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Reposted from NPR
Within a couple of days of the start of Maui's fires, government officials, preservation experts and contractors were meeting to talk about how to coordinate the cleanup effort with the salvaging and documenting of cultural artifacts.
"I hope we can work toward understanding what the needs are with regard to historic preservation and the resources that are important to our people, important to our history," said archeologist Tanya Lee-Greig, kicking off the discussion. Lee-Greig has overseen cultural preservation projects on Maui.
Janet Six, principal archaeologist for the County of Maui, was also at the meeting, held online. She said the reason officials and culture workers are focusing on the tourist town of Lahaina is because of how the fires ravaged the national historic landmark district.
"It's a landmark district we're dealing with, so we're wanting to expedite the emergency situation," Six said in an interview. "But at the same time, we need to be mindful that we're working in an area with buildings, some of which are 150 years old."
Six said people have been living in Lahaina for more than a thousand years; it has a complex past.
"[Native Hawaiians] made an island called Moku'ula in the middle of a wetlands," Six said. "And that became the royal seat."
Moku'ula served as the private residence of King Kamehaha III in the mid-1800s and the Hawaiian Constitution was drafted there. But by 1919, local authorities backfilled the wetlands, burying Moku'ula and turning it into a park.
"That's now under a baseball field," Six said. "Outta sight, outta mind."
Most of the historic landmarks in Lahaina that survived before the fire had dated back to the colonial sugar plantation era of the 1800s, because the plantations destroyed the pre-colonial sites.
But the fire has damaged these structures; now they're in various states of collapse, and their artifacts are endangered or incinerated. Lahaina's Heritage Museum was housed in the Old Courthouse. Its roof collapsed, though much of the walls are still standing, because they're constructed from heat-resistant coral.
Kimberly Flook, deputy executive director of the Lahaina Restoration Foundation, which oversees historic buildings, said they hadn't yet been allowed back to survey the damage. She's worried many of the museum's most precious items are lost: the flag that was lowered when the Kingdom of Hawaii was overthrown, Kapa artwork pieces, feather work from native Hawaiians.
It makes her grateful for the extensive digitization the museum completed a few years ago.
"We may have lost the physical elements," Flook said, "but we have amazing photographs and recreations and translations and transcriptions."
There's another reason for hope: some of Lahaina's historic sites, like the Waiola cemetery (also known as Waineʻe), one of Hawaii's first Christian cemeteries, remains mostly intact. It's the burial ground of important historical figures including Queen Keopuolani, the first Hawaiian baptized as a Protestant, and King Kaumuali'i, the last king of Kauai.
"The flag pole that is at the cemetery, the flag itself, was completely untouched in the midst of all of the damage," Lee-Greig said in the meeting. But the Wailoa church right next door was burned to the ground.
When an extreme event like a wildfire burns through a place, it's not just culturally meaningful physical structures that are at risk. The same goes for the rituals and traditions connected to those places.
One example is the annual Emma Farden Sharpe Hula Festival, which usually takes place under the banyan tree in downtown Lahaina, a local landmark that was badly burned. Organizer Daryl Fujiwara said he had intended to cancel the 2023 festival, because he thought it might be too much for the dancers.
"A lot of dancers in these hula schools, they're all facing so many hardships," he said. "A lot of them lost their homes."
But Fujiwara said the performers still wanted to go ahead. So he pivoted to producing the event virtually, on Facebook.
The performers this year danced indoors in front of a backdrop of white sheets and floral arrangements instead of under the tree. It wasn't the same. But Fujiwara said that because of the plundering and negligence of colonial powers, Hawaiians have learned to deal with the loss of many important historic and sacred sites.
"Even though we've lost those places, they still remain in our stories, in our songs and our dances," Fujiwara said. "And that's how we have been able to survive."
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Reposted from Security Managment Magazine
Ask anyone in any industry about their company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) initiatives, and chances are that you will get a healthy dose of cynicism in return, along with a vague description of the program and how it is annually required for everyone. Ask them what DE&I means to them personally, and you will get a variety of answers that center around that person’s unique interpretation of DE&I, which can be quite varied based on their own experiences in life—not necessarily what was presented in their training.
After the COVID-19 pandemic began to affect on-site workforces, many DE&I and organizational culture initiatives that were gaining steam dropped off before they could be fully implemented. Programs and initiatives are beginning to make a comeback, but the momentum is slow to build. But what about functions like security that don’t always have the option to work remotely or hybrid? How can DE&I improve security organizations’ postures, revenues, and mission?
If you look at these programs through the lens of value, you will begin to see the benefits such programs can bring to your organization. The purpose of these programs is to promote a workplace culture where individuals feel valued, respected, and supported regardless of their race, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or other personal characteristics.
History is replete with DE&I initiatives that moved society into a more inclusive environment, even if they were not known as “DE&I” programs at the time: women’s suffrage, the U.S. Civil Rights Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act are all examples of DE&I programs that were established to be inclusive of all people, not just a few.
However, gender diversity in some occupations didn’t really begin to take hold until the 1970s and 80s. Women in security or law enforcement were mostly relegated to administrative roles, and very few served in posts or positions that were dominated by white males.
When Lisa Terry, CPP, CHPA, chief development officer at Vistelar, LLC, started her law enforcement career in 1978, she understood that she was fighting an uphill battle for acceptance.
