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  • February 02, 2021 3:14 PM | Anonymous

    Reposted from Observer

    Since the beginning of the pandemic, museums and galleries have been particularly vulnerable to theft: without the constant stream of visitors prompting the watchful eyes of security guards, institutions have been standing empty and static for long stretches of time. This is the perfect time for burglars to take advantage of lapses in security, and they know it. On Monday, Italian officials arrested a 36-year-old man on suspicion of receiving stolen goods after a 500-year-old copy of Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci was found stashed in his bedroom cupboard. According to Italian police, the painting belongs to the collection of the Doma Museum at the San Domenico Maggiore church in Naples.

    However, the Doma Museum has been shut down for months, and apparently, no one at the institution noticed that the painting, which is believed to have been painted by the artist Giacomo Alibrandi, was gone or even reported to the police that it was missing. “The painting was found on Saturday thanks to a brilliant and diligent police operation,” Naples prosecutor Giovanni Melillo said in a statement. “There was no complaint on the matter and in fact we contacted the (church) prior, who was not aware of its disappearance, as the room where the painting is kept has not been open for three months. Whoever took the painting wanted it, and it’s plausible that it was a commissioned theft by an organization working in the international art trade.”

    In 2020, a similar series of thefts occurred when the Frans Hals painting Two Laughing Boys with a Mug of Beer disappeared from Museum Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden in Leerdam, which was also shut down due to the virus. Shortly before that theft took place, another Dutch museum nearby, the Singer Laren Museum, was robbed of Spring Garden by Vincent van Gogh. Whether or not all these thefts are connected remains to be seen, but it’s clear that museums need to be more vigilant in protecting their collections, even and especially when no one’s visiting.

    See Original Post

  • February 02, 2021 3:11 PM | Anonymous

    Reposted from Security Management Magazine & Dr. Jennifer Hesterman

    Whether your organization is large or small, public or private, there are basic security tactics that can protect your building and occupants from unwanted attention or attack.

    The goals of hardening are to deter, deflect, divert, and deny. You always want to project the image of a secure, impenetrable operation to someone conducting pre-operational surveillance, passing by as part of a group during a protest, or looking for a crime of opportunity with no premeditation. Hardening is an offensive security measure; it stops the fight before it starts.

    U.S. military bases are protected by using layered defense or rings of security, a technique easily cross-applied to other organizations. Consider the center ring as protecting the most precious asset—possibly leadership, important records, or special equipment, such as servers. If the bad actor can make it here, he or she would inflict the maximum amount of damage. The ring just outside the center includes employees, the front desk, cafeteria space, and visitors. The third ring is the public space outside the entrance, such as parking areas, sidewalks, open spaces, or woods. The next layer consists of streets, public transportation, pedestrians, and businesses. Finally, the outer ring encompasses the surrounding community, including social media—an important virtual community.

    Each ring presents an opportunity to harden, offering the chance to create an obstacle or tripwire against bad actors. Working from the outside-in, consider the security language used on your website and in event advertising, such as “plan extra time for bag checks.” This portrays a heightened level of security that may serve as a deterrent. Use free applications that search social media for threats to your property, organization, or leadership. This extends your situational awareness; for example, a shopping mall client using this service was alerted to a large group of teenagers planning a destructive flash mob on Twitter.

    Next, build relationships with those on your perimeter. When I was the Vice Commander at Andrews Air Force Base, the home of Air Force One, I knew the managers of the hotels, fast food franchises, and gas stations surrounding our property. They were force multipliers, my eyes and ears outside the wire; if someone was conducting surveillance or discussing a plot, their help could provide early—or sometimes the only—warning. This relationship paid off several times, as they served a critical overwatch role, identifying possible danger.

    Moving closer to the building, consider the deterrent effect of fencing and bollards—there are many attractive options. Have security-related signage on the property such as “cameras in use,” “regularly patrolled by security,” “private property,” or “no trespassing.”

    If you have security personnel, their vehicles should be visible to the public. If not, off-duty police officers will sometimes agree to lend theirs. Security personnel should be on foot, out and about, politely challenging strangers, looking for problems, detecting surveillance, and providing a presence. Don’t forget to secure your parking lot and structures; you must protect employees and visitors, and incidents that start there could bring danger to your doorstep.

    In these uncertain times, people want to feel safe, so don’t be afraid to enact security measures. Limit the number of entrances, try to keep exterior doors locked, and use electronic keys, codes, or badges to enter. Have a separate visitor entrance and screening area for quick verification, bag checks, and badging.

    Front desk personnel are the next line of defense and must be trained in “verbal judo” or other de-escalation techniques to deal with unauthorized or angry visitors. They should have access to a panic button or hotline to dial 911, and they should not be afraid to use it.  

    Coming further inward, offices, conference rooms, and restrooms should have doors opening outward into the hallway to prevent being kicked in. Doors should lock on the inside, with either no windows to the hallway or a window shade. Pre-position bottled water and snacks like protein bars in case of an extended shelter-in-place.

    Regularly train for crisis and have a communication plan. Talking about threats lessens fear, as people are empowered with knowledge of how to take care of themselves and each other.  

    By following these steps, your property, its occupants, and your precious assets will be more protected by layers of defense and rings of security. As former CIA and FBI Director William Webster said, “Security is always seen as too much, until the day it’s not enough.”

