Reposted from Vanity Fair

“Impossible,” said David Ward. The London Metropolitan Police constable looked up. Some 50 feet above him, he saw that someone had carved a gaping hole through a skylight. Standing in the Frontier Forwarding warehouse in Feltham, West London, he could hear the howl of jets from neighboring Heathrow Airport as they roared overhead.

At Ward’s feet lay three open trunks, heavy-duty steel cases. They were empty. A few books lay strewn about. Those trunks had previously been full of books. Not just any books. The missing ones, 240 in all, included early versions of some of the most significant printed works of European history.

Gone was Albert Einstein’s own 1621 copy of astronomer Johannes Kepler’s The Cosmic Mystery, in which he lays out his theory of planetary motion. Also missing was an important 1777 edition of Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, his book describing gravity and the laws of physics. Among other rarities stolen: a 1497 update of the first book written about women, Concerning Famous Women; a 1569 version of Dante’s Divine Comedy; and a sheath with 80 celebrated prints by Goya. The most valuable book in the haul was a 1566 Latin edition of On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, by Copernicus, in which he posits his world-changing theory that Earth and the other planets revolve around the sun. That copy alone had a price tag of $293,000. All together, the missing books—stolen on the night of January 29, 2017, into early the next day—were valued at more than $3.4 million. Given their unique historical significance and the fact that many contained handwritten notes by past owners, most were irreplaceable.

Scotland Yard’s Ward was stunned. He couldn’t recall a burglary like this anywhere. The thieves, as if undertaking a special-ops raid, had climbed up the sheer face of the building. From there, they scaled its pitched metal roof on a cold, wet night, cut open a fiberglass skylight, and descended inside—without tripping alarms or getting picked up by cameras. “Dangerous work,” he says. “This is not something ordinary burglars try to accomplish.”

Then there was the loot. In a warehouse laden with valuables coming in and out of Heathrow for customs clearance, the thieves had taken their time in the darkness, more than five hours, to select from among hundreds of books—choosing the most precious ones. They made off with nothing else from the vast freight building except for some nearby tote bags—heavy satchels that they snatched from another shipping container. Ward tells me on a call from London, “You must have a lot of patience, strength, and ingenuity not to trigger the sensors and to get the books back through that hole in the roof.”

The items belonged to three respected rare book dealers, two in Italy and one in Germany. They had shipped their wares through Heathrow, bound for an antiquarian fair in California. Informed of the heist that day, Alessandro Bisello Bado, a dealer in Padua whose shipment had been pilfered, nearly fainted. He boarded the next flight to London. Walking inside the warehouse, he saw that nearly everything in the trunk was gone, more than $1.2 million worth. Michael Kühn, a Berlin-based dealer, couldn’t believe it at first. “I had never heard of so many books being stolen at once,” he says. Why these books? he wonders. “Insurance fraud? Somebody who wanted to harm one of us? A book lover who wanted to have one item and threw away the rest of the books to cover his intentions?” All he knew was that his losses might bankrupt him.

As Ward looked for answers, the thieves weren’t waiting. Over the next few days, they moved their bulky cache around the city. On February 5, a van pulled up at a London house. Soon the vehicle and the trove were on their way out of the country. Some of the burglars also left, by air. But new operatives flew in to replace them. That very night, the reconstituted team embarked on another brazen high-wire raid on a warehouse. Many more would follow—a dozen, in fact, mainly around London.

Scotland Yard raced to follow leads—and wondered where the burglars would strike next. The U.K. press, meanwhile, remained focused on the Frontier Forwarding break-in, dubbing it the “Mission: Impossible theft”—a tip of the hat to its similarities with the movie’s iconic scene in which Tom Cruise, as Ethan Hunt, suspended by a cable, breaks into a CIA vault.

Ward could see these weren’t random warehouse robberies. But why…books? Someone must have tipped them off. “They knew what they wanted,” he says. “There were plenty of other valuables nearby. They targeted the books deliberately.”

The Met Police assigned organized crime specialist Andy Durham to oversee the case while Ward and other detectives did what Durham calls the “grunt work.” But they had little to go on. They even checked to see if a circus had come to town, so acrobatic was the feat.

There are any number of reasons for someone to steal rare books. They are alluring and beautiful, with an aura that connects the present to the past. Connoisseurs will pay unfathomable sums for an iconic book. Last October, rare book collector and dealer Stephan Loewentheil spent just under $10 million for a first printing of Shakespeare’s plays, referred to as the First Folio. That was a bargain. In 2013, David Rubenstein, the billionaire cofounder of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group, paid the highest price ever for a printed volume, $14.2 million, for The Bay Psalm Book, one of 11 extant copies of America’s first known book.

Rare book thefts occur all the time. “We in the business hear nearly weekly that something has gone missing,” Kühn says. Some sticky-fingered collectors covet them simply to add luster to their shelves. Ed Maggs, fifth-generation co-owner of what is reputedly Queen Elizabeth’s favorite bookstore, London’s venerable Maggs Bros., tells me, “The problem of the connoisseur book thief is a real one.”

The most famous large-scale thefts almost always take place over the span of years. In 2012, more than 1,500 volumes—including centuries-old editions of Aristotle, Descartes, Galileo, and Machiavelli, worth many millions—were found to have been looted from the Baroque-era Girolamini Library in Naples by the library’s director. He and a large network of accomplices went to jail for stealing and auctioning off his pilfered books. Similarly, the rare book archivist at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh swiped 300-odd books valued at around $8 million—but it took him 25 years. He was convicted in January 2020.

But Kühn says of the pre-dawn warehouse heist, “Such a large number of books had never been stolen at one time before this. It was really unbelievable.”

For a while, the spectacular theft made global headlines. Then came an unexpected break from 1,500 miles away.

Alina Albu, Romania’s chief prosecutor for organized crime, was working one morning about three weeks after the break-in when the phone rang at her office in Bucharest. On the line was someone unknown to her. The caller, whose identity she won’t reveal, told her about a load of rare books that had been stolen from a London warehouse ending up in Romania.

“I thought he was joking,” she tells me. As they spoke, she did an online search; numerous articles popped up about the theft, which had somehow escaped her attention. She began to take the caller’s tip seriously when he spoke of three men he claimed were behind the raid. He used their nicknames. Two were new to her, “Tizu” and “Blondie.” The other, she says, “turned a flashlight on for me.” She hadn’t heard anything about “Cristi Huidumă”—Cristi the Bruiser—in 15 years but recalled his associations with a notorious organized crime case she’d worked. After investigating further, that afternoon she telephoned Tiberius Manea, head of organized crime investigations for the national police. He’d already gone home for the day. “Tiberius,” she said, “come back. We have a new case, a very big one.”

