INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FORCULTURAL PROPERTY PROTECTION
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Reposted from Museums Association
Museums and galleries in Scotland must pay all of their workers at least the real Living Wage to apply for grants, following changes to funding criteria introduced by Museums Galleries Scotland (MGS).
The funding and development body is required to align its criteria to the Scottish Government’s Fair Work First policy, which applies to grants and public contracts being awarded by and across the public sector. Fair Work is also a priority area in MGS's recently launched strategy for 2023-30.
On 1 July, MGS introduced two elements of the government’s guidelines on fair working practices: that all workers within an organisation must receive at least real Living Wage, which is currently £10.90 per hour; and that all workers are to be provided with appropriate channels for effective voice.
Applicants will also need to demonstrate their awareness of, and commitment to, Fair Work principles by including a supporting statement on their website.
The government’s full list of Fair Work principles is:
MGS has produced a Fair Work Resources for Employers page to help museums find support and guidance towards becoming a Fair Work employer. It encourages museums to seek accreditation from the Living Wage Foundation.
Museums Journal understands that there is concern about this blanket approach, with some organisations warning that the changes may prove unaffordable for them. There have been calls for the criteria to be broadened to recognise organisations that are working towards the Living Wage.
In an update to members, MGS grants manager Catherine Myles said: “We recognise that many museums have been on the Fair Work journey for several years now as we work towards the ambition of being a fair paid sector, however for others this may feel new and unfamiliar. If you are at all unsure about these requirements we encourage you to contact us to discuss your own situation and we will provide you with support and guidance to understand how these requirements may affect your organisation.”
The changes echo the Museums Association’s recent Salary Research and Recommendations, which stipulate that all employees and freelancers should be paid the Living Wage as a minimum.
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Reposted from Security Managment Magazine
Today’s video management, access control, and intrusion detection systems are incredibly complex and provide unique challenges in product selection, networking, maintenance, and support. Features within these systems are extremely functional and may also provide some of the greatest opportunities to demonstrate value to one’s organization. But it can be a double-edged sword—if one chooses poorly or networks incorrectly, the very tools used to help secure a facility may also render it vulnerable and invite risk. Hence, strict technical standards are an absolute must for any organization.
This is the fourth in a five-part series on security governance. The first article, “Setting the Bar for Strong Governance in Security Management,” makes the case for establishing a governance program within your organization’s security department. The second article, “For Effective Governance, Start with Why,” implores you to ask yourself why you need a security program in the first place and then provides an outline for your program standards as to how you can communicate your why to the rest of the organization. The third article, “The How of Security Governance: Procedures Provide Support,”makes the case for tactical-level guidance on completing the most common tasks at your sites.
Technology is the application of knowledge for achieving practical goals in a reproducible way. The word can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible tools like utensils or machines, and intangible ones like software. In the physical security world, complex modern technology includes video management, access control, and intrusion detection systems and the less complex like barriers, lighting, locks, keys, glazing, and signage. For all of this, we must provide our teams guidance in the selection, application, installation, integration, operation, protection, and maintenance of our security tools. These are our technical security standards—the third leg of our fundamental security governance products.
“Technical security standards provide a strategic vision for an organization as to how they want to employ tools in the safeguarding of their assets,” says Wade Pinnell, CPP, CEO of Virtual Software Equipment and Consulting (VSEC), a technical security consultancy specializing in hospitality and manufacturing security systems. “If employed and integrated properly, these systems not only safeguard against loss, but enhance business objectives and can even help to exploit opportunities, giving organizations market advantages.
“Today’s cameras, employing analytics, can do things like count people, capture demographic information, discern humans from animals, trigger alarms, ‘see’ heat before there’s even a wisp of smoke, and spot anomalies, going far beyond traditional security applications,” he continues. “These are just some of the value-adds video management systems can deliver today. Finally, technical standards consolidate brand usage and therein present economic advantages in negotiating enterprise pricing with manufacturers. This can realistically generate savings of 15 percent to 25 percent in hardware/software purchases.”
Like your operations procedures, technical standards will be based upon established industry guidelines, best practices, and standards from organizations like ISO, ANSI, ASIS, and NIST, providing legal protections for our teams and organizations. And also like your operations procedures, this product should establish a baseline from which regional and area guidance can be created and better aligned—more prescriptive—with business units, countries, facilities, and cultures.
But technical security standardization can provide significant economic advantages as well. By selecting one or a limited range of products for your enterprise, you can become masters of support rather than generalists with a wider range of products.
Further, you can negotiate for economies of scale. For example, I’ve found that by selecting just three options of camera manufacturers at the good, better, and best levels, discounts upwards of 40 percent can sometimes be negotiated with manufacturers. When committing to just one access control or video management system, even greater discounts may exist. Using cloud-based servers may enable even more savings and provide more security.
Finally, one may avoid the potential pitfalls of selecting poor products which may actually place your organization at risk.
“The proper installation and integration of systems is critical to a system's integrity,” Pinnell says. “More than once I’ve had cases in which clients said their systems were networked correctly and safe. However, when inspected, they were completely vulnerable and exposed. You’re only one network switch port away from being completely open to the world.”
So, what might a technical security standard product look like? This is by no means a comprehensive list, but it might include the following:
Guidance in the selection, implementation, and management of less complex, non-electronic physical security controls (e.g., doors, locks and keys, lighting, parking and traffic control, signage, gates, bollards, and barriers).
The role security operations centers serve at the regional and global levels (e.g., technical objectives, layouts and systems, staffing, operations and procedures).
Strategic and operational guidance for supporting, and sunsetting new and legacy systems.
This may include more details on approved manufacturers, technology partners, and devices, fee schedules, project estimation tools, service bulletins, basic how-to user guides, and links to technical manuals.
Given the persistent developments in technology and threats to exploit these systems, enlisting the help of a technical security consultant or specialist to produce and update this document may be crucial. Like with all of your governance products, submit this for legal review and consider creating a website where the latest copy will reside and be available to your global teammates, contracted partners, and service providers.
With technical standards established, your foundational governance products will be complete, but without enforcement, they’re nothing more than good ideas. The next step in evolution is the creation of a security audit program, and beyond that, maturity modeling. Those are the topics of our next and final article in this series.
Reposted from ArtNet News
During the 10 years he spent working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, author Patrick Bringley developed a profound, in-depth appreciation for the vast art and antiquity collection at one of the largest and most popular museums in the world. He made the most of his unrestricted access to immerse himself in art ranging from Greek and Roman antiquities, Chinese silk paintings, and Old Masters, to American art, Impressionist and modern, postwar, and contemporary works. Whether it was the experience of standing in awe and quiet contemplation in front of the artworks or furthering self-education by delving further into their history and context with supplemental research, he clearly made the most of his time there.