“I knew that I was going to have to work twice as hard in a male-dominated field,” says Terry. “I genuinely believed that to be treated better, I had to work harder to fit in, adjust to and please others, often at the expense of my well-being.”
While the security industry has taken steps to become more welcoming and inclusive of a variety of professionals since then, fitting into a culture where you feel isolated has always been a challenge. The shift to remote work eroded inclusion further by reinforcing existing exclusive behavior, conscious and unconscious biases, and undermining workplace culture. People found themselves having to work harder to fit in from a remote environment—again at the expense of their well-being and mental health. Meanwhile, security personnel who could not work remotely found themselves immersed in a volatile and rapidly changing environment at workplaces all over the world, coping with daily temperature checks, frayed nerves, and short tempers.
Expanding and promoting DE&I programs can help to ease these inclusivity gaps by identifying and addressing biases, both conscious and unconscious. The programs also help identify learning needs and gaps—comprehending where you are in your own DE&I journey can often lead to improved mental health outcomes. Understanding by all parties leads to better mental health outcomes in the workplace.
So, what other benefits can DE&I programs have?
Leaders need to understand that getting that top talent means that they are not always going to look, act, or sound like you. It also means that attracting diverse talent should go beyond just looking for people of diverse backgrounds and lifestyles. It begins with rethinking role profiles and job descriptions, moving away from the stereotypes about who fits into a security role based on demographics and experience.
Companies in all industries are trending towards a more diverse workforce. Security organizations that look and sound more like the companies they protect will find a better relationship with that population, leading to more successful conflict resolution, trust in the security team, and a sense of pride.
Diversity in a workplace brings together individuals with unique perspectives and experiences, which can lead to enhanced creativity and innovation. When people with different backgrounds and perspectives collaborate, they can come up with creative solutions to complex problems.
In the 2023 ASIS Foundation study Empowering Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Corporate Security, authors Rachel Briggs and Paul Sizemore pointed out that collective wisdom benefits security organizations in a complex and fast-changing threat environment by bringing multiple views to the table. They went on to observe that “homogenous groups do not just share one another’s blind spots; they reinforce them.”
When a team has a diverse group of individuals, it can lead to better decision-making. Individuals from different backgrounds and experiences can offer unique viewpoints and challenge each other's assumptions, leading to better-informed decisions. In a security organization, this can be especially important when making decisions that affect the safety and security of people and assets.
If a team is made up of people who look the same, sound the same, and act the same, anyone who is different than the decision makers will probably not wish to speak up, therefore depriving the decision makers of potential new and improved ideas. Dominant and overbearing leadership always appears to be the common factor for why diverse viewpoints are never put forth. Briggs and Sizemore pointed out that “collective intelligence emerges not just from the knowledge of individuals, but also from the differences between them.”
When employees feel like they belong and are included, they are more engaged in their work and more likely to stay with the organization, according to a 2020 McKinsey study. The study revealed that 83 percent of millennials across all diversity groups were more likely to be engaged in companies with inclusive culture. This is especially important in a security organization, where high turnover can be detrimental to the organization's effectiveness. High turnover leads to more time spent training replacements, overtime costs to fill gaps, and morale issues.
As noted earlier, to move towards increased engagement and retention, there must be a focus on how security organizations are conducting their selection process. Companies in all industries are trending towards a more diverse workforce. Security organizations who look and sound more like the companies they protect will find a better relationship with that population, leading to more successful conflict resolution, trust in the security team, and a sense of pride. These outcomes coupled with increased engagement, lead to more retention of quality employees and top performers which reduce costs.
How is this accomplished? From the top down.
“It has to start at the top,” says Terry. “We must get away from seeing these initiatives as a weakness. We have to continue to educate other security leaders and look to successes.”
She also recommends putting DE&I initiatives in the security organization’s policies, including language about bullying other workers. The study by McKinsey revealed that in 2020, 67 percent of LGBTQ employees polled reported hearing negative comments, slurs, or jokes about themselves or other LGBTQ employees. This behavior, if left unchecked, can lead to cases of employee harassment or allegations of a hostile work environment. These types of cases could lead to a severe reputational risk to your company or organization and affect your ability to provide services within the industry.
On the other hand, employees who feel included and engaged will be more likely to stay in an organization, as well as recommend it to others, increasing your talent pool and potential business.
As we move into a future that includes more DE&I programs, success can be boiled down to three basic ideas: data, outreach, and recruitment.
The data is unmistakable in that more and more organizations are increasing their DE&I initiatives to become more agile. Security is all about risk management, and to do that, we need teams that are mentally agile with the freedom to ask questions and the freedom to learn. We must continue to adapt to an increasingly complex and interconnected world where there are new social challenges to modern society.
Continued outreach to diverse people of different talents and backgrounds can help our security organizations continue to spearhead growth into diverse markets in that interconnected world. That outreach leads to recruitment of top talent that can assist your organization with its ability to foster innovation, creativity, and empathy, but it must be purposeful and continual.
If your security organization can fully embrace and implement the ideals behind DE&I, they will flourish along the journey.
Reposted from Artnet News
A teenage girl from Switzerland vandalized the Colosseum on Friday just weeks after another tourist carved a love note to his girlfriend onto a wall at the famed 1,951-year-old amphitheater.