Manea immediately started to assemble a team that would work with Albu for the next three years. With a passion not unlike a collector in pursuit of a rare find, Albu tells me when we first meet via Zoom, “my goal was to recover the books. I became obsessed.”

Manea reached out to Ward at Scotland Yard. He had already begun to make some fitful progress in pulling the pieces together. Ward watched some 70 hours of video from the roadways around Feltham. He finally saw footage showing a blue Renault hatchback park at 9 p.m. on January 29 on the road outside the warehouse complex. Ward says, “Nobody would think they were up to no good.” Two men exited the car and cut holes in the perimeter fence. A third drove off; the two others entered the grounds, making their way along freight roadways to the Frontier Forwarding building. Ward speculates they climbed a drainpipe, but even now the police can’t be sure how the duo reached the roof. They cut through the skylight and, most likely using ropes or a folding ladder, made their way down.

Once inside, the two men went straight for their quarry. They sorted through the books and picked the ones they wanted. They found a shipment of heavy-duty carrying bags, which were on their way to oil field workers in Africa. They packed 16 full of books. Five hours and 15 minutes later, “they came out the way they came in,” says Ward. The Renault sped away at 2:50 a.m. “An impressive day’s work,” Durham acknowledges.

Using license plate recognition cameras along the nearby roads, Ward was able to identify the vehicle. A few days later, the car turned up, abandoned in South London. Although its papers were falsified, they listed the owner as a Romanian national living in England, but, says Ward, “Our analysts didn’t have him in our databases.” He was happily surprised when Manea called.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, organized and often violent criminal gangs from the former communist bloc, including Romania, have branched out across Europe, developing large, profitable illicit enterprises—operating protection rackets and prostitution, drug, and burglary rings. Vast amounts of illegally gained money flowing back into Romania have also been a destabilizing force at home, thwarting government officials’ attempts to rein in the gangsters. Knowing they had their work cut out for them, detectives from Scotland Yard started to analyze the warehouse case with their Romanian counterparts. Ward and Durham first met with Manea and his associates at Europol’s headquarters in The Hague in late March 2017. They opened a probe that eventually encompassed police forces in four countries. The joint investigative team members would meet five more times in the Netherlands, Italy, the U.K., and Romania. Acting on the source’s tip, Manea’s crew began undercover surveillance of Cristi Huidumă, whose real name is Gavril Popinciuc (pop-in-chee-uk).

When Albu, Manea, and I spoke via Zoom, Albu, aged 47, sat side by side at her desk with Manea, 42. Both wore black COVID masks. The wall behind them was bare except for a whiteboard with multiple notes. Neither looked particularly hardened, but Albu and Manea have clashed many times with dangerous mobsters. Both speak fluent if broken English. Albu first heard of Popinciuc while tangling with his fearsome “godfather,” Ioan Clămparu. The crime boss was for several years Interpol’s most wanted fugitive, with a bounty of $4.6 million on his head. “He was a criminal star in Romania,” says Albu.

Clămparu goes by a variety of nicknames, among them, “Pig Head” (probably derived from his thick neck, broad face, and 250-pound girth) and, without irony, “Godfather.” (He had many other godsons beside Popinciuc, according to Albu.) Both Clămparu and Popinciuc come from northeastern Romania, a remote area dotted with ancient towns and small farms bordering the Republic of Moldova. It is among the poorest parts of Europe, and one of its sources of income derives from criminal activities abroad.

As a drunken teen, Clămparu punched and stomped a man to death for no apparent reason, for which he served 10 years in prison. After his release in 1999, he organized one of the largest human trafficking and prostitution networks ever assembled in Europe. Clămparu and his lieutenants lured poor girls, some as young as 15, from Romania and Moldova with the promise of jobs in Spain. Once in Madrid, they were forced to prostitute themselves in the alleys of the city’s sprawling Casa de Campo park. Albu contends that Clămparu’s pimps took 150 to 200 entrapped women on nightly rounds to the park to sell sexual services. On occasion, she says, Clămparu and his pimps tortured those who resisted. “It was really violent,” she adds. Clămparu personally pocketed tens of millions of euros.

In 2004, Romanian and Spanish police finally cracked “the Clămparu,” as his mob was known, thanks to a few women who escaped their handlers and alerted the police. After the authorities moved in, Clămparu went underground even as Albu indicted him, winning his conviction, in absentia, for human trafficking. The Clămparu sent her numerous death threats, forcing her to retain bodyguards. “I was very young,” she says. “I didn’t scare so easily.” Manea shrugs, “Such scares come with the territory.” In 2011, Spanish authorities tracked down Clămparu. Now 52, he’s serving a 30-year sentence in a Romanian prison. Albu wondered whether Popinciuc hadn’t revived the Clămparu.

In fact, Popinciuc, who is only five years younger than his godfather, had purportedly formed his own mob and, to stay ahead of the police, studied the failings of the Clămparu. Popinciuc comes from the small northeastern city of Suceava, where a handsomely preserved medieval castle draws tourists. Pudgy, with the bemused look of a weary office clerk, he kept his criminal enterprises mobile to avoid capture. By 2009, he was a leader in a multinational counterfeit cigarette ring. The group moved its factories, warehouses, and tobacco stocks frequently, even among countries, but Romanian authorities smashed the operation. In 2015, Popinciuc received a suspended sentence for tax evasion. Wealthy from lucrative cigarette sales, Popinciuc, according to Albu, built several legitimate businesses. They include a large hotel, restaurant, and event hall complex in Suceava, though they reportedly now belong to his ex-wife. Albu says that Popinciuc is the one who put up the money that financed the warehouse raiders’ operations in England and built the crew that pulled off the heists.

In Albu’s view, Popinciuc teamed up with another Romanian, Cristian Ungureanu, 41, who acted as operations chief. The two men and their lieutenants masterminded a gang that sent small skilled teams to hit targets exclusively outside Romania, figuring that foreign detectives would never trace them back. To act as local operatives, Popinciuc brought on his younger brother Marian Albu (no relation to Alina Albu) and other Romanians living in England. Also joining in: Ungureanu’s younger brother, Ilie, living in Germany. “There were leaders and foot soldiers,” Manea explains. “Popinciuc was almost never in the field.” Most of the gang, says Albu, led “double lives,” living with their families, even maintaining accounts on social media, punctuated by quick “business trips” to carry out crimes outside Romania.