    See Original Post


  • February 02, 2021 3:08 PM | Anonymous

    Reposted from Artnet News

    The German government has announced that it will hand out €32 million ($38 million) this year to national cultural institutions undertaking modernization projects, including updating security systems. More than 73 cultural venues across Germany will benefit from the grant.

    “Preserving our cultural infrastructure is one of the most important cultural policy goals of the federal government, especially in these times of crisis,” German culture minister Monika Grütters said in a statement. She added: “culture creates identity and cohesion.”

    The funds are being directed especially at venues outside Germany’s bustling cosmopolitan hubs, and to rural parts of the country.

    Security concerns at German cultural sites have been a major preoccupation in the wake of several high-profile robberies, including ones at the Green Vault in Dresden in 2019 and the Bode Museum in Berlin in 2017.

    Last fall, a number of ancient artifacts were also vandalized at the Altes Museum in Berlin by an unknown perpetrator.

    The Alte Pinakothek, the preeminent museum in Munich known for its significant collection of Old Master paintings, has earmarked some of the money to boost its security systems. Corvey Castle, a UNESCO world heritage site in the North Rhine-Westphalia that dates back to 844, has done the same.

    Other beneficiaries include the state art collection in Düsseldorf and the Regensburg Cathedral and the Völklingen Ironworks building in the Saarland.

    Museums and galleries across Germany have been closed since the beginning of November. At the beginning of this month, state leaders met virtually and decided to extend lockdown measures until the end of January at the earliest. Compensation programs are in place to help venues with losses incurred during this time.

    See Original Post

  • January 18, 2021 3:01 PM | Anonymous

    Reposted from The New York Times

    Federal and local authorities across the country pressed their hunt this weekend for the members of the angry mob that stormed the Capitol building last Wednesday, as Washington’s mayor issued an urgent appeal to start preparing immediately for more potential violence before, during and after the inauguration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

    Following one of the most stunning security lapses in the city’s history, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser sent a firmly worded letter on Saturday to the Department of Homeland Security, asking officials to move up to Monday the implementation of heightened security measures that are otherwise set to begin on Jan. 19, just one day before Mr. Biden’s swearing-in.

    Ms. Bowser’s call to action, which came as law enforcement officers in several states made arrests related to the assault on the Capitol, was echoed Sunday by Senator Roy Blunt, the Missouri Republican who is charged with overseeing the planning of the inaugural celebration.

    The Capitol complex, typically a hive of activity, remained cut off from its surroundings Sunday night by troop deployments and an imposing scrim of seven-foot-tall, unscalable fencing. Still in shock from the worst breach of the building in more than two centuries, lawmakers were expected to turn their attention this week to a second slate of impeachment charges against President Trump, who has said little about the rampage he helped incite — in part because social media companies, like Twitter and Facebook, have either banned him or severely limited his use of their platforms.

    Security experts warned this weekend that some far-right extremist groups have now started to focus attention on Inauguration Day and are already discussing an assault similar to the one on the Capitol, which led to the sacking of congressional offices and the deaths of at least five people, including a Capitol Police officer.

    As of Sunday, nearly 400 people had joined a private group online dedicated to what is being billed as the “Million Militia March,” an event scheduled to take place in Washington on Jan. 20. On Parler, a social media site popular on the far right that is in danger of being taken offline because of rampant talk of violence, commenters were debating what tools they should bring to the march, mentioning everything from baseball bats to body armor to assault rifles.

    “We took the building once,” one person posted. “We can take it again.”

    While most of the chatter online appears to be directed toward Inauguration Day, some on the right have argued that pro-Trump activists should instead gather once again on Capitol Hill and hold other rallies in cities outside Washington on Jan. 17. Over the weekend, fliers began to circulate on Parler and in private groups on the chatting services WhatsApp and Signal, calling for an “Armed march on Capitol Hill and all state capitols” at noon that day.

    “I’d like to come to this, but want to know, does our president want us there?” asked one person on the social media site Gab. “Awaiting instructions.”

    In a statement, the U.S. Secret Service, which is responsible for security at the inauguration, said the inauguration was “a foundational element of our democracy” and “the safety and security of all those participating” was “of the utmost importance.”

    In a separate statement, Representative Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat and former Army Ranger, said he had spoken with military officials who were aware of “possible threats posed by would-be terrorists” in the coming days and were working with local and federal law enforcements officers to prevent them.

    Even as the throng of hundreds — if not thousands — breached gates, smashed windows and stormed into the Capitol last week, there were also tense standoffs at statehouses in Kansas, Colorado, Oregon and Georgia. On Saturday, that trend seemed to continue as Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said he was told of a “disturbing report of a death threat” received on Friday by the Iowa Democratic Party.

    “Threats like this & violence are UNACCEPTABLE,” Mr. Grassley wrote on Twitter.

    On Monday, the Michigan Capitol Commission is scheduled to meet to consider banning guns from the building. In April, in a kind of dress rehearsal for the chaos in Washington, a group of gun-toting protesters decrying coronavirus lockdowns rushed the State Capitol in Lansing, not long after Mr. Trump tweeted, “Liberate Michigan.”

    Armed with federal warrants, law enforcement officers spent much of the weekend cracking down on people who had stormed the National Capitol, making a series of arrests in states from Iowa to Florida, and filing new charges against some of the more than 80 people who were taken into custody last week by local officers in Washington. Among those charged so far have been a man seen hauling off House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lectern; the leader of the Hawaii chapter of the far-right nationalist group the Proud Boys; and a proponent of the QAnon conspiracy theory known for showing up at pro-Trump rallies in a headdress with horns and a spear.