The Swiss teen, who has not been identified, was on vacation with her family when she began carving her name into a wall, according to local news agency ADN Kronos, which first reported the alleged vandalism on July 15.
The teen girl was caught by an Italian tour guide who notified security at the Colosseum, Italian news agency ANSA reported. The news agency obtained video of the teen about to carve her name.
Italy’s Carabinieri police force was called, according to ADN Kronos. Artnet News has reached out to the Carabinieri for more information.
The girl could face a prison sentence and a fine of about $16,854, the news outlets reported.
Last month, 27-year-old Ivan Dimitrov, a Bulgarian national living in the United Kingdom, was filmed etching “Ivan + Hayley ’23” into a wall of the Colosseum.
Dimitrov looks up at one point, sees he’s being filmed, and smiles as the person recording calls him an “asshole” as he walks away.
In 2014, a 42-year-old Russian tourist was caught carving the letter “K” onto a wall of the Colosseum and was hit with a four-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of about $22,460.
Italy’s Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano condemned Dimitrov’s alleged vandalism but has not yet commented on the latest incident.
“I consider it extremely serious, undignified and a sign of great incivility that a tourist would deface one of the most famous places in the world, the Colosseum, to carve his girlfriend’s name,” Sangiuliano said in a tweet, translated from Italian.
“I hope that whoever carried out this act will be identified and sanctioned according to our laws.”
In April, Sangiuliano announced that the country’s Council of Ministers, the executive arm of the country’s government, approved a law that would impose fines beginning at around $11,221 and going as high as about $67,328 for those who vandalize art and cultural sites.
“Attacks on monuments and art sites produce economic damage to the community,” Sangiuliano said in a statement at the time.
“Cleaning up requires the intervention of highly specialized personnel and the use of very expensive machinery. Those who carry out these acts must also assume financial responsibility.
Reposted from Museums Association
Museums and galleries in Scotland must pay all of their workers at least the real Living Wage to apply for grants, following changes to funding criteria introduced by Museums Galleries Scotland (MGS).
The funding and development body is required to align its criteria to the Scottish Government’s Fair Work First policy, which applies to grants and public contracts being awarded by and across the public sector. Fair Work is also a priority area in MGS's recently launched strategy for 2023-30.
On 1 July, MGS introduced two elements of the government’s guidelines on fair working practices: that all workers within an organisation must receive at least real Living Wage, which is currently £10.90 per hour; and that all workers are to be provided with appropriate channels for effective voice.
Applicants will also need to demonstrate their awareness of, and commitment to, Fair Work principles by including a supporting statement on their website.
The government’s full list of Fair Work principles is:
MGS has produced a Fair Work Resources for Employers page to help museums find support and guidance towards becoming a Fair Work employer. It encourages museums to seek accreditation from the Living Wage Foundation.
Museums Journal understands that there is concern about this blanket approach, with some organisations warning that the changes may prove unaffordable for them. There have been calls for the criteria to be broadened to recognise organisations that are working towards the Living Wage.
In an update to members, MGS grants manager Catherine Myles said: “We recognise that many museums have been on the Fair Work journey for several years now as we work towards the ambition of being a fair paid sector, however for others this may feel new and unfamiliar. If you are at all unsure about these requirements we encourage you to contact us to discuss your own situation and we will provide you with support and guidance to understand how these requirements may affect your organisation.”
The changes echo the Museums Association’s recent Salary Research and Recommendations, which stipulate that all employees and freelancers should be paid the Living Wage as a minimum.
Today’s video management, access control, and intrusion detection systems are incredibly complex and provide unique challenges in product selection, networking, maintenance, and support. Features within these systems are extremely functional and may also provide some of the greatest opportunities to demonstrate value to one’s organization. But it can be a double-edged sword—if one chooses poorly or networks incorrectly, the very tools used to help secure a facility may also render it vulnerable and invite risk. Hence, strict technical standards are an absolute must for any organization.
This is the fourth in a five-part series on security governance. The first article, “Setting the Bar for Strong Governance in Security Management,” makes the case for establishing a governance program within your organization’s security department. The second article, “For Effective Governance, Start with Why,” implores you to ask yourself why you need a security program in the first place and then provides an outline for your program standards as to how you can communicate your why to the rest of the organization. The third article, “The How of Security Governance: Procedures Provide Support,”makes the case for tactical-level guidance on completing the most common tasks at your sites.
Technology is the application of knowledge for achieving practical goals in a reproducible way. The word can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible tools like utensils or machines, and intangible ones like software. In the physical security world, complex modern technology includes video management, access control, and intrusion detection systems and the less complex like barriers, lighting, locks, keys, glazing, and signage. For all of this, we must provide our teams guidance in the selection, application, installation, integration, operation, protection, and maintenance of our security tools. These are our technical security standards—the third leg of our fundamental security governance products.
“Technical security standards provide a strategic vision for an organization as to how they want to employ tools in the safeguarding of their assets,” says Wade Pinnell, CPP, CEO of Virtual Software Equipment and Consulting (VSEC), a technical security consultancy specializing in hospitality and manufacturing security systems. “If employed and integrated properly, these systems not only safeguard against loss, but enhance business objectives and can even help to exploit opportunities, giving organizations market advantages.