Albu and Manea soon understood how Popinciuc and Ungureanu ran the crime syndicate, but they didn’t know who the foot soldiers were. Then they got another lucky break. On March 28, 2017, regional Romanian police stopped a van driving through the northeastern part of the country. The driver, Narcis Popescu, had new laptops and smartphones with him. He claimed to have bought them in England. Asked to show a proof of purchase, Popescu needed to have an invoice sent to his phone from a retailer in the U.K. Popescu produced a receipt. But the police had already traced the items’ serial numbers back to a theft from an English warehouse just two weeks earlier.

This random roadway arrest helped shape the hunt for the gang members. Meanwhile, other evidence bubbled up. Ward and his analysts took DNA from a piece of metal, possibly a ladder rung, left in the Frontier Forwarding warehouse. Manea’s police used it to identify Daniel David. According to Albu, he turned out to be the one that her source called Tizu. Genetic findings from the abandoned Renault matched up with Popescu. The identity of the second of the two Frontier Forwarding raiders—Victor Opăriuc, a.k.a. Blondie—emerged from tracing the others’ movements. According to Albu, Opăriuc, 29, and David, 37, were particularly agile, strong, and adept at climbing in and out of warehouses.

Using cell phone tracking and airline flight data, Scotland Yard retraced the trio’s movements. On January 27, Opăriuc and David had flown from Iasi, Romania, to London’s Luton Airport. They drove in Popescu’s Renault to South London, where they remained until the evening of the 29th, the night of the break-in.

Cell records show that once inside the building, Opăriuc placed several calls to Cristian Ungureanu, who had flown to London the previous day. He, in turn, relayed information to Popinciuc and then called Marian Mamaliga, another gang member who was in Romania. Mamaliga then left in a van for England. On February 1, two days after the books were stolen, Ilie Ungureanu flew in from Germany, then four days after that, with Mamaliga, he drove the book-laden van through the Eurotunnel. A week after the robbery, the books had disappeared somewhere in Romania, but not before a fresh set of thieves had struck yet another warehouse, this time making off with around $37,000 in cash.

According to Albu, within a year she and Manea knew the identities of virtually all the members of the gang. But she says the police were hesitant to arrest them without definitive evidence. “It’s not what you know,” Manea says, “it’s what you can prove.” They were also worried that if they moved in too soon, the books might never turn up. Albu tells me that she feared that if the men expected their imminent arrest, “they might burn the books.”

As the months progressed, revolving teams shuttled through England, committing 12 sophisticated and precariously acrobatic warehouse burglaries. Typically, the raiders came through the roof, but for some thefts, they cut open neighboring buildings, leaving gaping holes in walls and ceilings to avoid alarmed doors, security guards, and camera detection. “They never attacked a building straight on,” Durham says.

Each heist, according to Albu, Manea, Durham, Ward, and court transcripts, went off like clockwork. Cristian Ungureanu was on hand to coordinate ops. Popinciuc monitored from afar. Popescu served as the gang’s travel agent, booking plane tickets and leasing housing for the revolving cast of accomplices. A van arrived, the loot was loaded, and the entire enterprise vanished. “Everybody had his part, each his role,” Durham tells me. For two and a half years, they got away with their disciplined, complex burglaries, like a Bucharest-based Ocean’s Eleven.

They stole books. They stole cash. They stole jewelry, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and clothes. Some got fenced in the U.K., some went to Romania and were sold, and other items were sold online. In total, the thieves raked in nearly $5 million worth of goods. They also left behind a trail of destruction, damaging warehouse structures and leaving businesses in disarray.

Finally, on June 25, 2019, almost two and a half years after the rare books were stolen, came what investigators dubbed Z-Day. Gathering at a high-tech command center inside Europol Headquarters were representatives from the joint investigative team as well as officials from Europol and Europe’s judicial coordinating body, Eurojust. Before dawn, more than 150 police and judicial officials fanned out simultaneously to search 45 houses and other sites in England, Italy, Germany, and Romania. By the end of the next day, Popinciuc, Opăriuc, David, Mamaliga, and Popescu, along with three other gang members, were led off in handcuffs in Romania; Ilie Ungureanu was arrested in Germany; Marian Albu and two other alleged associates were taken in England. Cristian Ungureanu went underground. He was finally arrested in Turin, Italy, in January 2020. The men were brought to England for trial. All pleaded innocent.

But the books still hadn’t been found.

The trial began on February 20, 2020, at the Kingston Crown Court, a short drive from the warehouse that brought the men such notoriety. Albu, Manea, and their team came to London. Ward and Manea were slated to be called to give evidence. None of the defendants was willing—or obligated—to testify.

In her opening presentation to the court, prosecutor Catherine Farrelly accused the defendants of stealing the rare books for profit. In a voice dripping with sarcasm, she asked about the Romanian defendants’ motives: “Were they going to pop back to the U.K., hungry for a spot of learning and have a dip into Sir Isaac Newton’s 17th-century work Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophyor spend some time appreciating the Spanish painter Francisco Goya’s genius by flicking through some of his 19th-century etchings?”

Then suddenly, the proceedings crashed to a halt—due to the pandemic. With space needed for 13 defendants and about 25 attorneys, as well as interpreters, witnesses, prosecutors, judge, jury, guards, court staff, and press, a courtroom the size of an arena would have been necessary for the trial to continue safely. The men were sent to prison to await the time when they could return to court. There they languished. Attiq Malik, a prominent and pricey criminal defense solicitor—well known in the U.K. for his appearances on the hit British series 24 Hours in Police Custody—represents Popinciuc. “Even if we won the case,” he tells me, “they would have been in prison for another year.” All the men except one decided to plead guilty rather than sit in jail indefinitely.

This fall, the men returned to court via remote hookups from prison to receive their sentences. Judge Jonathan Davies said, “Each [of you] joined and played a part in a criminal enterprise carried out with skill and determination…. [You] took risks with [your] eyes open.” He added that this “was a carefully planned operation, often carried out with Mission: Impossible skill.” With a reduction for pandemic conditions, he then meted out the lightest sentences to the “foot soldiers”: three years and seven months for David and Opăriuc, four years for Mamaliga. The stiffest terms went to the “brains” behind the heists. Cristian Ungureanu received five years and one month; Popinciuc, the financial “muscle” and boss, got five years and eight months. All the men face confiscation of assets as well. Throughout the ordeal, the gang has stayed mum about how and why they chose their targets.

The police remain uncertain about whether an insider had helped them on the Frontier Forwarding job. “The books,” Ward says, “were only supposed to be in the warehouse for less than 24 hours. That’s too much of a coincidence that they attacked this warehouse.” Adds Albu, “We think they had intelligence about the value of goods. They expected to find jewelry or something else of great value, but they found the books instead”—simply stumbling upon a cultural treasure chest. She believes “it was a surprise for them.”