    On Saturday, federal prosecutors filed a new complaint against Cleveland Grover Meredith Jr., a Georgia man who was accused of threatening Ms. Pelosi by saying in a text message that he was going to put “a bullet in her noggin on Live TV.” Federal agents said that Mr. Meredith had been staying at a Holiday Inn in Washington and had weapons in his camper-style trailer that included a Glock handgun, a Tavor X95 assault rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

    On Sunday, prosecutors brought charges of violent entry and disorderly conduct against a figure who had first been identified online by civilian sleuths: Eric G. Munchel of Nashville. In a photograph that circulated widely after the attack, Mr. Munchel, 30, was pictured wearing tactical military gear and carrying a handful of plastic restraints known as zip ties.

    Prosecutors in Washington also filed a complaint Sunday on similar charges against Larry R. Brock, a retired Air Force officer from Texas, saying he too had been carrying plastic restraints.

    The F.B.I. has said that it has received more than 40,000 tips online about the Capitol mob, including photographs and video clips. In an interview with NPR on Sunday, Michael R. Sherwin, the U.S. attorney in Washington, said that the Justice Department was considering charges for “theft of national security information” after some in the mob looted laptops, documents and other items from congressional offices.

    Some of those who had been at the Capitol discovered that they had been put on government no-fly lists as they tried on Sunday to make their way home from Washington.

    As charges continued to be filed, more participants in the attack were identified around the country, among them business executives and local school board officials. Several police departments — and the New York Fire Department — have said they are investigating members who may have taken part in the assault.

    See Original Post

  • January 18, 2021 2:58 PM | Anonymous

    Reposted from AAM

    Dear Museum Community,

    The violence and chaos that ensued in our nation’s capital on January 6 was horrifying and reprehensible, and a clear attack on our democracy and society propagated by deliberate deception and misinformation from elected officials. On a day that the United States recorded the most COVID-19 deaths in a single day so far, rioters invaded the U.S. Capitol building in an effort to overturn the unambiguous results of our presidential election resulting in the additional tragic loss of lives.

    Museums serve millions of people of all backgrounds and political persuasions in communities across the country, who cast their vote on Election Day. Regardless of whom their ballots favored, our support for the democratic process and the peaceful transition of power must be unequivocal.

    There is no doubt that systemic racism and the consistent downplaying of the threat of white supremacy in the United States allowed for the security breach on the Capitol, a museum itself, to take place. The treatment of the rioters, many of whom bore clothing and paraphernalia symbolizing hate, violence, and white supremacy, highlights a pronounced double standard in how peaceful Black and brown protesters fighting for racial justice have been treated.

    At this dark junction in our nation’s history, museums must lean into their missions and step up to the challenge ahead of us by fighting against white supremacy through educating our communities, building empathy, combating disinformation, and uplifting the stories and voices that have endured in the margins. As interpreters and educators of history and culture, museums and museum professionals have the power to uphold democracy and democratic norms, call out bigotry and hate, and fight for racial justice.

    We thank our members of Congress who returned to the Capitol after rioters were cleared to resume the electoral college count and certify President-Elect Biden’s victory, the members of the media who stayed to accurately document this atrocity, and the museum professionals who are now assessing the impact to the Capitol’s collections.

    It could not be clearer that it is time for lawmakers to unify around the certified election of President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris. Only united can we move forward to confront our nation’s many challenges, chief among them addressing systemic racism in the United States and ending the pandemic.

    American Alliance of Museums

    in partnership with 

    American Association for State and Local History

    American Institute for Conservation

    Association of Academic Museums and Galleries

    Association of African American Museums

    Association of Art Museum Directors

    Association of Children’s Museums

    Association of Midwest Museums

    Association of Science and Technology Centers

    Council of American Jewish Museums

    Illinois Association of Museums

    Museum Association of Arizona

    Museum Association of New York

    New England Museum Association

    Western Museums Association

    Southeastern Museums Conference

    The Association of Art Museum Curators

    The California Association of Museums

    Utah Museums Association

    Visitor Studies Association

    If you are an AAM Affiliate organization, or a state or regional museum association, and would like to sign onto this statement, please contact AAM Director of Marketing & Communications, Natanya Khashan.

    See Original Post

  • January 18, 2021 2:54 PM | Anonymous

    Reposted from Campus Safety Magazine

    Physical threats are increasing in frequency and becoming more unmanageable, putting unprecedented financial, reputational and liability pressures on organizations’ leadership and security teams, according to the “2021 State of Protective Intelligence Report: A Mandate for Proactive Protective Intelligence in the Era of Exponential Physical Security Threats,” a new study commissioned by the Ontic Center for Protective Intelligence.

    As physical security operations budgets are expected to increase in 2021, driven and accelerated by COVID-19, the study showcases the collective perspectives of chief security officers, chief legal officers, chief compliance officers and physical security decision-makers — on their physical security operations, what keeps them up at night, challenges and opportunities they foresee in 2021, and the pressing need for physical security modernization through technology.

    Business continuity is at the heart of physical security concerns and 69% of security, legal, compliance and physical security executives say their leadership would agree it will be impossible for their company to recover financially and reputation-wise were a fatality to occur as a result of missed physical threats. But the reality is they are already teetering on the brink of inadequately protecting many aspects of their businesses.

    Alarmingly, 71% of respondents say in the past year the lack of unified protective intelligence has resulted in missed threats and physical harm to their company’s employees, customers and human assets.