But Bringley didn’t join the Met as an executive, a curator, or even as an art expert. In 2008, he joined the museum as one of the hundreds of blue-jacketed security guards charged with guarding some of the world’s rarest treasures. And he did so after making a leap from a high-profile job at another august city institution, The New Yorker, a move that coincided with the tragic loss of his brother Tom, the older sibling by two years who he admired and looked up to his entire life. It was after Tom’s death from terminal cancer at the young age of just 27, that Bringley felt the need for a life change, and he found it in the hallowed halls of the Met, where the job of guarding the masterpieces helped him to find solace, quiet, and ultimately, healing.
Brinkley writes: “When in June of 2008, Tom died, I applied for the most straightforward job I could think of in the most beautiful place I knew. This time, I arrive at the Met with no thought of moving forward. My heart is full, my heart is breaking, and I badly want to stand still awhile.”
From guarding the art, to watching millions of visitors from around the world (and no shortage of locals) stream up the grand staircase each year, to making friends on a diverse team of about 600 fellow guards, Bringley’s book, All The Beauty In The World: The Metropolitan Museum and Me (Simon & Schuster), is not a tell-all. It is more a love letter to one of the world’s most beloved institutions. As an added bonus, Bringley, who left after a decade, is now leading tours of the Met, with an appendix to his book listing every single artwork referenced in the text to help curious visitors find them inside the museum.
Most Met lovers would agree—and Bringley recounted in vivid detail his first visit to the museum at age 11, on a trip from Chicago with his mother. “I remember a long subway ride to the remote-sounding Upper East Side, and I remember the storybook feel of that neighborhood: doormen in livery, proud stone apartment towers, wide famous avenues—first Park, then Madison, then Fifth… The magical part was that as we drew nearer it kept growing wider and wider, so that even out front by the hot dog carts and the geysering fountains, we were never able to get the entire museum into view. I immediately understood it as a place of impossible breadth.” Bringley’s very solid advice to new and first-time visitors is to just wander. As he pointed out, the development of the museum since its opening in 1880 “expanded in a largely illogical sprawl, appending new wings to old ones in such a way that entire new atmospheres seem to spring up out of nowhere.”
While Bringley entered the job as something of a silent observer, he started to develop close friendships with the tribe of fellow guards he meets over the course of time. As he pointed out: “The glory of so-called unskilled jobs is that people with a fantastic range of skills and backgrounds work them. White-collar jobs cluster people of similar educations and interests… At the Met, I knew guards who have commanded a frigate in the Bay of Bengal, driven a taxi, piloted a commercial airliner, framed houses, farmed, taught kindergarten, walked a beat as a cop, reported a beat for a newspaper, and painted facial features on department store mannequins. They are from five continents and five boroughs… And remarkably, it doesn’t feel disorienting to stand on points with just about any of them. The ice is already broken. We’re wearing the same clothes.”
A factoid that may surprise readers? The Met keeps a tailor in-house just for the guards and their uniforms.
At the height of Bringley’s pre-pandemic guard days, he noted the museum was welcoming almost seven million visitors a year, “a greater attendance than the Yankees, Mets, Giants, Jets, Knicks, and Nets combined”—more even than the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building, though less than the Louvre in Paris.
“There is no one way that visitors experience the museum, but there are a few typical ways,” wrote Bringley. These include the “Sightseer, perhaps a dad in his local high school’s windbreaker, camera around his neck, on the hunt for whatever’s most famous… There is the Dinosaur Hunter—a mother with small children who cranes her neck to peer around corners, panicked by each new piece of evidence that this museum only has art.”
Before you mistake any of these encounters for anything resembling an eye-roll, it is immediately apparent in both the introduction of the “types” and elsewhere in the numerous visitor encounters sprinkled liberally throughout the book that Bringley’s guidance is never anything short of curious, kind, non-judgmental, and generous.
Bringley reflected on the Egyptian wing as “a singular place to work. It is a huge section with room enough to display almost all 26,000 objects,” making it the envy of most other curatorial departments. Amid fielding questions about whether or not the artifacts are “real” or observing visitors’ stunned reaction at being informed that some objects are 5,000 years old, he also answers questions from children wanting to know why the mummies are not unwrapped:
“There’s a dead dude in there?”
“Who killed him?”
“Who said anyone killed him?”
“What’s he look like under it?”
They prompt the author to ruminate on the mummification practice itself. He wrote: “A minute later they bolt from the room, and I’m left behind to reflect on how ugly the mummifying impulse was, what a failure, what a brazen, feeble denial of a fundamental truth. The body doesn’t make it. Believe all you want that some piece of a person is immortal, but a significant part is mortal, inescapably, and mad science will not stop it from breaking down.”
While the wealth of knockout, up-close, and personal encounters with art described in the book are too many to count, one that stands out is Brinkley’s description of Florentine painter Bernardo Daddi’s Crucifixion, in which the body of Christ is “dignified but limp; a gentle elegance in his bearing suggests that he suffered bravely,” as Mary and John sit reflectively on the ground.
“An artist in the 14th century wouldn’t have dreamed that one day there would be art connoisseurs and textbooks dedicated to something called art history,” he wrote.
While contemplating his own intent at examining the work, and alternately, the artist’s intent in creating it, he concluded: “Much of the greatest art, I find, seeks to remind us of the obvious. This is real is all it says. Take the time to stop and imagine more fully the things you already know. Today my apprehension of the awesome reality of suffering might be as crisp and clear as Daddi’s great painting. But we forget these things. They become less vivid. We have to return as we do to paintings, and face them again.”
Reposted from The Art Newspaper
On 22 July, the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, DC, reportedly escorted a visitor with a disability off its premises due to a bag violation, prompting a furor on Twitter and subsequent apology from the institution.
The incident gained visibility following the circulation of a Twitter thread in which the visitor in question, artist Celeste Tooth, decried the NGA's alleged insensitivity. Tooth, who uses the pronouns they and them, is a student and teaching assistant at the Maryland Institute College of Art (Mica). They were leading a field trip of 16- and 17-year-old students to the museum when an NGA guard stopped them for wearing a backpack on two shoulders rather than one, against museum guidelines. When Tooth, who was accompanied by a service dog, explained that their backpack was full of medication and that their neurosurgeon had recommended they wear their backpack on both shoulders to minimise the risk of it falling, the guard refused to compromise on the bag policy, according to Tooth.