One of the defendants held out, determined to go to court and prove his innocence. His trial is set to resume this month and could reveal details about the gang’s operations that have yet to come to light. Albu speculates that someone, perhaps a shipping industry insider, may have hacked freight insurance databases that clued the burglary teams in to the presence of lucrative targets.

Still, the question remains: Why books? Booksellers can be a pessimistic lot, often expressing a view that the last word on their business may soon be written. “As a rare book dealer myself,” laments Rebecca Romney, whom TV viewers know from the History channel program Pawn Stars, “I’m aware of the unfortunate truth that rare books, while of immense cultural value, are much more difficult to sell than laptops.” Ed Maggs, the London bookseller, agrees. “This,” he tells me, “was the smartest and the dumbest robbery ever. Smart because of all the Mission: Impossible business with ropes, and dumb because there are few objects of value that are less fungible than rare books.”

Cops seem to have a rosier outlook on prospects for the illicit rare book trade. “There is,” says Ward, “always a market for items of curiosity.” (Indeed, in recent months there has been a rash of thefts from London rare book dealers.) Durham speculates that the Heathrow-area heist might have been “ordered by the top of this organized crime group,” because he or someone he knew wanted the rare treasures. Or the books might have been intended to serve as collateral or as a sort of criminal insurance policy. Some syndicates, Durham says, “want to have possession of culturally important valuables to offer up to assist in getting a lesser sentence” should they get caught for other crimes.

And what about the stolen books? Just as happens in the best books, our story has a happy ending.

Once the roles of the Ungureanu brothers came to light, Albu and Manea suspected, and Scotland Yard confirmed, that they were the ones who might have stashed the lot. On September 16, 2020, with the defendants’ sentencing just days away, Manea led his team on a search of a large new house the brothers had constructed next to their parents’ home in the northeastern Romanian countryside. The other officers watched while a jackhammer broke apart a six-inch slab laid over the garage floor. Manea shoveled away the debris and lifted a board. “It was very tense,” he recalls. “I was really worried about damaging the books. We had worked so long and hard to arrive at that moment.”

And there they were. He climbed into a bunker dug about six feet underground to lift out the books. Most were packed into recycling bins; others had been left in the bags. The following day the booksellers flew to Bucharest to recover their belongings, which were moved to the National Library. Most of the books remained in sterling condition. Some had suffered moisture damage or had broken spines or stains, though nearly all were reparable. Only four books were still missing, one worth $34,000, though none was among the most valuable.

Bisello Bado, arriving from Padua, walked into the National Library where each of his books was laid out on shelves in a climate-controlled room. “I had given up hope,” he says. “When I saw them, I felt like the youngest book dealer in the world. They were fantastic books.”

That evening, the book dealers, the entire Romanian investigative squad, and the English team members on hand celebrated over dinner at a Bucharest restaurant. “Tonight,” an elated Bisello Bado told the gathering, “we drink like lions!”

Seeing the dealers’ joy at regaining their treasured books “was our reward,” says Manea. Even through her mask, I can see Albu smile when she recalls, “I never stopped believing we would bring them back their books. Never.”

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Reposted from Artnet News

A fifth of museum staff and students surveyed by the American Alliance of Museums don’t expect to be working in the sector three years from now. The striking figure is part of a broader report released by the organization this week about the state of the field—and it makes clear that museums and their workers will continue to cope with the effects of the global health crisis for some time to come.

Fifty-seven percent of those surveyed cited burnout and 59 percent cited compensation as reasons for shifting career paths.

Meanwhile, almost a quarter of museum employees surveyed found themselves out of work at some point over the past year, with five percent still unemployed. More than 40 percent reported lost income, averaging 31 percent of their salaries or $21,191.

The report on the impact of the pandemic on the museum community is based on the results of a survey conducted last month. But the figures likely do not paint a complete picture of the number of museum workers whose employment was impacted by the pandemic, as the survey was more likely to reach current employees, rather than those no longer on staff, and middle and upper management, rather than frontline workers, who bore the brunt of most staffing cuts.

Part-time staff were struggling the most, with 21 percent living paycheck to paycheck.

“Since the pandemic began, the Alliance has successfully advocated for billions of dollars of Federal relief funding which has sustained thousands of museum jobs,” Laura Lott, president and CEO of AAM, said in a statement. “As we recover and rebuild, we must focus on equity, empathetic leadership, and actions that support the people who make museums possible. The resiliency and future vitality of our field relies on them.”

The report also examined the experiences of BIPOC workers, who represented just 20 percent of respondents, and were more likely to have been under financial stress at some point over the last year. Women, who made up 78 percent of respondents, were more likely to have experienced an increased workload and a loss of salary or benefits than their male counterparts.

Beyond its financial effects, the pandemic took a toll on workers’ mental health and wellbeing, with respondents rating its impact at nearly a seven out 10 on average.

Looking to the future, student respondents were particularly unsure about their career outlook, with 92 percent believing they were unlikely to be able to find museum jobs and 78 percent doubting their ability to get a museum job with sufficient compensation.

But despite it all, some are keeping a positive outlook, with 57 percent calling themselves cautiously optimistic, and 7.5 percent very optimistic.

Conducted between March 9 and 17, the survey had 2,666 responses, representing only a fraction of the 726,000 jobs in the museum sector pre-pandemic.

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Reposted from Allied Universal

The nature of security programs is changing. Higher demands for customer service; increased use of technology; evolving threat scenarios, even language skills remain at the core of day-to-day security functions.

At the same time, the labor market continues to tighten and the challenge of attracting and retaining qualified staff is becoming difficult. Still, many corporations are choosing to outsource non-core service functions, such as security, to focus on their core competencies and rely on their security partner to recruit, develop and retain quality security staff.

Below are key lessons learned on keeping up with the evolving challenges of building and maintaining best-in-class security officer teams.

1. It starts with recruiting. How you attract future team members to your program is crucial. Your job postings should clearly promote the benefits and opportunities of being part of your team. At the same time, you need to get out into your community and talk about the team and the environment you are creating with your security program. Share the skills, culture and values you are integrating into your program. 

2. Meet basic needs: There are three specific elements that must be met to attract the right staff. If these three needs are not completely met, the revolving door will ensue:

• Competitive wages
• Distance from residence
• Shift preference

First, there must be a livable wage to reduce your officers from having to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, which is so common today.  Also consider the distance from home and working a schedule that meets family and lifestyle expectations is also just as critical.