    “This study shows that every business leader should be sounding an alarm and looking to protective intelligence to truly transform their ability to proactively see around corners, to identify, assess and act on threats that can have irreparable human and business costs,” says Fred Burton, executive director of the Ontic Center for Protective Intelligence. “We are at a critical inflection point, and security leaders should act judiciously, be emboldened to adopt a proactive protective intelligence strategy and help radically transform physical security — and our world — for the better.”

    “We heard resoundingly from physical security decision-makers that technology to advance the effectiveness of physical security and mitigate violent threats is necessary for the future of their company,” says Lukas Quanstrom, CEO of Ontic. “When physical threats go unmanaged, it increases corporate risk, irrevocably impacting business continuity given the potential for deep financial impact. Our research shows that security, legal, compliance and risk leaders unanimously agree the time is now to invest in physical security digital transformation, and Ontic is proud to help pave the way for a new standard in protective intelligence innovation.”

    Among the biggest 2021 physical security challenges:

    • COVID-19 recovery, including managing permanent remote working and safety protocols (38% agree this will be a challenge)
    • Data protection and privacy (36%)
    • Reduced security headcount due to the economy (35%)
    • Physical security threats to remote workers (34%)
    • Threat data management (33%)
    • Physical security threats to C-suite and organization leadership (32%)

    Other key findings from the survey include:

    • Keeping employees safe as they work remotely (43%), identifying potential threats to reduce their company’s liabilities (43%), effectively managing the volume of threat data (43%) and identifying threats to save their organization money (34%) are the top physical security concerns keeping security, legal and compliance executives up at night.
    • 71% of legal and compliance leaders rank increased potential for financial losses as a top 3 compliance, risk or regulation issue impacting physical security strategy.
    • 39% say COVID-19 has caused them to accelerate their timeline for physical security solutions modernization.
    • 84% agree their company would be able to better avoid crises if all members of the physical security team could view threat data in a single system-of-record platform.
    • 91% of respondents say — and 54% strongly agree — that physical security needs a technology-driven industry standard for actively identifying, investigating, assessing, monitoring and managing physical security threats.
    • A strong majority agree (90%) — and half strongly agree (51%) — that now is the best time to invest in physical security digital transformation, and 84% agree unmanaged physical threats increase risk, can be financially crippling and negatively impact business continuity.

    A total of 300 respondents completed the survey, which was conducted between Oct. 13-30. These included chief security officers, chief legal officers, chief compliance officers, general counsels, corporate attorneys and physical security decision-makers at U.S. companies with more than 5,000 employees.

    See Original Post
  • January 07, 2021 2:58 PM | Anonymous

    Reposted from The Art Newspaper

    The cycle of museum openings and closings in the US continues to churn amid the pandemic, with five Philadelphia museums announcing today that they will once again welcome visitors this month.

    Temporary closures were mandated in Philadelphia on 20 November in response to a rise in coronavirus cases but then lifted by the city for some organisations, including museums, effective today. All five museums plan to resume measures to protect visitors and staff members’ health and safety as they reopen their doors.

    The Franklin Institute, a science museum and centre for science education and research, will reopen on Wednesday; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Barnes Foundation and the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University will greet visitors starting on Friday. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Artswill reopen on 21 January.

    “With the advent of a new year, we are grateful for the opportunity to welcome our visitors once again,” the directors of the museums said in a joint statement. “Despite the continued challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the resilience of the cultural sector shines through and cultural experiences remain essential to the well-being of the human spirit, providing inspiration, enrichment and rejuvenation.”

    The statement was also joined by the Eastern State Penitentiary, which operates a historic site examining the crumbling prison's history and plans to reopen sometime in March. The Rodin Museum, overseen by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, will reopen later in the spring.

    The picture on the East Coast of the US is spotty. Most major New York museums are currently open, with a notable exception being the two Smithsonian museums there. After closures lasting from mid-March to September, Boston museums shut their doors again in mid-December in response to renewed city restrictions while signalling that they were hoping to reopen in January. Washington institutions including the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian’s museums have been closed since late November after some phased reopenings. 

    The Baltimore Museum of Art closed on 25 November and plans to reopen on 16 January, and museums in the southeastern US mostly remain open. The picture varies significantly elsewhere across the country, with many institutions having reopened but Chicago museums, for example, having closed again in November in response to state restrictions and a majority of California museums closed under government mandates.

    US museums are facing overwhelming financial challenges because of the pandemic, having lost revenue from admissions and retail sales as well as facilities rentals and on-site fundraising events. Nearly all are struggling to find a way forward.

    See Original Post

  • January 07, 2021 2:53 PM | Anonymous

    Reposted from The Boston Globe

    So what, exactly, are we in for in 2021? Think ahead to, say, the fall, and imagine heading back to the office. The morning train feels a little crowded for comfort but the sidewalks lack their old bustle, and your favorite lunch spot is long gone.

    Most of your pals are working from home today — in houses weirdly quiet since the kids are back in school — so lunch out isn’t the same anyway.

    After a one-on-one with the boss and some meetings via video, you head home about 1:30, pick up the kids, and get back on the laptop. After work, you go for a run. Your old gym didn’t survive the shutdown, either. Dinner is takeout from a neighborhood joint, then maybe some shopping: a virtual Target run at 10 p.m.

    Welcome to life in 2021 — one version of it, anyway. After the big pile of misery that was 2020, the coming year has to be better for most of us. Right?