In a statement to Hyperallergic, NGA spokesperson Anabeth Guthrie said that a security worker “offered assistance and multiple options for storing or carrying the bag in line with our policy to be inclusive and welcoming” but that Tooth was unreceptive. Tooth denied this description of events, alleging that the guard told them they were “taking too much time” and forced them to leave the museum.
In a statement to The Art Newspaper, Tooth elaborated on the incident: "I was told that my two options as a singular individual were to check my medical bag (not feasible as it contains life saving medications) or wear it on one shoulder (also not feasible due to my spinal disability. I repeatedly expressed that I was very open to finding an alternative way to keep my medical supplies with me."
Tooth has accused NGA of “violent ableism”, claiming that the museum’s decision to remove them was a “clear violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act”. “It is not uncommon for museum attendants to tell me, ‘You have to carry your backpack on one shoulder,’” Tooth told Hyperallergic, adding that after a short conversation, staff members typically understand and respect their medical needs.
“Our goal is to create an inclusive and welcoming space for all, and it deeply saddens us to learn that your experience did not reflect our values,” an NGA spokesperson told Tooth in a public apology posted on 24 July. The apology also stated that the institution had sent contact details for the museum’s diversity, inclusion and belonging officer to Tooth via Twitter direct message, asking Tooth to share further details about the incident.
“What other information would you like?” Tooth responded in a tweet. “May I suggest a paid meeting with you to discuss ways in which you can make your museum accessible to people like me—considering the amount of time and emotional labour this has already required from me as a Disabled person.”
This is not the first time a museum has been pressured to re-examine its backpack policy; last March, an Indigenous mother was asked to remove her traditional woven baby basket after being told it violated the Portland Art Museum’s “no backpacks” policy. The museum publicly apologised to the woman after her Facebook post about the incident gained widespread attention.
IFCPP Advisory Board Member, Past Education Chair, and longtime colleague and friend, Ross Guthrie, retired from the Minneapolis Institute of Art last week. We're proud to recognize Ross as a true cultural property protection professional, and a leader in the field.
IFCPP thanks Ross for decades of service to the community, and congratulates him for a well-deserved and hard-earned retirement. Following is the official memo from the Chief Operating Officer at Mia - a recognition that sums up well Ross's dedication, and longstanding contribution to the field...
From: Michael Sanders, COO, Minneapolis Institute of Art:
In August of 1991, a young Ross Guthrie stepped off the plane from Tulsa to embark on his new career at Mia. For context, that was just two months before the Great Halloween Blizzard, because in Minnesota all things are measured from that event. Ross would survive the blizzard and spend the next 32 years ensuring the safety and security of Mia’s staff, collection, and facilities while maintaining an infectiously positive attitude.
During his time here, Ross has helped with every significant exhibition and organizational milestone for the past three decades. Some of his favorite exhibitions have been Star Wars: The Magic of Myth (2000), Eternal Egypt (2002), Terra Cotta Warriors (2012), and Martin Luther: Art and the Reformation (2016). During the Louvre and the Masterpiece (2009), the Director of the Louvre asked if Ross was going to sleep under Vermeer's The Astronomer to keep it safe. Ross did not, in fact, sleep under the painting but it says a lot about Ross that it doesn’t seem completely out of the question.
Ross has brought kindness and levity to every situation with which he has been involved. He famously, or maybe infamously, did a Tonight Show-based skit with Mike Newman (Ross was Johnny, Mike was Ed McMahon). He greatly enjoyed the celebrity-spotting at Mia’s Super Bowl parties. If a visitor contacted us to compliment the service they received at Mia, there is a better than average chance they were talking about Ross.
Ross has worked under four Mia Directors and two interim Directors. He survived multiple museum expansion projects, including the Target wing expansion that involved a temporary loading dock (which he loved). There have been countless late night emergency phone calls that Ross has diligently responded to that helped keep the museum functioning safely. More recently, Ross helped lead Mia through some of the most challenging times the organization has faced – COVID and the subsequent shutdown and the civil unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd.
Through all of this, Ross has kept his trademarked calm and upbeat demeanor. He is quick to smile and joke with his colleagues and always an advocate for the Security department and staff. Ross’ legacy and impact at Mia cannot be overstated and he will be greatly missed.
Reposted from Security Management Magazine
The average lifespan of a company is 10 years, according to an often-cited study by the Santa Fe Institute. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that 50 percent of small businesses fail within the first five years. And, for large companies, consider that only 49 of the original Fortune 500 companies remain on the list. While there’s nothing that can guarantee long-term success, there are things that businesses can do to improve how they hire, innovate, and conduct activities, which can contribute to their success.
One of the keys is a formal sustainability plan with a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) program as a major component.
Diversity includes (but is not limited to) gender, age, nationality, background, culture, skills, neurodivergence, socio-economic status, and other attributes. And, while sustainability is usually associated with environmental stewardship, that’s just part of the equation. In simple terms, sustainability is defined as the ability to endure. This is where DE&I can help, as it can play a significant role in a company’s longevity.
So, how can DE&I contribute to a company’s long-term success? Consider that DE&I can help:
Attract the right talent. Two out of three job candidates seek companies that have diverse workforces. (What Job Seekers Really Think, Glassdoor)
Increase job satisfaction and improve employee retention. Companies experience a 50 percent drop in turnover risk and a 75 percent reduction in sick days when workers feel like they belong. (The Value of Belonging at Work, Harvard Business Review)
Enhance team performance. Three-quarters of organizations with frontline decision-making teams that reflect a diverse and inclusive culture exceed financial targets. (Diversity and inclusion Build High-Performance Teams, Gartner)
Generate ideas and innovate. Companies with above-average diversity produce a greater proportion of revenue from innovation (45 percent) than companies with below average diversity (26 percent). (How Diverse Leadership Teams Boost Innovation, Boston Consulting Group)
Gain a competitive business advantage. Companies with the most ethnically diverse executive teams are 33 percent more likely to outperform their competitors on profitability. (Delivering Through Diversity, McKinsey & Company)
A diverse workforce and an inclusive and fair environment are appealing to today’s business professionals. It’s clear that an inclusive, positive work climate that promotes diversity and equity can attract and retain the right people, drive engagement, and foster both creativity and innovation because it takes into account many different points of view. Ultimately, this can lead to a much more sustainable business.
If your company is serious about trying to improve sustainability via efforts like improving DE&I, it’s best to make a formal commitment and set goals. For example, many companies have signed the United Nations Global Compact and use its agenda and goals as a blueprint for aligning company strategies and operations with their universal principles on human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption. The UN Global Compact is the world's largest corporate sustainability and corporate social responsibility initiative, with 13,000 corporate participants and other stakeholders in more than 170 countries.