3. Develop security staffs’ hard and soft skills: Training is an essential requirement for anyone wishing to work in security, and is also a key component of recruiting, developing and motivating high-quality security teams. Security work has always depended on a range of “hard” skills. Typically, these skills included knowledge of and execution on policies and procedures, such as access control and emergency response. But in today’s information age, where people rely on the Internet for information, this has never been more important. Managers must implement innovative training to help security officers know all procedures.

4. Career pathing to your team member’s best potential. Whenever hiring and retention gets tough, we all rationalize it by claiming “it’s the money.” Without a doubt, wages will always be a key component and basic need of any employee, which is why it ranks as Number 1 on this “Basic needs” list in point 2 above.

But once someone is onboard, is it always money that leads them away?  No, not always. Many workers are looking to learn and develop in order to build a security career. If they don’t see opportunity with your program they will go looking for it elsewhere. Companies that can’t promise any kind of advancement opportunities soon fall behind those that do. Entry-level staff need to be able to see how they can become supervisors. So, when more money isn’t an option, make sure a future can be. Pave the way for your team through succession planning and skills development. 

5. Communication and recognition goes a long way: The way officers are treated will go a long way towards building ownership in your program.  Employees want to be respected, informed and appreciated. Great security teams are engaged, provide feedback and feel part of the overall strategy.

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Reposted from American Libraries Magazine

The American Library Association (ALA) announced April 9 it will make available $1.25 million in emergency relief grants to libraries that have experienced substantial economic hardship caused by the coronavirus pandemic. ALA invites public, school, academic, and tribal libraries across the US and its territories to apply for grants of $30,000–$50,000 from the ALA COVID Library Relief Fund. Libraries serving low-income and rural communities, or communities that are predominately Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and people of color, are especially encouraged to apply.

These funds are intended to bolster library operations and services, including technology access, collections, digital instruction, staffing, and outreach. Funds can be used to maintain and amplify existing service strategies or add new ones.

“Libraries have demonstrated extraordinary innovation over the past year in creating new materials, programs, and service delivery models, but they are being asked to do more with less,” ALA Executive Director Tracie D. Hall said in an April 9 statement. “This new grant program recognizes those efforts and seeks to strengthen them, especially in communities where the need is greatest.” Hall added that this fund is the first part of a larger fundraising effort to support libraries, with more announcements planned in the coming months.

The ALA COVID Library Relief Fund is supported by Acton Family Giving, as part of its pandemic grantmaking response. Initial seed funding was provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The application deadline is May 20. Awards will be announced at the end of June. Additional information and award guidelines are available on the grant application site. ALA’s Chapter Relations Office will administer the ALA COVID Library Emergency Relief Fund.

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Reposted from Allied Universal

Our access to around-the-clock news greatly increases our visibility to acts of crime and violence. To avoid becoming a victim of crime ourselves, there are preemptive strategies we can implement in our daily lives to maximize our personal safety and security and minimize our exposure to threats. The following are some best practices to help you reduce your risk, deter criminal activity and increase your safety at home, online and in public places.

Protect Your Home and Family

• Develop and communicate contingency plans with your family for sheltering in place, emergency evacuation and home intrusions.
• Install an alarm system or video surveillance system.
• Increase visibility by improving exterior lighting and installing motion sensors.
• Keep shrubs and trees trimmed and away from doors and windows to eliminate areas for criminals to hide.
• Give the impression you are home even when you are not: don’t broadcast your travel plans on social media, stop papers and mail, use timers to alternate lights on at night and have a neighbor park a car in your driveway.

Maintain Online Integrity

• Ensure your privacy settings are intact and up to date on the social media sites you use.
• Use discretion when posting any personal information on social sites. Posts intended for family and friends could inadvertently provide access to unintended audiences—current and future employers, hackers and those with ill intent.
• Secure your smartphone by updating operating systems regularly, disabling geotagging, using data encryption features and avoid clicking on suspicious emails and links.

Be Vigilant

• Limit phone use in public places so your focus remains on your surroundings.
• Keep back packs and purses zipped and close to your body when in public places.
• Travel with others when possible and alert others of your plans when venturing out solo.
• Always have your keys in hand when walking across parking lots and garages to your car.
• Park close to entrances and in well-lit, high traffic areas whenever possible.
• Lock your car doors immediately when getting out of or into your car.
• Keep the interior of your car clean, with valuables hidden from sight or locked in the trunk.
• Never attach readily visible identifying information (name, address and phone) on your keys or bags. Doing so gives criminals direct insight to where you live.
• Increasing personal safety and security begins with making informed choices, maintaining a level of situational awareness, and always striving to be prepared. See more in my WKRN.com story titled Situational Awareness is Key to Keeping Yourself Safe.

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Reposted from Artnet News

Dutch authorities have linked a suspect to two major art thefts that took place during the early days of lockdown last spring.

The police announced on Tuesday morning that they had arrested a 58-year-old man on suspicion of stealing both Vincent Van Gogh’s The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring (1884) and Frans Hals’s Two Laughing Boys with a Mug of Beer from two museums in the Netherlands.

The suspect, who has not been named by police, was arrested at his home in the town of Baarn, near Hilversum in the Netherlands. Neither painting has been recovered.

The first crime was committed around 3:15 a.m. on the morning of March 30, when a theft arrived at the Singer Laren Museum, smashed through reinforced glass doors with a sledgehammer, grabbed the Van Gogh canvas, and fled into the night on a motorcycle. The robbery was captured on security videos, released via a Dutch crime show in late April.

A few months later, in June, art detective Arthur Brand caught wind of a “proof of life” photograph circulating in the criminal underworld. It showed the front page of the New York Times, the back of the Van Gogh painting, and a biography of infamous art thief Octave Durham, titled Meesterdief (Masterthief). 

Durham went to prison for stealing two other paintings by Van Gogh, and the inclusion of his biography in the hostage-like photograph bolstered law enforcement’s belief that the Singer Laren thief was a copycat.

The Van Gogh painting was on loan to the Singer Laren Museum from the Groninger Museum for a temporary exhibition, and was the only Van Gogh in the Groninger’s collection.

“Compliments to the police for their detective work. No robbery should go unpunished,” said Evert van Os, the managing director of the Singer Laren museum, in a statement. Although the painting itself remains missing, “everyday we hope to receive good news,” van Os says, “so that visitors to the Groninger Museum are able to enjoy this fabulous artwork again.”

