascinating because of the mystery surrounding their origins and purported supernatural powers. Some posit that the skulls were carved thousands of years ago and that they have healing powers. There are even suggestions that their existence indicates that aliens visited the Aztecs.

Although a captivating story, science has proven that these skulls are neither ancient nor magical. Electron microscope analysis revealed that the skulls were made with modern instruments, and that they likely date to 19th-century Europe. And since none of the skulls were found during official archaeological excavations, the British Museum conjectures that they are all fakes.

While the museum recognizes its own skull as a fake, it devotes a lengthy page on its website to the object. Interestingly, the page does not use the terms “fake” or “forgery,” but concedes that the skull is “not an authentic pre-Columbian artefact” and “did not come from a source within the ancient trade network of Mexico.” The museum also acknowledges that its skull does not have supernatural properties; rather, it suggests that the skull encourages visitors to learn more about Aztec culture.

So, yes, forgeries understandably may not command the same respect and value as authentic works. But they can still attract people to museums, and can focus one’s attention on the real history and ancient culture behind the modern rip-offs.

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