Implementing a sustainability plan in your workplace should be approached like any other company initiative. It’s important to conduct a proper assessment and evaluate where your organization is pertaining to DEI and sustainability in order to define needs, set strategy and goals, and develop a way to measure success.
Looking at my organization, Axis Communications, for example—in its 2022 Sustainability Report, Axis reported a significant 33 percent increase in gender diversity among both managers and employees in its global operations. Overall, 29 percent of Axis employees are women, and 71 percent are men. Although there is clearly still work to be done, the gap between males and females at Axis, especially in leadership positions, is narrowing.
Using Axis corporate sustainability efforts as a guide, Axis Americas has been working on increasing DE&I in our hiring practices, as well. When we began a deep dive into the issue of diversity about five years ago, we didn’t score as well as our counterparts across the globe in this area, so we committed to making improvements. Not only was there an imbalance between the percentage of women and men, but the problem was being exacerbated by the lack of job applications from women. The same applied to the other identities.
Accordingly, we committed to working harder to attract a pool of diverse and qualified candidates for our management positions. We’ve moved the needle from 27 percent women in management positions five years ago to 33 percent today. That’s a very positive growth indicator, and we’re working just as hard to increase the number of other types of diverse representation in management.
Why focus on management positions first? Because these new hires bring new thinking and new networks of people with them.
This change didn’t happen overnight. It was part of a formalized plan, and it’s exciting to see progress being made.
No longer just a “nice to have” initiative, improving diversity has become a “have to have” initiative. A diverse employee makeup better reflects society and includes input from a wider variety of stakeholders, which ultimately helps diversify and improve the products and services that a company creates. To increase sustainability and DE&I efforts in security companies, the industry can and should band together to leverage industry associations, working groups, and committees to bring industry-wide change that benefits all of us.
One great example is the Security Industry Association’s (SIA) Women in Security Forum. This group offers programs, professional development opportunities, and networking events with the goal of supporting the involvement of women in the security industry. The forum’s purpose is to engage all security professionals to promote, recruit, and cultivate the leadership of women for a more inclusive and diversified industry.
In just five short years, the Women in Security Forum has rapidly grown to over 1,300 members. This summer Axis Americas—which played a role in creating the forum—served as a co-chair of the forum’s inaugural Security LeadHER event in Nashville, Tennessee, which brought together security professionals committed to advancing, connecting, and empowering women in security. The work of the Women in Security Forum has also helped raise more than $100,000 in scholarships, provided mentoring opportunities, and included a partnership with Dress for Success where we’ve collected clothing and funds for women looking for assistance in elevating themselves to better jobs.
As companies begin or continue efforts to improve sustainability, they should evaluate their efforts—and there are resources available to help do so. EcoVadis, for example, is the world’s largest and most trusted provider of business sustainability ratings, and it has created a global network of more than 100,000 rated companies. It works as a third-party to provide reliable, globally recognized sustainability ratings and insights that enable companies to reduce risk, drive improvement, and accelerate a positive impact on the planet and society.
Axis undertakes an assessment each year carried out by EcoVadis to evaluate our environmental, social, and governance (ESG) efforts. For the last two years, Axis has earned a Silver Sustainability Rating from EcoVadis. These ratings not only serve as a testament to your efforts, but they help the organization identify gaps and develop plans for ongoing improvement.
The great news is that there are many examples of companies, in general, and in the security industry, in particular, that are incorporating DE&I initiatives and sustainability into long-term planning. This move not only improves diversity within employee populations, but it also encourages diversity of thought and, ultimately, innovation in the development, design, production, and quality of products and services.
As we in the security industry work to continue to improve existing technology and invent new products, let’s continue tapping into an expanded talent pool that can add experience, perspective, and diversity of thought. Together, we can raise the bar for the industry and improve our collective sustainability and success.
Reposted from the NonProfit Times
Giving to nonprofits in the United States plunged during 2022, led by the disappearance of individual donors. Giving dropped to an estimated $499.33 billion – down 3.4% in current dollars and 10.5% after adjusting for inflation from a revised total of $516.65 billion in 2021.
Giving also declined as a percentage of the nation’s gross domestic product, to 1.9% from 2.2%.
Inflation, economic uncertainty, individuals returning to previous giving levels after the pandemic surge and the decline in the number of donors are the key culprits in the drop, according to researchers for Giving USA 2023: The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2022. It is published by Giving USA Foundation, part of The Giving Institute. It is researched and written by the team at Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University.
Donations by individuals declined significantly as a portion of overall giving, to 64% from 66% during 2021. Individuals provided $319.04 billion in support, a decline of 6.4% in 2022 and 13.4%, when adjusted for inflation. In current dollars that’s $319.04 billion during 2022 versus $340.97 billion in 2021.
Foundation giving was $105.21 billion, up 2.5% but down 5% in inflation-adjusted dollars. It made up 21% of all giving. Bequests hit $45.60 billion, up 2.3% but down 5.3% in inflation-adjusted dollars. It made up 9% of all giving. Corporations gave $29.48 billion, up 3.4% but down 4.2% after adjusting for inflation. It was 6% of all giving.
In current dollars, total charitable giving increased 6.2% between 2020 and 2021 and decreased 3.4% between 2021 and 2022. The cumulative change in current-dollar total giving between 2020 and 2022 was 2.7%, according to the new data.
“Nonprofits and donors alike experienced the steady, negative impacts of inflation, such as the growing cost of goods and high interest rates throughout 2022, and many of those challenges remain,” said Amir Pasic, Ph.D., the Eugene R. Tempel Dean of the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. “However, Giving USA’s historical data also provide a case for hope: we have seen charitable giving rebound from each decline.”
As usual, giving to religion took the top spot at $143.57 billion (27% of total amount donated), followed by:
* Human services – $71.98 billion (14%)
* Education – $70.07 billion (13%)
* Gifts to grant making foundations – $56.84 billion (11%)
* Health – $51.08 billion (10%)
* Public-Society Benefits – $46.86 billion (9%)
* International Affairs – $33.71 billion (6%)
* Arts, Culture & Humanities – $24.67 billion (5%)
* Environmental/Animals – $16.10 billion (3%)
* Giving To Individuals – $12.98 billion (2%)
Seven of the nine sector-related categories declined when inflation-adjust dollars were calculated. Only international affairs (up 2.7%) and foundations (1.95%) were in positive territory. Unallocated giving was negative $28.54 billion in 2022. This amount is the difference between giving by source and use (who received it) in a particular year. This amount includes the difference between itemized deductions by individuals (and households) carried over from previous years. The tax year in which a gift is claimed by the donor (carried over) and the year when the recipient organization reports revenue (the year in which it is received) might be different.