    It sure should. But it will likely come in fits, with false starts and setbacks that may feel like 2020 all over again, long periods of muddling along broken by sudden bursts of new activity. Think Red Sox at Fenway, dinner out on a summer night, dropping off the kid on that first day of school — at an actual school. It will probably be December before we can all safely look back and exhale, just in time to ring out another year and genuinely look forward to the new.

    That’s roughly the picture that emerges from more than 15 experts from various avenues of business and civic life in Boston whom the Globe interviewed about how they see the next 12 months unfolding.

    To a person, they hold a fundamentally hopeful outlook for our region, but acknowledge there are huge unknowns. The effectiveness of vaccines, the appeal of cities as hubs for both commerce and culture, the prospect of more aid from Washington — all these and other variables could result in wild, abrupt swings in conditions and mood.

    And 2021 will look very different for different people. Indeed, the gaps between the rich and poor will likely grow even wider. And countless decisions we all make — where to live, how to commute, whether to close a struggling restaurant — will collectively shape the fabric of Greater Boston, and its recovery.

    And after the year we’ve just had, even hazarding a guess could be a fool’s game.

    “Anybody who tells you they know how 2021 will go is crazy,” said veteran local developer Kirk Sykes, a former board chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. “There are just so many variables.”

    January: Dark times, as COVID-19 cases and deaths surge, and business restrictions stay in place. While new vaccines and a new president signal hope ahead, the toll of the pandemic is inescapable.

    Restaurants and retailers that hung on for the holidays shut their doors, some forever. Logan Airport is ghostly. A few big-name companies dump their leases on downtown offices. The sidewalks are empty.

    “I hate to say it,” said restaurant industry consultant Ed Doyle, “but things are going to get worse before they get better.”

    February: Signs of life, as the post-holiday COVID surge ebbs and vaccine distribution ramps up, despite some hiccups.

    Gyms and museums reopen and restaurants resume more in-person dining. College kids come back to the streets of Allston and Cambridge. Some school districts plan a post-Presidents Day return to in-person learning, and parents rejoice. Traffic on the highways, for once, is seen as a good thing.

    But for workers who’ve long since lost jobs, a new start is still a mirage, likely months in the future. Yes, the stimulus bill passed by Congress at year’s end is helping, but the expanded unemployment benefits will lapse soon. Spring (and more stimulus money) can’t come soon enough.

    March: The months are a blur, but March marks one year since everything changed. And while we’re impatient to get back to normal, the machinery of daily life isn’t ready yet. MBTA cuts make it hard for some to get to work. Schools are probably still doing remote learning at least some of the time. Grocery store employees, delivery drivers, hospital janitors, and others still going into work have to dig deeper for child care and transportation.

    “All the things that you need to get back to work, it’s on [essential workers’] backs with little to no support,” said Phyllis Barajas, chief executive of Conexión, a mentoring and advancement program for Hispanic and Latino business leaders. “Except for their drive to take care of their family, keep food on the table and a roof over their heads.”

    April: Hope springs eternal, but it arrives with the warm weather carrying a mixed bag. The economic divide laid bare by the pandemic threatens to widen. Home prices keep surging, thanks to low interest rates and a still-strong economy for white-collar workers. But unemployed hospitality workers, Uber drivers, and others at the mercy of the service economy find themselves pushed from their homes as evictions surge.

    And the binding rituals of a Boston spring — like the Marathon — are missing again this year.

    This is also supposed to be the time the vaccines roll out to the general public. But any setback has people on edge, said venture capitalist David Frankel of Founder Collective, and suddenly the promise of spring appears to be fading.

    ”You could easily see somewhere a real psychological shift,” he said. A slower-than-expected return to normalcy “could wipe out the good will that I think will accrue as you see more people vaccinated.”

    May: Finally, a sign: The Red Sox, the season delayed a few weeks, hold Opening Day at Fenway Park — with fans, though at reduced capacity. College graduation ceremonies — outdoors, of course — help to fill hotels desperate for visitors. Warmer temperatures and longer evenings bring a resurgence in outdoor dining. Suddenly it’s hard to get a table.

    There’s also more work for people, at both ends of the job ladder. Big drugmakers announce plans for new buildings, while laid-off wait staff and hotel workers take up retraining opportunities to become electricians and HVAC technicians. Technical schools see a surge in applications.

    “That part of the workforce has remained robust,” said Aisha Francis, chief executive of Ben Franklin Institute of Technology. “We need to figure out how to train people faster.”

    June: Tourist sighting in the North End! As travel restrictions ease, the streets of downtown Boston are dotted with visitors, meandering along the Freedom Trail and queueing for the whale watch boats. Hotels begin to fill, and the stores and bars around Faneuil Hall that managed to survive celebrate the end of a long, cold winter.

    For us locals, summer day camps fill fast, and if you thought it was hard to rent a house on the Cape last summer, well, good luck this year. With a year under their belt to plan, public spaces like Boston Common and the Lawn on D spring back to life with vibrant — though still socially distanced — events and concerts.

    “It will be a time of great urban celebration,” said Carlo Ratti, professor of urban technologies and planning at MIT.

    July: While the streets are livelier, the office towers of downtown Boston and Kendall Square remain quiet; some companies commit to remote work indefinitely, a few have moved to the suburbs. Some have also downsized, retooling their smaller offices to be less the center of company life, and more the occasional hangout.