The second robbery, of a Frans Hals painting valued at $17 million, stolen from the small Hofje van Aerden museum near Utrecht, was another nighttime theft. Thieves made off with the painting on August 27, 2020, at around 3:30 a.m. after forcing open a back door.

The jovial picture is a popular target for thieves: it had been stolen once in 1988 and again in 2011. Police are hoping it will be recovered for a third time.

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Reposted from WFAA

At Fair Park, the Hall of State remains closed due to damage it sustained during Texas's historic winter storm in February. Yet, on Wednesday, Dallas city council members took the first step to getting the symbolic museum back open. 

On Feb. 17, when the storm was grappling much of Texas, the Hall of State lost power. Unable to heat pipes inside, administrators were called early in the morning about sprinkler system pipes bursting. 

Documentary filmmaker Mark Birnbaum compiled multiple videos of the pipes gushing water into the East Texas Room. 

The Hall of State houses and features several collections of recognizable Texas art and artifacts. It also honors some of the state's heroes like Sam Houston and Davy Crockett. 

In one area of the museum, you'll find Tom Landry's Super Bowl rings that he won with the Dallas Cowboys. Another? Davy Crockett's pistol and Santa Anna's spurs. 

In the East Texas Room, water damaged the gum-paneled walls, orotone photographs taken by Polly Smith showing scenes throughout Texas in the early 1920s and 1930s, and murals depicting the region before and after oil was discovered. 

Dallas City Council members passed a resolution Wednesday that would allocate $376,092 to restore and refurbish any damaged pieces.  

However, roughly $3 million is still going to be needed to repair infrastructure to the building. 

Karl Chiao, the executive director for the Dallas Historical Society, said the whole ordeal was a nightmare. The two things a museum tries to avoid most are fire and water damage.  

The Dallas Historical Society has managed the building since 1938. 

"You know, this happened around 4 a.m., and by 10 a.m., we had 25 to 30 people here helping," Chiao said. "We've got over three million items in our collection, and this is one of the three most historic buildings in Texas behind the Alamo and the State Capitol." 

Roughly 1 to 4 inches of water had to be swept out of the building erected for Texas's Centennial Exposition in 1936. Fans are still drying it to this day. 

Birnbaum captured volunteers in February, moving artifacts into the Great Hall, some of them needing to be dried out. 

One of the soaked items was Quanah Parker's doeskin pipe bag. Parker was a war leader of the Kwahadi band of the Comanche Nation.

Interior damage was also done to the East Texas Room ceiling and other ceiling areas around the museum. The walls in the East Texas Room will likely have to be repaired, and the sprinkler system will also have to be fixed. 

That is where the $3 million derives from.  

Council members will likely approve the needed cash, because the City already spent $14.4 million on restoration to the building that was finished in December. 

The funds were secured by voters in 2017, when a majority approved a bond sale for financing the renovation.  

Chiao is looking forward to when repairs actually begin. He hopes the building can reopen in the coming months.  

"It feels a little bit like Groundhog Day," Chiao said. "We just got done doing this renovation, and now here we are again. It's a little frustrating, but the good thing is we've done it before." 

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Reposted from Government Executive

Smithsonian Institution facilities remain closed to the public indefinitely, but the agency’s union is worried about employee safety when operations resume, based on problems encountered by staff who have been required to report to worksites over the past year and those involved in limited reopenings in the summer and fall. 

On March 14, 2020, the Smithsonian closed all of its locations (the majority of which are in Washington, D.C.) as the lockdowns for the novel coronavirus pandemic began. Between July and September, the National Zoo and seven museums reopened with restrictions, but then all were closed again in late November due to a spike in coronavirus cases in the Washington region. Despite being closed to the public, many employees, such as security officers and facilities workers, still have to be on site, which has been an ongoing problem, according to American Federation of Government Employees Local 2463, which represents Smithsonian employees. 

“We have had since Day 1 numerous problems beginning with trying to be on the [Smithsonian’s] committee, on the COVID team, so that bargaining unit employees could have a representative,” said David Hendrick, president of AFGE Local 2463. “They refused my numerous requests to allow the union person on the committee.”

There are over 6,300 employees at the Smithsonian, of which 3,215 are bargaining unit employees. Many union members have been working on site during the pandemic, and “the majority are minorities and a large part of that is African American,” according to Hendrick. Those are communities that have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic. 

On-site employees have been working “side by side with outside contractors who repeatedly fail to wear masks,” Hendrick said. “On numerous occasions they do not have adequate [personal protective equipment] supplies. Cleaning procedures after someone is found to be infected are below standards or not [happening] at all.” Also, “on some occasions when they come down with COVID the Smithsonian claims they caught the COVID virus at home and refuses to pay them while they recuperate at home.” 

WUSA9 first reported in April 2020 that contractors were working at the Museum of American History, which prompted employees’ concerns for increased risk of exposure. 

As of this March 1, there had been 242 COVID-19 cases among Smithsonian staff, of which 97 were teleworkers. At least 145 of the staff infected were bargaining unit employees, Hendrick was informed by the Smithsonian (a Smithsonian spokesperson told Government Executive the agency would not disclose the numbers). 

Union members are “concerned with what's going to happen to them once the public comes in because of the lack of Smithsonian following the COVID recommendations, providing adequate supplies and ensuring that the employees are safe,” said Hendrick. “They’re scared not only for their health” but also their families’ well-being.  

Union representatives also expressed concern that the Smithsonian won’t follow the Labor Department’s “presumption of workplace causation” for federal workers who contract COVID. Employees have an easier time claiming benefits if it is assumed they caught COVID at work. The presumption of workplace causation was first enacted last May and then updated in the recent coronavirus stimulus package.

The problems during the pandemic are part of the Smithsonian’s overall goal of saving money and an ongoing “class war” with bargaining unit employees being viewed as the “lower class,” Hendrick said. 

A year later, “I’m concerned still,” said Jarvis Waller, an officer in the Zoological Park Police and shop steward for AFGE Local 2463, who experienced many of the challenges that Hendrick mentioned. “Yes, we have a new president that has basically done a 360 compared to the last president and everyone’s getting tested and everyone’s getting vaccinated, but I’m concerned about my agency.” 

The availability of personal protective gear and clearing supplies has been an ongoing concern at the zoo, in particular. 

Also, “they didn’t put out the information that you get up to 15 weeks if you come up COVID-19 positive,” which was a provision in President Biden’s $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” enacted on March 11, according to Waller.

Reggie Booth, executive vice president of the union local, said in some situations management took pre-existing conditions into consideration for those who had to work on site, but not for all. Also, “the employees aren’t receiving ample notification when someone tests positive” and they are worried when the public is allowed back in, “are they going to be kept safe?” 