Public-society benefit got hit hardest. Giving to public-society benefit increased 11.8% in inflation-adjusted dollars between 2020 and 2021. Between 2021 and 2022, inflation-adjusted giving to public-society benefit declined by 15.2%. The cumulative change in giving to public-society benefit between 2020 and 2022 is negative 5.1% in inflation-adjusted dollars.
“I think there are a lot of silver linings in the data. The good news here is when we shared the findings, most people who had been paying attention to the economic data were not surprised,” said Una Osili, Ph.D., Associate Dean for Research and International Programs; Efroymson Chair in Philanthropy; Dean’s Fellow, Mays Family Institute on Diverse Philanthropy at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
Some of the data she referenced includes year-over-year inflation, the rate at which consumer prices increase, which was 6.5% in December 2022, the Federal Reserve raising interest rates seven times during 2022 and again on February 1, 2023. Most important when looking at donor behavior is that when accounting for inflation, workers’ average hourly earnings were down 1.7% in December 2022 compared to a year prior.
The total estimate for giving by individuals in 2022 included itemized and non-itemized charitable contributions. Contributions included gifts of cash, securities and property. Mega-giving from six individuals, such as MacKenzie Scott, and couples totaled $13.96 billion during 2022.
One of those not surprised by the drop in giving is Woodrow Rosenbaum, chief data officer for GivingTuesday and a non-resident fellow, Technology and Public Purpose Project at the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School.
“There may be other factors as well, but the dominant trend has been for nonprofits to focus on large donor stewardship at the expense of everything else, and for lots of good reasons, as well as some that might be misguided. This is what we would expect to see” when affluent donors pull back, Rosenbaum said.
“I think it has more to do with the pressing need in the nonprofit sector for short term dollars. It has driven us toward that at the expense of other activity combined with some scarcity mentality that contributes to continuing that cycle,” said Rosenbaum. “It works to get more money until you have too many eggs in that one basket and then have some type of correction which appears is what happened last year.”
That sentiment of smaller donors not being asked is key to the decline, according to Shannon McCracken, CEO of the Nonprofit Alliance in Washington, D.C. “What the nonprofit sector inherently knows – but donors and the general public may not consider in seeing Giving USA 2023 highlights – is that increases in giving from corporations, foundations and mega-donors that help cover declines in individual giving on a pie chart are not equally distributed,” she said. “There are winners and losers. Institutional funders can be magnificent change-makers, but the everyday givers are the bedrock of democracy of giving.”
Chris Pritcher, CEO at national fundraising firm RKD Group in Dallas, believes charities leaders must fundamentally change their pursuit of donors. “This study is the latest in a series of alarm bells, but it doesn’t even touch what might be the loudest alarm. I’m bothered by the fact that individual giving revenue is down 6.4%, but I’m more concerned that the number of donors continues to decline,” he said in reaction to the data.
“Not enough people are being moved to contribute – because our practices perpetuate talking at them, not talking with them or listening to them,” said Pritcher. “As a sector, we have to change. We must work harder than ever to innovate and deepen relationships with donors, no matter how much they give.”
McCracken offered additional perspective when it comes to rank and file donors. “For the last 10-plus years, there’s been a substantial shift in donor acquisition best practices to maximize efficiency by focusing on donors with the highest lifetime value,” said McCracken. “The natural follow-up question for nonprofits is whether that efficiency of fundraising for the years leading up to 2022 was worth it – that is, are they in a better financial position at present, with the 2022 softening, than they would be had they continued to prioritize the number of donors over gift size? If yes, that’s an intriguing context to overlay on the Giving USA data. If the answer is no, these numbers may inspire new definitions of fundraising efficiency.”
Rosenbaum believes the cash is out there. “Theoretically, there is some limit to how much someone can give but there’s so much elasticity in the donor ecosystem that we are nowhere near that limit,” he said.
Gifts via donor-advised funds (DAFs) are becoming more popular, especially in times when holders of such accounts believe they can’t deposit as much into the accounts and therefore feel the need to grant more from the DAFs, said Rosenbaum.
It is hard to track the impact of DAFs in the Giving USA numbers. DAF funds are counted wherever the organization that hosts the donor-advised fund is counted. For example, a DAF that is held within a community foundation will be counted with community foundations in the giving to foundations subsector. Freestanding, national or commercial DAFs, such as Fidelity Charitable, are counted in the Public-Society Benefit subsector on the uses side.
According to the most recent data from the National Philanthropic Trust, $72.67 billion was deposited into DAFs and $45.74 billion was granted during 2021. The average DAF account was $183,842.
In addition, other types of organizations on the uses side sponsor DAFs. The contributions to these donor-advised funds appear in Giving USA in the specific subsector under which the primary organization is categorized. Some examples are DAFs within higher education institutions (in education) and within organizations such as World Vision (in international affairs), the Humane Society (in environment/animals) or the National Christian Foundation (in public-society benefit).
Americans continued remembering charities in their wills. Giving by bequest has captured between 7% and 9% of total giving during the past 40 years, with high points in the five-year periods beginning in 1993, 1998, 2013 and 2018, the data show. Giving by bequest saw its largest period of growth during the five-year period beginning in 1998, with an increase of 40.7%.
Many nonprofit advocates want to ensure living Americans have an incentive to give. “Nonprofits leaders and policymakers should be alarmed that the 2022 decline in donations from individuals illustrates the impact of a 20-year decline in the percentage of Americans who donate to nonprofits,” said Steve Taylor, a principal at public policy firm Integer in Washington, D.C.
“In 2000, two-thirds of American households gave. By 2018, that percentage had fallen to less than half of households,” said Taylor who spent more than 15 years at United Way Worldwide, most recently as senior vice president and counsel for public policy.
A coalition of nonprofits and others are working to reverse this trend by asking Congress to allow all taxpayers who donate to deduct those gifts from their taxes. “Since 2018, only about 10% of taxpayers have been able to take the deduction, with the exception of the $300/$600 non-itemizer deduction in place in 2020 and 2021,” said Taylor. “While renewing and expanding this deduction is just part of a solution, virtually all the empirical evidence shows that tax deductibility increases donations.”
More troubling is when these numbers are paired with earlier research from the Lilly School that showed just 5.4% of American believe they had a personal interaction with a nonprofit – despite more than 10% of the population working at a nonprofit and tens of millions of people involved with organizations such as YMCAs, YWCAs and scouting.
“The Giving USA results should be a bit of a reminder or maybe a nudge if not a direct catalyst for a lot of folks around the philanthropic sector to recognize and think about the importance of engagement and building those authentic relationships,” said Osili.