“Today’s cameras, employing analytics, can do things like count people, capture demographic information, discern humans from animals, trigger alarms, ‘see’ heat before there’s even a wisp of smoke, and spot anomalies, going far beyond traditional security applications,” he continues. “These are just some of the value-adds video management systems can deliver today. Finally, technical standards consolidate brand usage and therein present economic advantages in negotiating enterprise pricing with manufacturers. This can realistically generate savings of 15 percent to 25 percent in hardware/software purchases.”
Like your operations procedures, technical standards will be based upon established industry guidelines, best practices, and standards from organizations like ISO, ANSI, ASIS, and NIST, providing legal protections for our teams and organizations. And also like your operations procedures, this product should establish a baseline from which regional and area guidance can be created and better aligned—more prescriptive—with business units, countries, facilities, and cultures.
But technical security standardization can provide significant economic advantages as well. By selecting one or a limited range of products for your enterprise, you can become masters of support rather than generalists with a wider range of products.
Further, you can negotiate for economies of scale. For example, I’ve found that by selecting just three options of camera manufacturers at the good, better, and best levels, discounts upwards of 40 percent can sometimes be negotiated with manufacturers. When committing to just one access control or video management system, even greater discounts may exist. Using cloud-based servers may enable even more savings and provide more security.
Finally, one may avoid the potential pitfalls of selecting poor products which may actually place your organization at risk.
“The proper installation and integration of systems is critical to a system's integrity,” Pinnell says. “More than once I’ve had cases in which clients said their systems were networked correctly and safe. However, when inspected, they were completely vulnerable and exposed. You’re only one network switch port away from being completely open to the world.”
So, what might a technical security standard product look like? This is by no means a comprehensive list, but it might include the following:
Guidance in the selection, implementation, and management of less complex, non-electronic physical security controls (e.g., doors, locks and keys, lighting, parking and traffic control, signage, gates, bollards, and barriers).
The role security operations centers serve at the regional and global levels (e.g., technical objectives, layouts and systems, staffing, operations and procedures).
Strategic and operational guidance for supporting, and sunsetting new and legacy systems.
This may include more details on approved manufacturers, technology partners, and devices, fee schedules, project estimation tools, service bulletins, basic how-to user guides, and links to technical manuals.
Given the persistent developments in technology and threats to exploit these systems, enlisting the help of a technical security consultant or specialist to produce and update this document may be crucial. Like with all of your governance products, submit this for legal review and consider creating a website where the latest copy will reside and be available to your global teammates, contracted partners, and service providers.
With technical standards established, your foundational governance products will be complete, but without enforcement, they’re nothing more than good ideas. The next step in evolution is the creation of a security audit program, and beyond that, maturity modeling. Those are the topics of our next and final article in this series.
Reposted from ArtNet News
During the 10 years he spent working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, author Patrick Bringley developed a profound, in-depth appreciation for the vast art and antiquity collection at one of the largest and most popular museums in the world. He made the most of his unrestricted access to immerse himself in art ranging from Greek and Roman antiquities, Chinese silk paintings, and Old Masters, to American art, Impressionist and modern, postwar, and contemporary works. Whether it was the experience of standing in awe and quiet contemplation in front of the artworks or furthering self-education by delving further into their history and context with supplemental research, he clearly made the most of his time there.
But Bringley didn’t join the Met as an executive, a curator, or even as an art expert. In 2008, he joined the museum as one of the hundreds of blue-jacketed security guards charged with guarding some of the world’s rarest treasures. And he did so after making a leap from a high-profile job at another august city institution, The New Yorker, a move that coincided with the tragic loss of his brother Tom, the older sibling by two years who he admired and looked up to his entire life. It was after Tom’s death from terminal cancer at the young age of just 27, that Bringley felt the need for a life change, and he found it in the hallowed halls of the Met, where the job of guarding the masterpieces helped him to find solace, quiet, and ultimately, healing.
Brinkley writes: “When in June of 2008, Tom died, I applied for the most straightforward job I could think of in the most beautiful place I knew. This time, I arrive at the Met with no thought of moving forward. My heart is full, my heart is breaking, and I badly want to stand still awhile.”
From guarding the art, to watching millions of visitors from around the world (and no shortage of locals) stream up the grand staircase each year, to making friends on a diverse team of about 600 fellow guards, Bringley’s book, All The Beauty In The World: The Metropolitan Museum and Me (Simon & Schuster), is not a tell-all. It is more a love letter to one of the world’s most beloved institutions. As an added bonus, Bringley, who left after a decade, is now leading tours of the Met, with an appendix to his book listing every single artwork referenced in the text to help curious visitors find them inside the museum.
Most Met lovers would agree—and Bringley recounted in vivid detail his first visit to the museum at age 11, on a trip from Chicago with his mother. “I remember a long subway ride to the remote-sounding Upper East Side, and I remember the storybook feel of that neighborhood: doormen in livery, proud stone apartment towers, wide famous avenues—first Park, then Madison, then Fifth… The magical part was that as we drew nearer it kept growing wider and wider, so that even out front by the hot dog carts and the geysering fountains, we were never able to get the entire museum into view. I immediately understood it as a place of impossible breadth.” Bringley’s very solid advice to new and first-time visitors is to just wander. As he pointed out, the development of the museum since its opening in 1880 “expanded in a largely illogical sprawl, appending new wings to old ones in such a way that entire new atmospheres seem to spring up out of nowhere.”