Alise Fisher, a Smithsonian spokesperson, told Government Executive that the agency has an established process for reporting and investigating coronavirus cases. She said that about 90% of staff has been working from home and gave the following statement on what they’ve been doing to protect those who can’t: 

“To protect themselves and each other, our employees conduct a daily self-check of their health before coming to work, follow our ‘stay home if sick’ policy, wear appropriate face coverings in the workplace, practice safe social distancing, and wash and sanitize hands regularly. Among other safety measures, we have installed directional guidance and signage where needed to accommodate safe social distancing; reduced occupancy throughout staff areas, such as break rooms; installed protective safety shields; and used a risk assessment and mitigation process before conducting work activities involving more than one staff member. Where needed, we provide additional personal protection equipment to further reduce risks. If employees self-identify as having a medical condition that makes them vulnerable to COVID-19, they are currently asked to stay home and paid their normal salary.”

The Smithsonian has not received a direct allocation of vaccines yet, but is providing staff with information on how to get shots in their respective areas. Also, “we did not have any documented cases of visitor-to-staff transmission or vice versa while our museums were reopened” for a period of time last year, Fisher said.

Government Executive provided the Smithsonian with a list of some of the union’s concerns––regarding personal protective equipment availability, contractors coming into facilities, a union representative allegedly not being allowed on the Smithsonian’s coronavirus committee, employee testing and tensions between the union and agency. In response, Fisher told Government Executive: 

“The Smithsonian’s first priority is to protect the health and safety of our staff and visitors, which includes ensuring the availability of sufficient [personal protective equipment] for our staff. Our COVID-19 response team leaders meet with the union regularly to discuss plans and solicit feedback. We recognize that the union is an integral part of the reopening process and will continue to seek their input, abide by all obligations, and strive to strengthen our partnership.” 

The Smithsonian inspector general said this fiscal year it plans to review the agency’s implementation of the emergency management program in response to the pandemic as well as its use of $7.5 million in funds from the CARES Act. 

Starting January 22, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser allowed museums to reopen with no more than 250 people per floor and without guided tours. Then she announced on Monday that starting May 1, museums, galleries and exhibits could operate indoors and outdoors at 50% capacity. 

Several for-profit museums in the D.C. area have reopened between January and March, The Washington Post reported. Fisher didn’t have a target reopening date for the Smithsonian to share, but said they are “actively planning” for when it is safe to do so.

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Reposted from ABC News

An art piece by an American graffiti artist showcased in South Korea was damaged by a couple in their 20s who thought the sets of paint and brushes laid in front of the artwork was for spectators' use.

Staff at the gallery exhibition noticed new brush strokes on the wall -- small swipes of dark green to the right of center -- last Sunday. After checking the security camera, two suspects were taken by the police for investigation.

The agency that organized the exhibition told ABC News that it is currently negotiating with the artist to take appropriate steps.

"We called the police immediately and talked to the insurance company for the damaged artwork," Kang Wook, the CEO of Contents Creator of Culture, co-organizer of the exhibition, told ABC News. "But as the agency in charge, we will do best to minimize the harm to the couple who unintentionally vandalized the work."

According to Kang, the graffiti was not framed due to its large size. The vandalized art was 22.9 feet by 7.8 feet, and was the only piece in the exhibition without frames.

“Given the circumstances, the young couple does not seem to have done it intentionally.” John Andrew Perello, who goes by the name JonOne, told ABC News. “I hope the piece gets restored to meet the Korean audience like before.”

The damaged art piece by JonOne is worth around $440,000, according to its agency. The graffiti "Untitled," which attracted even more public attention in South Korea after it was painted on, will hang until June 13, at the Street Noise exhibition at the Seoul-based Lotte World Mall.

The decision to display performance equipment in front of JonOne's work goes back to 2016. JonOne completed the artwork in question during a graffiti museum show, "The Great Graffiti,'' in Seoul Arts Center at the time. When the piece was complete, it was displayed along with the props used by the artist, in the same way the display is on now.

"The paint and brushes used by the artist comprise a complete set with the graffiti canvas work," said Kang. He explained that the props were part of the exhibition to help highlight the history of the artist's work.

Since the accidental painting, the agency in charge of the exhibition has provided additional guidelines for spectators and increased the surveillance around the work to prevent such misunderstandings from taking place again.

"Due to the characteristics of contemporary art, there will be many happenings like these going forward. Exhibit organizers must take extra care in physically protecting the artwork, as the audience may mistake the art like that of JonOne's to something they can scribble on," Ha Jae-geun, a Korean pop culture expert, told ABC News.

JonOne, who now lives in Paris, received France's Legion of Honor in the culture and communications category in 2015. France's premier award goes to those recognized for their service to the country.

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Reposted from The Guardian

The Victoria & Albert Museum is a strange place to be on this late-February morning. The staircases and deserted hallways echo to my footsteps. A top-floor gallery looks naked, with gaps on the walls and improvised labels where works of art should be. Next to the doors leading to the courtyard, the plaster casts are swaddled in bubblewrap, as if sheltering from the chill.

It isn’t just London’s museumland, of course. Galleries and museums up and down the UK are stuck in suspended animation. Closed along with nearly every public building a year ago, they were permitted to open again in the summer, before having to bolt their doors again a few months later. Places in lower-risk areas stuck it out into December, before succumbing to the latest national lockdowns. According to the latest plans, it will be mid-May at the earliest before we’re able to step inside again.

But what actually happens when museums pull up the drawbridge and pull down the shutters? Do staff just flick off the lights , turn on the burglar alarms and head home? The V&A possesses more than 2.3 million books and artefacts stored across multiple locations. Who’s been looking after them?

The V&A’s deputy director, Tim Reeve, in a corridor somewhere between Fashion and Buddhism, is eager to point out that there’s more going on in the empty building than one might think. Spry in a suit and a William Morris-print mask, he points out the work they’ve been doing while the place is closed: repainted gallery spaces, roof repairs, the former foyer repurposed as a socially distanced cafe.

Reeve halts next to a gleaming new mosaic floor with the pride of a man showing off some lockdown DIY. “We’ve been meaning to do this for years,” he explains. “But it would have meant four months of disruption. There are very, very few silver linings with Covid, but this is one.”

When staff shut the doors on 17 March last year, a week before the UK officially went into lockdown, the assumption was they’d be back in a few weeks, says Vernon Rapley, the museum’s head of security. “We just closed everything up as normal. A bit like Christmas Day.” Rapley, a former Met policeman, actually had a pandemic crisis plan ready to go. Problem was, it wasn’t the right one. “We’d never considered the scenario where government turned round and said, ‘Oh, you’ve got to close.’”