    “It’s going to be collaborative space, with collaborative tech. Screens, new systems for hybrid meetings,” said Arlyn Vogelmann, a principal at design firm Gensler Boston. “People won’t just come in and sit at a desk all day.”

    August: One slice of Boston’s economy is growing fast: Life sciences. The same technology that quickly created vaccines for COVID-19 is now tackling a host of difficult diseases, and it’s all happening here.

    “There are going to be breathtaking things that will happen in science this year,” said Tim Ritchie, president of the Museum of Science. “And Boston is the life science capital of the world.”

    That’s apparent along Fort Point Channel, where politicians and pharmaceutical executives gather to celebrate the start of construction of a tower once planned as the world headquarters for General Electric. Instead, it will be home to a drug company, one of dozens of life science groundbreakings around Boston this year. As the ceremonial dirt flies, everyone wears a mask.

    September: A duck boat parade celebrating front line workers on Labor Day is nixed. Too risky. But the vaccine is now well into general distribution, and for many people, this is the month life finally starts to feel normal again.

    Most crucially, schools are back. There are masks and social distancing and COVID testing for teachers and students alike. But public schools across Greater Boston at last return to in-person classes. But there is so much catching up to do, with districts struggling to resolve the huge disparities exposed, and deepened, by kids who’ve missed so much regular school.

    “I expect different states and even different communities to do this at different paces,” said Will Austin, chief executive of the nonprofit Boston Schools Fund. “Because as much as we want to say this stuff is scientific, a lot of it is political.”

    With kids in school, more parents are back at work in person, part of a broader return-to-the-office that picks up speed in the fall. It’s not the typical post-Labor-Day rush, but downtown feels the busiest it has been in 18 months, with new restaurants and bars starting to open. Jobs come back too, though the biggest help-wanted ads come from Amazon, gearing up for an online-shopping season to dwarf this past year’s. Some new habits die hard.

    October: Life back at the office isn’t quite the same. Many white-collar workers are on hybrid schedules, working from home one or two days a week. No one’s jetting in from Chicago for a meeting that can happen on Zoom. Conventions? Maybe next year. So parts of the economy remain down, particularly the hard-hit hospitality sector and downtown restaurants that relied on expense account business dinners.

    But even in travel, there’s hope, as a few of the city’s signature events — maybe the Marathon, or the Head of the Charles — finally get back on track.

    “The vaccine rollout will have been a success if those events happen,” said Carlos Aramayo, president of hospitality-workers union Unite Here Local 26. “And if those events happen, that’s great for our members, because that means a lot of other things are going to be happening.”

    November: Dare we say, life in Boston is starting to feel somewhat . . . normal? The Celtics and Bruins fill TD Garden again. Concert venues come back on line and a wave of pop-up stores open downtown. Logan Airport bustles at Thanksgiving. No one’s skipping the holidays this year.

    By now, some are even able to look back on the pandemic as a missed opportunity, a squandered chance to reset how Boston functions, for the better. There was no big rethinking how we create affordable housing, or use public space, no mass buildout of bus lanes in the quiet, traffic-free months of the pandemic.

    “We never made any meaningful changes that would change behavior, and the way people get around the city,” said Stacy Thompson, executive director of transit advocacy group Livable Streets Alliance. “Because of that, the unevenness of our system feels profound.”

    Still, the vaccine has largely done its job. Along with our annual flu shot, we all get a COVID booster, and go about our lives. After the last 18 months, that feels like a win.

    December: We’re already looking ahead to next year. If 2020 was a mess, and 2021 was a stop-and-start recovery, we all think 2022 is when things get moving again for real.

    With more people coming in to work, holiday parties feel like a just reward. There’s some of the usual Christmas bustle at hotels and event businesses. New restaurants experiment with different formats — though takeout and outdoor seating are here to stay. Neighborhood joints thrive.

    While there’s so much left to rebuild — and still 200,000 fewer jobs than before the pandemic — hiring is picking up speed, and finally, COVID feels like a thing of the past. After nearly two years of trying to stay afloat, companies and people are looking forward again. Indeed, ideas we haven’t even thought of yet are starting to bloom.

    “On the other side of this are some amazing opportunities,” said Doyle, the restaurant consultant. “This is a forest fire. Everything is going to burn down. And out of those ashes are going to come some new sprouts that could never have seen the light of day.”

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  • January 07, 2021 2:48 PM | Anonymous

    Reposted from Artnet News

    Earlier this week, a life-sized bronze statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee was unceremoniously removed from the U.S. capitol more than a century after it was installed. But just as quickly as the question over the controversial sculpture’s fate was resolved, another one popped up: Where does it go now?

    It’s a question haunting many monuments toppled in 2020. In this case, the simple answer is the Virginia Museum of History and Culture in Richmond, where it arrived Tuesday morning. More complicated, though, is what the museum, which is currently closed for renovation, will do with it. 

    “Since we first learned that the statue may come to the museum, we had always intended to display it,” Andrew Talkov, the museum’s senior director of curatorial affairs, tells Artnet News. “There was never a thought of simply putting it in storage and hiding or holding onto it simply for posterity.”

    Indeed, when the museum reopens in the spring of 2022, one of the most divisive symbols in the ongoing debate over historical public statuary will be on full display, likely in a larger exhibition about the history and evolution of “Confederate memorialization, from a variety of viewpoints,” Talkov says. 

    But display does not equal endorsement, the curator is quick to clarify. “We’re not going to decide,” he says. “It’ll be our society that decides how they want to handle these types of monuments in the future.”