While Bringley entered the job as something of a silent observer, he started to develop close friendships with the tribe of fellow guards he meets over the course of time. As he pointed out: “The glory of so-called unskilled jobs is that people with a fantastic range of skills and backgrounds work them. White-collar jobs cluster people of similar educations and interests… At the Met, I knew guards who have commanded a frigate in the Bay of Bengal, driven a taxi, piloted a commercial airliner, framed houses, farmed, taught kindergarten, walked a beat as a cop, reported a beat for a newspaper, and painted facial features on department store mannequins. They are from five continents and five boroughs… And remarkably, it doesn’t feel disorienting to stand on points with just about any of them. The ice is already broken. We’re wearing the same clothes.”
A factoid that may surprise readers? The Met keeps a tailor in-house just for the guards and their uniforms.
At the height of Bringley’s pre-pandemic guard days, he noted the museum was welcoming almost seven million visitors a year, “a greater attendance than the Yankees, Mets, Giants, Jets, Knicks, and Nets combined”—more even than the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building, though less than the Louvre in Paris.
“There is no one way that visitors experience the museum, but there are a few typical ways,” wrote Bringley. These include the “Sightseer, perhaps a dad in his local high school’s windbreaker, camera around his neck, on the hunt for whatever’s most famous… There is the Dinosaur Hunter—a mother with small children who cranes her neck to peer around corners, panicked by each new piece of evidence that this museum only has art.”
Before you mistake any of these encounters for anything resembling an eye-roll, it is immediately apparent in both the introduction of the “types” and elsewhere in the numerous visitor encounters sprinkled liberally throughout the book that Bringley’s guidance is never anything short of curious, kind, non-judgmental, and generous.
Bringley reflected on the Egyptian wing as “a singular place to work. It is a huge section with room enough to display almost all 26,000 objects,” making it the envy of most other curatorial departments. Amid fielding questions about whether or not the artifacts are “real” or observing visitors’ stunned reaction at being informed that some objects are 5,000 years old, he also answers questions from children wanting to know why the mummies are not unwrapped:
“There’s a dead dude in there?”
“Who killed him?”
“Who said anyone killed him?”
“What’s he look like under it?”
They prompt the author to ruminate on the mummification practice itself. He wrote: “A minute later they bolt from the room, and I’m left behind to reflect on how ugly the mummifying impulse was, what a failure, what a brazen, feeble denial of a fundamental truth. The body doesn’t make it. Believe all you want that some piece of a person is immortal, but a significant part is mortal, inescapably, and mad science will not stop it from breaking down.”
While the wealth of knockout, up-close, and personal encounters with art described in the book are too many to count, one that stands out is Brinkley’s description of Florentine painter Bernardo Daddi’s Crucifixion, in which the body of Christ is “dignified but limp; a gentle elegance in his bearing suggests that he suffered bravely,” as Mary and John sit reflectively on the ground.
“An artist in the 14th century wouldn’t have dreamed that one day there would be art connoisseurs and textbooks dedicated to something called art history,” he wrote.
While contemplating his own intent at examining the work, and alternately, the artist’s intent in creating it, he concluded: “Much of the greatest art, I find, seeks to remind us of the obvious. This is real is all it says. Take the time to stop and imagine more fully the things you already know. Today my apprehension of the awesome reality of suffering might be as crisp and clear as Daddi’s great painting. But we forget these things. They become less vivid. We have to return as we do to paintings, and face them again.”
Reposted from The Art Newspaper
On 22 July, the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, DC, reportedly escorted a visitor with a disability off its premises due to a bag violation, prompting a furor on Twitter and subsequent apology from the institution.
The incident gained visibility following the circulation of a Twitter thread in which the visitor in question, artist Celeste Tooth, decried the NGA's alleged insensitivity. Tooth, who uses the pronouns they and them, is a student and teaching assistant at the Maryland Institute College of Art (Mica). They were leading a field trip of 16- and 17-year-old students to the museum when an NGA guard stopped them for wearing a backpack on two shoulders rather than one, against museum guidelines. When Tooth, who was accompanied by a service dog, explained that their backpack was full of medication and that their neurosurgeon had recommended they wear their backpack on both shoulders to minimise the risk of it falling, the guard refused to compromise on the bag policy, according to Tooth.
In a statement to Hyperallergic, NGA spokesperson Anabeth Guthrie said that a security worker “offered assistance and multiple options for storing or carrying the bag in line with our policy to be inclusive and welcoming” but that Tooth was unreceptive. Tooth denied this description of events, alleging that the guard told them they were “taking too much time” and forced them to leave the museum.
In a statement to The Art Newspaper, Tooth elaborated on the incident: "I was told that my two options as a singular individual were to check my medical bag (not feasible as it contains life saving medications) or wear it on one shoulder (also not feasible due to my spinal disability. I repeatedly expressed that I was very open to finding an alternative way to keep my medical supplies with me."
Tooth has accused NGA of “violent ableism”, claiming that the museum’s decision to remove them was a “clear violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act”. “It is not uncommon for museum attendants to tell me, ‘You have to carry your backpack on one shoulder,’” Tooth told Hyperallergic, adding that after a short conversation, staff members typically understand and respect their medical needs.