Giving USA estimates primarily rely on econometric methods developed by researchers in philanthropy and the nonprofit sector and are reviewed and approved by members of the Giving USA External Review Panel. Members of the External Review Panel include research directors from national nonprofit organizations as well as scholars from such disciplines as economics and public affairs, all of whom are involved in studying philanthropy and the nonprofit sector.
The Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy prepares all of the estimates in Giving USA for the Giving USA Foundation. Giving USA develops estimates for giving by each type of donor (sources) and for recipient organizations categorized by subsectors (uses). Most of Giving USA’s annual estimates are based on econometric analyses and tabulations of tax data, economic indicators and demographics.
Data for giving by foundations come from Candid (formerly the Foundation Center). Giving USA researchers update data found within Giving USA each year. This is because current Giving USA estimates are developed before final tax data, some economic indicators and some demographic data are available. The estimates are revised and updated as final versions of these data become available. Final estimates are usually developed two or three years after their initial release.
Climate-related events and ramifications account for the top five global risks for the next decade in the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Global Risks Report. Climate change also ranked among the top five concerns cited by the Institute of Risk Management in its 2022 list. Extreme weather events such as hurricanes and flooding are increasing in many regions of the world. While climate change is often characterized as a long-term problem, its potential to increase the near-term risks of high-impact, high-probability weather events is a concern for organizations.
Climate change is projected to increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. Heat waves will be more severe, leading to droughts, and intense precipitation will lead to floods. Warming temperatures will increase the intensity of extratropical hurricanes. There is evidence that Category 4 and 5 hurricanes with sustained winds of 135 mph or higher could become more frequent.
The estimated losses due to climate change could be between $126 trillion and $616 trillion until the year 2100 given current commitments from organizations and governments, according to 2020 research published in Nature Communications. Losses from natural disasters worldwide in 2021 hit $280 billion, making it the fourth-costliest year since 2011, insurer Munich Re found. More than 50 major flood events caused $82 billion of economic losses globally in 2021.
In addition to the commercial liabilities associated with business disruptions, there are legal and corporate reporting implications. Rapidly developing climate related regulations can leave organizations open to legal action or fines, Chubb Institute found. According to the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) the impacts of climate change on a company’s financial situation must be disclosed by listed organizations. Similar climate change disclosure rules are in place for organizations listed on exchanges in Australia, Denmark, South Africa, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The UN’s Global Framework for Climate Risk Disclosure calls on organizations to analyze the impact of climate change and report on the implementation of mitigation measures.
Many organizations are experiencing the impacts from extreme weather events or expect to in the near future. Climate change could disrupt business models and destroy enterprise value that has taken decades to build. Recent severe storms, heat waves, and flooding events are just an early warning of what could come.
Climate change can disrupt supply chains, cause financial losses, and damage facilities. This can have myriad effects on business operations and security plans.
A Category-3 hurricane on the U.S. East Coast can cause an interruption of approximately $32 billion to top-line corporate revenues, according to 2011 research from the Global Travel Business Association (GBTA). U.S. business travel losses from a storm of this magnitude include 514,000 cancelled trips and $606 million in spending due to hurricane related cancellations, GBTA estimated. In the decade since that initial research, storms have intensified—leading to even more travel ramifications.
Weather related flight cancellations and delays have increased over the past two decades in the United States and Europe. In 2021 severe winter weather forced the cancellation of more than 300 flights at both Chicago’s O’Hare airport and Dallas/Fort Worth airport, The Financial Times reported. Airlines canceled more than 3,500 flights across the United States due to Hurricane Ian in 2022 while airports in Florida were shut down. The share of cancelled flights in the United States increased from 35 percent in 2004 to 54 percent in 2019, according to The Financial Times. The number of delays in European airspace rose from 3.5 million in 2003 to 6.5 million in 2019.
The U.S. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) attributes 21 percent of all roadway crashes to inclement weather—affecting nearly 1,235,000 crashes each year. The FHWA estimates that 23 percent of non-recurrent delays on U.S. highways are related to snow, ice, and fog, resulting in an estimated 544 million vehicle-hours of delay every year. Trucking companies and commercial vehicle operators lose more than 32 billion vehicle hours annually due to severe weather-related congestion, costing trucking organizations anywhere from $2.2 to $3.5 billion dollars, the FHWA estimated. Without changes, this number is projected to increase substantially.
Projections show that bridges, tunnels, and airports will become vulnerable as sea level rises. In the United States, around 40,500 miles of navigable waterways in rivers facilitate transportation by ships and barges. There is a climatic shift to a systematic and a long-term increase in flood incidence and scale in Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio, which have riverine transportation systems. Record water levels on the Mississippi River in 2019 disrupted the key transport network for exporting U.S. agricultural goods, causing losses valued at almost $1 billion, according to a 2022 report from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and RTI International, Act Now or Pay Later: The Costs of Climate Inaction for Ports and Shipping.
In 1996, a record-breaking 24-hour rainstorm resulted in flash flooding in Chicago. There were extensive travel delays on highways and railroads, commuters were unable to reach Chicago for up to three days, and more than 300 freight trains were delayed or re-routed. These record-breaking weather-related events are becoming more common.
Additionally, road infrastructure along approximately 60,000 miles in U.S. coastal areas is vulnerable to sea level rise and storm surges, according to the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit.
A U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) assessment in 2012 found that Hurricane Irene-related flooding resulted in more than $733 million in damages, including the damage to or complete loss of 2,400 roadways, 300 covered bridges, and six railroad tracks.
In 2021, Hurricane Ida struck the United States along the Gulf of Mexico, forcing a diversion of trucks—already in short supply across the country—for use in relief aid, The New York Times reported.
In addition to causing closures or delays, flooding may damage airport facilities, including runways. Thirteen of the 47 largest U.S. airports have at least one runway within 12 feet of sea level, making them particularly vulnerable to coastal storm surge and inundation.
Brookings Institute found that with just one foot of sea level rise, four significant U.S. airports will face significant flooding on more than 10 percent of their land. In New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, many critical transportation infrastructure facilities (including Newark and La Guardia airports) lie within the range of current and projected 50-year coastal storm surges, according to 2017 numbers from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Larger storms coupled with sea level rise will increase the duration of port closures. An analysis of storm-related disruptions across 74 ports in 12 countries found that an additional meter in storm surge height or 10 meters per second in wind speed is associated with two days of average increase in the duration of disruption, according to the RTI-EDF report.
Hurricane damage to U.S. ports have averaged almost $430 million per year, the report found. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy caused the complete shutdown of the Port of New York and New Jersey for more than eight days.