    Though programming plans are in the early stages, the curator says he intends to present the statue in a balanced, historically-informed manner. It won’t be neutral, but it won’t be geared toward the polemical either.  

    The goal, he says, is to “connect our past with our present. It’s difficult to understand why the monument was removed if we don’t understand how the monument came to be in the first place,” he says.

    Created in 1909 by Richmond sculptor Edward Virginius Valentine, the Lee statue stood for 111 years as one of two sculptures representing Virginia in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. Specifically, it was located in the building’s crypt, where 13 statues represent the original 13 colonies.

    An eight-person commission established by Virginia Governor Ralph Northam to remove the statue selected the museum as its new permanent home. The formal request came in August and contained no stipulations about whether or not it should be displayed, or in. what manner. 

    The museum was a logical fit for the statue, in part because its building is itself a Confederate monument—or at least it used to be. The museum is housed in the Confederate Memorial Institute (colloquially known as the “Battle Abbey”), a structure built in 1921 as a memorial to the Confederate lives lost during the Civil War. The building was acquired in 1946 by the museum, then known as the Virginia Historical Society. Prior to that, the society was headquartered in the Lee House, a Richmond building that housed General Lee and his family during the war.

    When the Lee statue goes on display, there’s a good chance other symbols of 2020 will be included alongside it. Among the objects to enter into the museum’s collection this year are a used can of tear gas, a demonstrator’s broken face shield, and several protest signs and posters. 

    “I can’t imagine we would have a conversation about Confederate memory without talking about the events of the summer of 2020,” Talkov says. 

    “History museums are an excellent place to be able to look at where we are,” he continues, “and I think the statue is an incredible symbol of where we are as a society in regard to confederate memory and monumentation. That’s a conversation we want to welcome into the museum.”

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  • January 07, 2021 2:42 PM | Anonymous

    Reposted from The New York Times

    It was sometime in the spring that Ruth Willig, then 96, first compared her pandemic life to being in prison. My mother, Dorothy, was still alive then, in a building much like the assisted-living facility in Brooklyn where Ruth lives. The buildings had shut down all visitors and stopped all group activities, including meals in the dining room. Residents spent their days in their apartments, alone.

    “It’s very depressing,” Ruth said over the telephone in late March. At that time, the virus was raging in New York, most lethally in nursing homes. Facilities that were designed to prevent social isolation were now doing everything possible to enforce it.

    “Two nights ago they came to my door and told me I couldn’t go outside,” Ruth said then. “I don’t know what reason there is, or if anybody has it in the building. They don’t tell you anything. But we’re stuck here. They bring the food. It’s just awful.”

    That was how the pandemic began for Ruth Willig, the last surviving subject of a New York Times series that began nearly six years ago, following the lives of six people age 85 and up.

    For Ruth, it was a year measured in what she gave up: visits from her children every weekend, daily meals with friends, chances to see her great-granddaughter, now 3 years old and changing daily. Also: Passover, Thanksgiving, her birthday and perhaps her last days of walking without a walker, even in her small apartment.

    Her building’s management declined to provide numbers, but records at the State Department of Health show five deaths there either confirmed or presumed to have been caused by Covid-19. At my mother’s building, in Lower Manhattan, the count was three times as high.

    “I say, ‘Why do I have to keep going?’” Ruth said back in the spring. “Judy” — her oldest daughter — “says, ‘Ma, if you die now we won’t be able to have a funeral. I won’t be able to see you.’” Ruth laughed. “That’s a terrible way to put it, but she’s right,” she said. “Meanwhile, I’m not dying. I guess it’s good. I laugh and I say I’m ready, but I’m really not.”

    Her complaints over the next months were the same as my mother’s: the edict to shut down contact with other people, the food delivered cold to their rooms.

    As Ruth’s building allowed a little more mobility over the summer, she became aware of the neighbors whom she did not see. “I don’t know if they’re alive or how their health is,” she said. “You have to ask, and they don’t always want to tell you. So we don’t always know. If I walk around I see a lot of empty rooms.”

    The pandemic has wrought unequal effects on New York’s population groups. For older adults in institutional settings, it has meant ceding even more control of their lives to the institutions, unasked, in exchange for safety.

    “It’s very paternalistic,” said Louise Aronson, a geriatrician and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “Like, we know what’s better for you. I get that the intent is good. But it’s basically putting draconian measures onto frail older people for society’s failure to create better systems.”

    Ruth, who trained as a microbiologist, understood the restrictions but resented them.

    “I’d like more freedom to get around,” she said. “I look out at the water and see these people walking back and forth, and I wish, Oh, my God, wouldn’t that be nice.”

    The hairdresser and the rabbi stopped coming to the building. The meals, the bane of most institutions, were even less appealing without a companion at the table. Ruth lost weight.

    But one day, amid complaints, she said: “I get my joy out of my plants, I really do. My Christmas cactus has four or five flowers.” She read Michelle Obama’s memoir, then Barack’s.

    A surprise of the pandemic has been how well many older adults have adapted to the restrictions. “There’s crisis competence,” said Mark Brennan-Ing, a senior research scientist at Hunter College’s Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging. “As we get older, we get the sense that we’re going to be able to handle it, because we’ve been able to handle challenges in the past. You know you get past it. These things happen, but there’s an end to it, and there’s a life after that.”

    While people of all ages have struggled this year, those 65 and up are still more likely to rate their mental health as excellent compared with people under 50.