“Our goal is to create an inclusive and welcoming space for all, and it deeply saddens us to learn that your experience did not reflect our values,” an NGA spokesperson told Tooth in a public apology posted on 24 July. The apology also stated that the institution had sent contact details for the museum’s diversity, inclusion and belonging officer to Tooth via Twitter direct message, asking Tooth to share further details about the incident.
“What other information would you like?” Tooth responded in a tweet. “May I suggest a paid meeting with you to discuss ways in which you can make your museum accessible to people like me—considering the amount of time and emotional labour this has already required from me as a Disabled person.”
This is not the first time a museum has been pressured to re-examine its backpack policy; last March, an Indigenous mother was asked to remove her traditional woven baby basket after being told it violated the Portland Art Museum’s “no backpacks” policy. The museum publicly apologised to the woman after her Facebook post about the incident gained widespread attention.
IFCPP Advisory Board Member, Past Education Chair, and longtime colleague and friend, Ross Guthrie, retired from the Minneapolis Institute of Art last week. We're proud to recognize Ross as a true cultural property protection professional, and a leader in the field.
IFCPP thanks Ross for decades of service to the community, and congratulates him for a well-deserved and hard-earned retirement. Following is the official memo from the Chief Operating Officer at Mia - a recognition that sums up well Ross's dedication, and longstanding contribution to the field...
From: Michael Sanders, COO, Minneapolis Institute of Art:
In August of 1991, a young Ross Guthrie stepped off the plane from Tulsa to embark on his new career at Mia. For context, that was just two months before the Great Halloween Blizzard, because in Minnesota all things are measured from that event. Ross would survive the blizzard and spend the next 32 years ensuring the safety and security of Mia’s staff, collection, and facilities while maintaining an infectiously positive attitude.
During his time here, Ross has helped with every significant exhibition and organizational milestone for the past three decades. Some of his favorite exhibitions have been Star Wars: The Magic of Myth (2000), Eternal Egypt (2002), Terra Cotta Warriors (2012), and Martin Luther: Art and the Reformation (2016). During the Louvre and the Masterpiece (2009), the Director of the Louvre asked if Ross was going to sleep under Vermeer's The Astronomer to keep it safe. Ross did not, in fact, sleep under the painting but it says a lot about Ross that it doesn’t seem completely out of the question.
Ross has brought kindness and levity to every situation with which he has been involved. He famously, or maybe infamously, did a Tonight Show-based skit with Mike Newman (Ross was Johnny, Mike was Ed McMahon). He greatly enjoyed the celebrity-spotting at Mia’s Super Bowl parties. If a visitor contacted us to compliment the service they received at Mia, there is a better than average chance they were talking about Ross.
Ross has worked under four Mia Directors and two interim Directors. He survived multiple museum expansion projects, including the Target wing expansion that involved a temporary loading dock (which he loved). There have been countless late night emergency phone calls that Ross has diligently responded to that helped keep the museum functioning safely. More recently, Ross helped lead Mia through some of the most challenging times the organization has faced – COVID and the subsequent shutdown and the civil unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd.
Through all of this, Ross has kept his trademarked calm and upbeat demeanor. He is quick to smile and joke with his colleagues and always an advocate for the Security department and staff. Ross’ legacy and impact at Mia cannot be overstated and he will be greatly missed.
Reposted from Security Management Magazine
The average lifespan of a company is 10 years, according to an often-cited study by the Santa Fe Institute. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that 50 percent of small businesses fail within the first five years. And, for large companies, consider that only 49 of the original Fortune 500 companies remain on the list. While there’s nothing that can guarantee long-term success, there are things that businesses can do to improve how they hire, innovate, and conduct activities, which can contribute to their success.
One of the keys is a formal sustainability plan with a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) program as a major component.
Diversity includes (but is not limited to) gender, age, nationality, background, culture, skills, neurodivergence, socio-economic status, and other attributes. And, while sustainability is usually associated with environmental stewardship, that’s just part of the equation. In simple terms, sustainability is defined as the ability to endure. This is where DE&I can help, as it can play a significant role in a company’s longevity.
So, how can DE&I contribute to a company’s long-term success? Consider that DE&I can help:
Attract the right talent. Two out of three job candidates seek companies that have diverse workforces. (What Job Seekers Really Think, Glassdoor)
Increase job satisfaction and improve employee retention. Companies experience a 50 percent drop in turnover risk and a 75 percent reduction in sick days when workers feel like they belong. (The Value of Belonging at Work, Harvard Business Review)
Enhance team performance. Three-quarters of organizations with frontline decision-making teams that reflect a diverse and inclusive culture exceed financial targets. (Diversity and inclusion Build High-Performance Teams, Gartner)
Generate ideas and innovate. Companies with above-average diversity produce a greater proportion of revenue from innovation (45 percent) than companies with below average diversity (26 percent). (How Diverse Leadership Teams Boost Innovation, Boston Consulting Group)
Gain a competitive business advantage. Companies with the most ethnically diverse executive teams are 33 percent more likely to outperform their competitors on profitability. (Delivering Through Diversity, McKinsey & Company)
A diverse workforce and an inclusive and fair environment are appealing to today’s business professionals. It’s clear that an inclusive, positive work climate that promotes diversity and equity can attract and retain the right people, drive engagement, and foster both creativity and innovation because it takes into account many different points of view. Ultimately, this can lead to a much more sustainable business.