Tropical storms in Asia-Pacific also have widespread ramifications for ports. In 2011, Cyclone Yasi cost the Port of Brisbane $52 million and 10 days of operations. Typhoon Haikui caused $10 million in damage to the Port of Shanghai in 2012. In 2019, Typhoon Lekima caused a loss of $65 million to the Port of Dalian and closed the Port of Wenzhou in China for 45 days, Insurance Journal reported.
There are 12 major ports in East Asia that are highly exposed to typhoon hazards. These ports have a combined annual throughput of more than 160 million TEUs (20-foot equivalent units—a measurement to determine cargo capacity)— which is around 20 percent of the global total. Almost 290 ports (14 percent of all ports) are at extremely high risk, with more than 30 percent of them located in Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, and the United States.
The Port of Busan in South Korea, which is among the 10 most active ports in the world was inoperable for 91 days due Typhoon Maemi in 2003. Typhoon Maemi damaged 11 cranes and flooded the container yards, the RTI-EDF report said. A 10 percent increase in typhoon intensity can result in between 18 percent and 43 percent more downtime for Japanese ports, resulting in significant costs to the national economy, according to 2017 research from the University of Rhode Island.
Even ports in Europe that are currently considered well protected against high intensity storms—like in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Hamburg—are expected to need upgrades for their flooding defense systems to address from future sea level rise, according to the RTI-EDF report.
In South America, extreme rainfall in 2008 forced the closure of the Paranaguá Port, one of the most important ports in Brazil, resulting in losses of $350 million. More recently, landslides caused by heavy rainfall in November 2022 blocked road and rail access to the Paranaguá port, disrupting the flow of trucks headed to the coast, MarineLink reported.
The Panama Canal area experienced a rainfall deficit of more than 25 percent in 2019, the RTI-EDF report said. As a result of severe drought in the region, the Panama Canal Authorities set limits on traffic that cost global shipping companies between $230 million and $370 million.
In the 2011 monsoon season, Tropical Storm Nock-ten unleashed waves of flooding across Thailand. The floods spread across multiple river basins to inundate 65 out of Thailand’s 76 provinces, damaging 7,700 square miles of farmland, displacing millions of people, and resulting in 815 deaths. The flooding in Thailand highlighted the vulnerabilities of production and direct exporting when prevailing just-in-time procurement models and management had not fully accounted for the potential damage from supply chain disruptions, according to an article in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.
“Today’s global supply chain has achieved cost reduction by reducing inventory, shortening transportation timelines, and streamlining production systems,” wrote the researchers, Masahiko Haraguchi and Upmanu Lall. “However, with lean and complex supply chains, there is much more susceptibility to systemic risk, a financial term used to describe a risk originating from one node of a financial network which then harms the entire financial market. This notion of risk is applicable to supply chains. While a more efficient production and transportation system is more capital intensive and cost efficient, in the event of a natural disaster, the entire system may suffer disruption and break down.”
The Thai floods showed that disasters in one country can significantly affect manufacturing industries in many countries. Direct losses from the floods were estimated at $15 billion to $20 billion, according to a 2013 report from the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES), Weathering the Storm: Building Business Resilience to Climate Change. The floods affected about 10,000 factories, including 804 in just seven inundated industrial parks.
Of those factories affected by the floods, 56.7 percent were owned or operated by Japanese organizations, Haraguchi and Lall noted.
Honda operations were shut for six months, and its two production lines were beyond repair, according to a briefing from Just Auto. Its estimated production losses were more than $250 million, the C2ES report said. A shortage of parts forced Toyota to produce 30 percent fewer vehicles at its Japanese plants and postponed the launching of new models. HP estimated that more than half of its 7 percent revenue decline in the fourth quarter of 2011 was attributable to a shortage of hard disk drives caused by the flooding in Thailand. Construction firm Holcim was affected by severe flooding in both Thailand and eastern Australia in 2012, resulting in a loss of $15 million. With more than $46 billion in damages, the 2011 Thai floods were ranked by the World Bank as the fourth-costliest disaster at the time.
“When risk management professionals hear that the Polar Vortex is collapsing, they aren’t simply worried about how cold it will get; they are focused on the impact to business operations,” wrote Ann Pickren for Continuity Central in 2019.
For security and business continuity professionals, mitigation measures vary broadly, depending on a company’s unique risk profile. Organizations could check location specific risks based on historical patterns as well as mid- to long-term weather forecasts, Pickren wrote. Companies should conduct a disaster vulnerability analysis before expanding company operations to a new location. Organizations can globally distribute manufacturing sites to ensure that they are able to shift supply of products among sites in the event of a catastrophe.
Multinational Spanish banking group Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) has a total of 128 business continuity plans implemented in 25 of the 32 countries in which it operates, the C2ES report noted. “These plans were put to the test during floods and power outages in Venezuela, La Niña triggered floods in Colombia and storms and tornados in Alabama,” the report said. “By implementing its business continuity measures, in each case BBVA was able to continue to render its critical services and comply with its obligations to society and various authorities.”
Through a global security operations center (GSOC) or similar security management hub, chief security officers (CSOs) can assume emergency management functional responsibility for coordination with the municipal and police authorities, hospitals, electricity department, disaster management cells of business associations, and the fire brigade. The CSO could activate emergency response teams; conduct a quick damage assessment; assist in search, rescue, and emergency evacuations of employees; provide medical assistance; and incorporate security and safety measures during infrastructure restoration work.
The GSOC can be the technological hub for coordination between the company’s emergency management teams and federal and state government authorities. Alerts can be disseminated through various apps that can provide updated information on safety and security to employees. The GSOC can inform employees and vendors about areas that are likely to flood, assess damage to facilities from the video surveillance cameras, implement the measures which are mentioned in the emergency management standard operating procedures (SOPs), and provide updated information to the company’s communications director through the CSO.
The site infrastructure—which also includes the main server or data centers—can be destroyed during an earthquake, fire, flooding, or a hurricane. The chief information security officer (CISO) or CSO can have a data loss prevention strategy in place for employees. It’s crucial to have a combination of onsite and offsite backups of the organizational data which can be stored at geographically dispersed locations of the organization and on cloud infrastructure.
Organizations can conduct vulnerability assessments of facilities and operations in high-risk regions. A climate monitoring expert group could be established to observe local climate changes. For example, organizations operating in Southeast Asia can conduct geographical assessments to understand flooding during incessant rains.
Organizations could create an inclement weather policy for their employees. The policy will help organizations fulfill duty of care responsibilities.
Other measures can include the identification of critical dependencies, materials, and utilities. Market vulnerability analysis can be conducted to ensure that the supply chain is not disrupted.