    For Ruth and her family, efforts to stay connected came with frustrations. Her children bought her an iPad so they could share video calls, but for months she kept it in the packaging because it was unappealing or hard to use.

    She eventually started using it to play Cryptic Quotes, and occasionally for FaceTime calls.

    In the spring, the only way Judy Willig could see her mother was on what she called “window visits,” at which they would talk via cellphone from opposite sides of the glass.

    “That was the worst,” Judy said. “She’d reach her hand out to touch you, and there was glass between us. I would do those window visits and then go sit in my car and cry. They were just awful.”

    Early in the pandemic, Ruth’s closest friend in the building stopped answering her phone. Since Ruth could not leave her apartment to check, for days she was left to wonder: Had her friend gotten the virus? Finally the friend called from a rehab center, and they resumed daily calls. But it was a scare.

    A part of writing these articles, which began in 2015, has been learning to say goodbye. By the start of 2020, five of the six subjects — Fred JonesJohn SorensenJonas MekasPing Wong and Helen Moses — had died, each facing the last days differently. For all, death meant not just the final heartbeat of one person, but a communal process that began well before the last breath and continued after.

    The coronavirus, even when it spared a body in 2020, ravaged the rest of this process.

    On May 30, my mother developed a urinary tract infection and went to the hospital in Lower Manhattan, where I was able to sit with her indoors for the first time in nearly three months. She made it back home but never recovered her strength, and in late June, when it became clear that she wouldn’t, her building let me visit in her final days. My brothers, in North Carolina and Oklahoma, who had not seen her since 2019, could not come to say goodbye.

    Ruth was among the first to call me when my mother died.

    As case numbers dropped in New York, in late August, Ruth’s building allowed family members to visit — outside, at opposite sides of a long table.

    Her building started to open the dining room partially in September. A few times a week, Ruth goes downstairs and eats a meal by herself at a table, six feet away from her closest friend. It is near enough that they can talk a little, even with hearing aids. Intermittently the dining room will close again because someone in the building tests positive. But on days when Ruth dines downstairs, Judy said, she can notice the difference in her mother’s voice. “She’s much more alive,” Judy said.

    In November, a day before her 97th birthday, Ruth fell in her apartment and hit her head, telephoning Judy from the floor when she could not get up. Mother and daughter were finally able to spend time together, four hours in the hospital emergency room.

    By the time Ruth fell again a few weeks later, she had learned a lesson: “This time I wasn’t going to tell anyone, because I didn’t want to go back to the hospital,” she said. “You should’ve seen how I managed to get up. I moved around on my behind, otherwise known as my tush. And I had black and blue marks all over my elbows, and I managed to get up without calling anybody. I’m a stubborn mule.”

    After the second fall, a physical therapist advised her to use a walker even in the apartment.

    Just before her birthday, Ruth mentioned the prospect of living to 100 — a change from our past conversations, when she had said only that she did not want to get there. That same day she brought it up again with her daughter. “For the first time ever she said, ‘Maybe I’ll live to be 100, and if I do, we can have a party,’” Judy Willig said.

    At last, on Dec. 7, the building opened for a few visitors — with an appointment and a negative test for the virus. Judy grabbed the first appointment, in order to get in before someone in the building tested positive and the doors shut again.

    She was given one hour. She had a long list of chores, starting with Ruth’s closet.

    “Mostly we hugged,” Ruth said, “which we haven’t been able to do forever.”

    Judy Willig remembered it slightly differently. After 15 minutes of hugging, she said, “I finally had to say, ‘Now I only have 45 minutes left.’ And she said, ‘Can’t we just sit and talk?’ And I said, ‘Not today.’ Because my fear is that they’re going to shut it down again.”

    The visit and the meals downstairs have made a difference for Ruth. “The nice thing is that things are getting a little better,” she said. “I’m lucky in one way that I can heat up the meals myself, but in the other way it’s nice when someone does it for you. So it’s like a tossup.”

    My mother would have turned 92 on Dec. 21, largely against her wishes. Her remains rest atop a bookshelf in my bedroom, next to an action figure of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, waiting for a time our family can gather to scatter them.

    Because of the pandemic, the medical school to which she had promised her body was no longer accepting them. The cemetery did not allow gatherings, so on a sweltering morning in early July, five of us said a few words over her in the loading bay behind the crematory, before her body went inside. The experience was probably worse for my brothers, who watched it on Zoom, but it would be hard to say how.

    Her two home attendants, amazing women who traveled long distances to care for her during the pandemic, are still without work, their informal job network another casualty of the virus.

    But for Ruth and others who made it this far, a better day was in sight: The first vaccine doses had started to reach nursing home residents.

    Four years ago, at the end of 2016, Ruth wanted to knit a blanket for her coming great-grandchild, but she feared that the tremor in her hands would prevent her. She knitted it anyway. This year, during the pandemic, she was knitting again.

    That is Ruth, 2020.

    Catherine Thurston, chief program officer at Service Program for Older People, which provides mental health services, said her staff had seen this kind of resilience in many older clients this year.

    “They’ve been a real lesson for us,” she said. “I often tell the story of my own parents, who were Holocaust survivors. And after 9/11 it was so good to talk to them, because they said, ‘Look, horrible stuff happens, and people rebound from it.’”

    A motto to take into the new year: Horrible stuff happens, and people rebound from it.

    And eventually, at Ruth Willig’s assisted living facility, the hairdresser will make a long-awaited return. “I really need a haircut so badly,” she said.

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