If your company is serious about trying to improve sustainability via efforts like improving DE&I, it’s best to make a formal commitment and set goals. For example, many companies have signed the United Nations Global Compact and use its agenda and goals as a blueprint for aligning company strategies and operations with their universal principles on human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption. The UN Global Compact is the world's largest corporate sustainability and corporate social responsibility initiative, with 13,000 corporate participants and other stakeholders in more than 170 countries.
Implementing a sustainability plan in your workplace should be approached like any other company initiative. It’s important to conduct a proper assessment and evaluate where your organization is pertaining to DEI and sustainability in order to define needs, set strategy and goals, and develop a way to measure success.
Looking at my organization, Axis Communications, for example—in its 2022 Sustainability Report, Axis reported a significant 33 percent increase in gender diversity among both managers and employees in its global operations. Overall, 29 percent of Axis employees are women, and 71 percent are men. Although there is clearly still work to be done, the gap between males and females at Axis, especially in leadership positions, is narrowing.
Using Axis corporate sustainability efforts as a guide, Axis Americas has been working on increasing DE&I in our hiring practices, as well. When we began a deep dive into the issue of diversity about five years ago, we didn’t score as well as our counterparts across the globe in this area, so we committed to making improvements. Not only was there an imbalance between the percentage of women and men, but the problem was being exacerbated by the lack of job applications from women. The same applied to the other identities.
Accordingly, we committed to working harder to attract a pool of diverse and qualified candidates for our management positions. We’ve moved the needle from 27 percent women in management positions five years ago to 33 percent today. That’s a very positive growth indicator, and we’re working just as hard to increase the number of other types of diverse representation in management.
Why focus on management positions first? Because these new hires bring new thinking and new networks of people with them.
This change didn’t happen overnight. It was part of a formalized plan, and it’s exciting to see progress being made.
No longer just a “nice to have” initiative, improving diversity has become a “have to have” initiative. A diverse employee makeup better reflects society and includes input from a wider variety of stakeholders, which ultimately helps diversify and improve the products and services that a company creates. To increase sustainability and DE&I efforts in security companies, the industry can and should band together to leverage industry associations, working groups, and committees to bring industry-wide change that benefits all of us.
One great example is the Security Industry Association’s (SIA) Women in Security Forum. This group offers programs, professional development opportunities, and networking events with the goal of supporting the involvement of women in the security industry. The forum’s purpose is to engage all security professionals to promote, recruit, and cultivate the leadership of women for a more inclusive and diversified industry.
In just five short years, the Women in Security Forum has rapidly grown to over 1,300 members. This summer Axis Americas—which played a role in creating the forum—served as a co-chair of the forum’s inaugural Security LeadHER event in Nashville, Tennessee, which brought together security professionals committed to advancing, connecting, and empowering women in security. The work of the Women in Security Forum has also helped raise more than $100,000 in scholarships, provided mentoring opportunities, and included a partnership with Dress for Success where we’ve collected clothing and funds for women looking for assistance in elevating themselves to better jobs.
As companies begin or continue efforts to improve sustainability, they should evaluate their efforts—and there are resources available to help do so. EcoVadis, for example, is the world’s largest and most trusted provider of business sustainability ratings, and it has created a global network of more than 100,000 rated companies. It works as a third-party to provide reliable, globally recognized sustainability ratings and insights that enable companies to reduce risk, drive improvement, and accelerate a positive impact on the planet and society.
Axis undertakes an assessment each year carried out by EcoVadis to evaluate our environmental, social, and governance (ESG) efforts. For the last two years, Axis has earned a Silver Sustainability Rating from EcoVadis. These ratings not only serve as a testament to your efforts, but they help the organization identify gaps and develop plans for ongoing improvement.
The great news is that there are many examples of companies, in general, and in the security industry, in particular, that are incorporating DE&I initiatives and sustainability into long-term planning. This move not only improves diversity within employee populations, but it also encourages diversity of thought and, ultimately, innovation in the development, design, production, and quality of products and services.
As we in the security industry work to continue to improve existing technology and invent new products, let’s continue tapping into an expanded talent pool that can add experience, perspective, and diversity of thought. Together, we can raise the bar for the industry and improve our collective sustainability and success.
Reposted from the NonProfit Times
Giving to nonprofits in the United States plunged during 2022, led by the disappearance of individual donors. Giving dropped to an estimated $499.33 billion – down 3.4% in current dollars and 10.5% after adjusting for inflation from a revised total of $516.65 billion in 2021.
Giving also declined as a percentage of the nation’s gross domestic product, to 1.9% from 2.2%.
Inflation, economic uncertainty, individuals returning to previous giving levels after the pandemic surge and the decline in the number of donors are the key culprits in the drop, according to researchers for Giving USA 2023: The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2022. It is published by Giving USA Foundation, part of The Giving Institute. It is researched and written by the team at Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University.
Donations by individuals declined significantly as a portion of overall giving, to 64% from 66% during 2021. Individuals provided $319.04 billion in support, a decline of 6.4% in 2022 and 13.4%, when adjusted for inflation. In current dollars that’s $319.04 billion during 2022 versus $340.97 billion in 2021.