All of a sudden, security were pretty much the only people allowed on site. Among myriad mundane but crucial tasks, guards did everything from assisting the exhibition team to lay out signage, to replacing pest traps and batteries on humidity monitors.

A museum’s primary duty is to care for the objects in its collection; “condition-checking” artefacts is especially important. The security team added this to their skillset, too. “Is that object ‘sweating’, does everything look the same?” Rapley says. “We became mini-technicians. Some of my guys, they hadn’t really had time to look at the objects before.” One day, he came across a guard staring into a case. “He looked really nervous and said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I was just looking.’ I said, ‘Absolutely perfect!’”

Security of a more obvious kind was also on their minds. Last March, thieves broke into the coronavirus-closed Singer Laren museum in the Netherlands with a sledgehammer and made off with a Van Gogh. Anxious that the V&A shouldn’t suffer the same fate, Rapley started posting plentiful photos to Twitter, making it clear he and his team were very much in the building. “It’s always good to remind people,” he says.

As soon as it closed, Glenn Benson, the V&A’s senior safety adviser, was feverishly finding ways they could reopen. Making the museum Covid-secure was a gargantuan task. The main V&A building in Kensington covers 12 acres and has seven miles of gallery space, plus more miles of gloomy Edwardian corridors and backstairs rooms. Benson and his colleagues had to account for every inch, assessing ventilation and where hand-sanitiser points and Perspex screens should go, if headsets on displays were safe, what could be cleaned and what couldn’t. 

Working from floor plans, Benson’s team calculated how many visitors could be let in, allowing for a two-metre bubble around each and factoring in what they christened the “clutter factor” – what the rest of us refer to as art works. It became clear that only a fifth of normal visitor numbers could safely come in each day – alarming for a museum that derives much income from footfall.

Even trickier was making the V&A’s notoriously cramped backstage areas Covid-safe. “The V&A is a village,” Benson says, explaining that nearly 1,000 people currently work there (even the British Museum doesn’t have so many). “We have workshops, we have cinemas, we have shops, we have cafes, close-contact activities, everything.”

As spring became summer, some of the first to come off furlough were the conservators, who clean, research and restore objects – tasks that, for obvious reasons, can’t be done from home. Senior textile conservator Frances Hartog spent her final hours in the museum last March shrouding delicate silk kimonos in protective coverings and installing pest traps, not knowing when she’d return. When she came back to the studios in July, it was to a world transformed. To minimise contact, her team has been divided into two separate bubbles, working split shifts; she’s also been taking weekly lateral flow tests. “Of course everyone’s anxious, but we all need to take the rules seriously,” Hartog says.

A sculpture conservator, Sarah Healey-Dilkes, adds that, to reduce the number of people on site, everything possible is being done virtually. Instead of objects that have been borrowed from other museums arriving guarded by a “courier”(usually a conservator or other specialist), which was standard practice pre-pandemic, now V&A staff are holding up iPhones as they open crates, so their counterparts can observe remotely.

Others in the V&A team did the same in reverse, surveying the de-installation of a Balenciaga couture loan show at the China National Silk Museum in Hangzhou entirely online. Meanwhile, the exhibition crew have been on endless early-morning video calls with curators in the Middle East, arranging for objects to travel for what the museum hopes will be a grand curtain-raiser when it reopens, a new exhibition called Epic Iran.

“We’re used to finding solutions,” says senior exhibitions manager Claire Everitt cheerfully. “When you’re installing a big, complex show, things are changing all the time. You get good at improvising.”

Hanging over everything, of course, are immense storm clouds. While hundreds of institutions were bailed out by the government’s £1.57bn culture recovery fund, the V&A and other directly funded museums such as Tate and the British Museum were not permitted to apply to the main scheme. Instead, they’ve been waiting on the Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport for handouts of up to 25% of their normal grants – a figure that, in many cases, won’t cover the shortfall, even with a top-up recently announced in the budget. 

The V&A is in a deep hole, says Reeve. “We depend heavily for our livelihood on visitors, whether it’s joining as a member, buying a ticket, shopping in the shop, signing up for an online course. And we’ve gone from 4 million people a year to 15% of that.” Income is down by something like 70%, he adds. “It’s kind of catastrophic.”

Last September, the V&A announced that it would shed more than 100 jobs, mainly retail and visitor-facing roles, 10% of the overall workforce. A few weeks back, the Guardian reported that some departments were facing cuts of up to 20%. The museum has confirmed that a major curatorial shake-up is under way, redesigning how departments work; the number of jobs that hang in the balance is now 140. Altogether the museum says that it needs to find “sustainable savings” of £10m each and every year, going forward.

“We’ll have to be a smaller organisation,” says Reeve. “There are lots of things we can do to reduce expenditure. But if we’re looking at 500,000 visitors this year, maybe 1 millon next year, it’s not the same as 4 million people.”

Some have raised eyebrows that the museum is still pushing ahead with a grandiose new project, V&A East, a vast “creative campus” and open-storage facility in the Olympic Park in east London. The V&A’s Museum of Childhood is also undergoing a £13m revamp. Other institutions have put expansion plans on ice; in September, America’s Smithsonian Institution cancelled plans to rent part of the same space, blaming the pandemic.

While there are doubts about whether the original opening date of 2023 will be met, Reeve insists that V&A East will not be cancelled. “It’s a commitment we’ve made,” he says, pointing out that much of the funding comes from elsewhere, and they in any case need to vacate their current storage facilities in west London, which the government wants to sell off.

More, though, it’s philosophically important they plough ahead. “It’s about audience,” Reeve says. “It’s the right project in the right place at the right time. I believed that pre-Covid; I think Covid has made that even more the case.”

Others aren’t so sure about the changes. Angered by what they saw as a lack of consultation, one staff member described a “hollowing out [of] the expertise of the museum”, with the loss of conservators and period specialists. 

A survey last November reported that six in 10 UK museums were worried about their future; at least 4,000 people are known to have lost their jobs in the museum sector already.

In Britain, the final straw for many has been the government’s decision to pause museum reopening until 17 May – five weeks after non-essential shops (including commercial galleries and libraries). Reeve, ever-buoyant, says having a clear date is “helpful”, but admits it’s “frustrating”.

Crucial as all the behind-the-scenes work they’ve been doing is, the whole point of a museum is that it’s open to the public. “When you work in exhibitions,” says Everitt, “you’re always thinking about the finishing line. We want people again.”

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