Environmental intelligence uses the power of artificial intelligence to improve responsiveness to unpredictable weather conditions. The technology provides environmental data and forecasting capabilities to deliver greater insight into what weather is coming and how it might affect organizations. Organizations can mobilize facility and maintenance teams in advance to prevent damages to assets. Aviation operators are already leveraging environmental intelligence tools to assess weather risks and make necessary and agile decisions to protect personnel and maintain operations, IBM noted in a 2022 blog.
“In the U.S., for example, Tornado Alley is moving eastward due to climate change, disrupting lives that were historically safe from that type of weather event,” the blog explained. “During this new shifting tornado season, an aviation operator using reactive weather forecasting technology will be able to shut down operations quickly. But an operator using environmental intelligence can understand where the most severe tornados may form next. They may have facilities on high alert from the beginning of the season, build those facilities with future climate patterns in mind, or even avoid new investment in high-risk areas.”
Management can work with other organizations or industry groups to identify best practices while industry associations could work with governments to craft environmentally friendly policies.
Natural disasters disrupt global supply chains for raw materials, plus equipment support and maintenance services. The CSO can engage with vendors in the critical function areas of banking, finance, logistics, fuel, telecommunications, and electricity to improve event response planning. CSOs could work with vendors in the following areas:
Research into the effects of climate change and related mitigation measures is readily available. Climate change scenarios and models can present a range of future impacts of concern to organizations. Organizations can incorporate data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), NOAA, and the U.S. Geological Survey into their analysis.
Organizations can also collaborate with universities or government agencies to better understand climate-related vulnerabilities and risks.
For instance, Bayer partnered with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research to develop scenarios of changes in hydrology, air temperature, sea level, and river flows that would affect the company and its markets over the next 10, 50, and 100 years, the C2ES report explained. Similarly, Australian mining company Rio Tinto commissioned the UK’s Hadley Centre for Climate Change to develop a range of scenarios for how changes in key climate variables over the next 25 to 50 years might affect regions where the company operates.
Such studies can form the basis for a variety of educational efforts such as briefings for senior managers, webinars for employees directly involved in planning for climate related risks, and guidance for specific business units, projects, or investments. Climate impact modeling tools can also be made available to managers for business continuity planning purposes.
The world economy may lose up to 18 percent of GDP from climate change if no action is taken, according to a 2021 estimate from Swiss Re Institute. Economies in Asia would be hardest hit, with China at risk of losing nearly 24 percent of its GDP in a severe scenario, while the United States stands to lose close to 10 percent, and the European Union almost 11 percent. Organizations should learn and adapt in the long term and thrive in a world beset by the unpredictability of a changing climate.
New information has emerged from the investigation into a sprawling art and collectibles heist that eluded authorities for more than two decades. Earlier this month, after the US Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that it had charged nine people with conspiring to steal artworks, memorabilia and antiques from 20 different museums and institutions, it was discovered that missing pieces by Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock may have avoided the fiery fate of other stolen items from the hoard.
The thieves had taken to melting down or burning evidence to avoid arrest. Still, prosecutors told officials at the Everhart Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania—from which the Warhol and Pollock works were stolen in 2005—that a defendant reported seeing Warhol’s missing screenprint La Grande Passion (1984) within the last three years. According to The Times-Tribune newspaper of Scranton, the veracity of that claim has not been confirmed.
Four of the nine people involved in the thefts were indicted on 15 June by a federal grand jury on counts of conspiracy to commit theft of major artwork, concealment or disposal of objects of cultural heritage and interstate transportation of stolen property. The suspects had targeted mostly small museums in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and North Dakota between 1999 until 2019. Stolen items range from Pollock’s unauthenticated 1949 painting Springs Water to $1m worth of Yogi Berra memorabilia from the baseball legend’s namesake museum in Little Falls, New Jersey. The thieves also absconded from various institutions with $400,000 in gold nuggets, $1m in vintage firearms and more than 30 golf and horse-racing trophies.
According to the US attorney’s office, the gang burned Upper Hudson, a painting by Jasper Cropsey, in order to avoid detection. Other objects like championship rings were melted down into metal bars to sell in New York City. As such, chances of recovering the stolen items are low, authorities say.
“After all these years, we are heartened by the identification, capture and (hopeful) prosecution of the nine defendants," Charles Barber, the interim director of the Everhart Museum, told Artnews. “The Everhart is dedicated to the preservation and protection of precious art and historical items. These thieves have proven to be the antithesis of that philosophy by their wanton destructions.”
Reposted from Artnet News
Torrential rain in Germany has caused the ceiling of the Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, to leak. Photos from one gallery show a sheet of plastic draped over the 1641 Rembrandt van Rijn canvas The Mennonite preacher Cornelis Claesz Anslo and his wife Aeltje Gerritsdr Schouten, and a white bucket on the floor in front of the artwork to collect the water dripping from the ceiling.
The absurd scene was captured by David Grubbs, a musician and professor at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center in New York, and reported by Hyperallergic. Visiting the museum’s central Rembrandt display in Gallery X, he was disturbed to find a sheet of plastic duct taped to the wall, draped over the large painting, water dripping steadily into a bucket just inches away.
“It was truly bizarre,” Grubbs told Artnet News. “To the right of this one, a smaller Rembrandt had been removed and a second ceiling leak was steadily plop-plop-plopping into a bucket. There was a line of rainwater down the front of the plastic covering this larger Rembrandt; my guess is that given its size it was more difficult to remove and the covering (plastic and duct tape, literally) was temporary.”
He did not see any museum staff or security guards tending to the artwork. “The small number of visitors were completely shocked—disbelieving,” Grubbs added.
The museum’s guards discovered the leak around 4 p.m. on Friday afternoon, a Gemäldegalerie spokesperson told Artnet News in an email. Germany experienced its “wettest spring” on record, according to the German Weather Service, with flooded roads, train outages, and postponed Berlin Open tennis matches, as reported by the Associated Press.
“The restorers on site immediately provided ‘first aid’ and quickly secured the corresponding areas in the hall with special suction mats and a bucket,” the museum representative wrote. “Rembrandt’s painting of the Mennonite preacher Anslo was first protected with foil before the large-format, heavy painting was taken down shortly afterwards with the help of a lifting platform.”
“No damage was done to the painting itself; thanks to the quick intervention, no water got to the work. It is currently being stored in the depot. The site of the water leak was inspected and secured,” the email continued. “The affected hall and the entire Picture Gallery remain open as usual.”
The Gemäldegalerie is home to a collection of 20 Rembrandt works, a collection it claims is “one of the largest and most valuable in the world.” The museum displays 1,200 works of art, with a special focus on Dutch Golden Age masters and German and Italian painting from the 13th to 16th centuries.
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