Foundation giving was $105.21 billion, up 2.5% but down 5% in inflation-adjusted dollars. It made up 21% of all giving. Bequests hit $45.60 billion, up 2.3% but down 5.3% in inflation-adjusted dollars. It made up 9% of all giving. Corporations gave $29.48 billion, up 3.4% but down 4.2% after adjusting for inflation. It was 6% of all giving.
In current dollars, total charitable giving increased 6.2% between 2020 and 2021 and decreased 3.4% between 2021 and 2022. The cumulative change in current-dollar total giving between 2020 and 2022 was 2.7%, according to the new data.
“Nonprofits and donors alike experienced the steady, negative impacts of inflation, such as the growing cost of goods and high interest rates throughout 2022, and many of those challenges remain,” said Amir Pasic, Ph.D., the Eugene R. Tempel Dean of the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. “However, Giving USA’s historical data also provide a case for hope: we have seen charitable giving rebound from each decline.”
As usual, giving to religion took the top spot at $143.57 billion (27% of total amount donated), followed by:
* Human services – $71.98 billion (14%)
* Education – $70.07 billion (13%)
* Gifts to grant making foundations – $56.84 billion (11%)
* Health – $51.08 billion (10%)
* Public-Society Benefits – $46.86 billion (9%)
* International Affairs – $33.71 billion (6%)
* Arts, Culture & Humanities – $24.67 billion (5%)
* Environmental/Animals – $16.10 billion (3%)
* Giving To Individuals – $12.98 billion (2%)
Seven of the nine sector-related categories declined when inflation-adjust dollars were calculated. Only international affairs (up 2.7%) and foundations (1.95%) were in positive territory. Unallocated giving was negative $28.54 billion in 2022. This amount is the difference between giving by source and use (who received it) in a particular year. This amount includes the difference between itemized deductions by individuals (and households) carried over from previous years. The tax year in which a gift is claimed by the donor (carried over) and the year when the recipient organization reports revenue (the year in which it is received) might be different.
Public-society benefit got hit hardest. Giving to public-society benefit increased 11.8% in inflation-adjusted dollars between 2020 and 2021. Between 2021 and 2022, inflation-adjusted giving to public-society benefit declined by 15.2%. The cumulative change in giving to public-society benefit between 2020 and 2022 is negative 5.1% in inflation-adjusted dollars.
“I think there are a lot of silver linings in the data. The good news here is when we shared the findings, most people who had been paying attention to the economic data were not surprised,” said Una Osili, Ph.D., Associate Dean for Research and International Programs; Efroymson Chair in Philanthropy; Dean’s Fellow, Mays Family Institute on Diverse Philanthropy at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
Some of the data she referenced includes year-over-year inflation, the rate at which consumer prices increase, which was 6.5% in December 2022, the Federal Reserve raising interest rates seven times during 2022 and again on February 1, 2023. Most important when looking at donor behavior is that when accounting for inflation, workers’ average hourly earnings were down 1.7% in December 2022 compared to a year prior.
The total estimate for giving by individuals in 2022 included itemized and non-itemized charitable contributions. Contributions included gifts of cash, securities and property. Mega-giving from six individuals, such as MacKenzie Scott, and couples totaled $13.96 billion during 2022.
One of those not surprised by the drop in giving is Woodrow Rosenbaum, chief data officer for GivingTuesday and a non-resident fellow, Technology and Public Purpose Project at the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School.
“There may be other factors as well, but the dominant trend has been for nonprofits to focus on large donor stewardship at the expense of everything else, and for lots of good reasons, as well as some that might be misguided. This is what we would expect to see” when affluent donors pull back, Rosenbaum said.
“I think it has more to do with the pressing need in the nonprofit sector for short term dollars. It has driven us toward that at the expense of other activity combined with some scarcity mentality that contributes to continuing that cycle,” said Rosenbaum. “It works to get more money until you have too many eggs in that one basket and then have some type of correction which appears is what happened last year.”
That sentiment of smaller donors not being asked is key to the decline, according to Shannon McCracken, CEO of the Nonprofit Alliance in Washington, D.C. “What the nonprofit sector inherently knows – but donors and the general public may not consider in seeing Giving USA 2023 highlights – is that increases in giving from corporations, foundations and mega-donors that help cover declines in individual giving on a pie chart are not equally distributed,” she said. “There are winners and losers. Institutional funders can be magnificent change-makers, but the everyday givers are the bedrock of democracy of giving.”
Chris Pritcher, CEO at national fundraising firm RKD Group in Dallas, believes charities leaders must fundamentally change their pursuit of donors. “This study is the latest in a series of alarm bells, but it doesn’t even touch what might be the loudest alarm. I’m bothered by the fact that individual giving revenue is down 6.4%, but I’m more concerned that the number of donors continues to decline,” he said in reaction to the data.
“Not enough people are being moved to contribute – because our practices perpetuate talking at them, not talking with them or listening to them,” said Pritcher. “As a sector, we have to change. We must work harder than ever to innovate and deepen relationships with donors, no matter how much they give.”
McCracken offered additional perspective when it comes to rank and file donors. “For the last 10-plus years, there’s been a substantial shift in donor acquisition best practices to maximize efficiency by focusing on donors with the highest lifetime value,” said McCracken. “The natural follow-up question for nonprofits is whether that efficiency of fundraising for the years leading up to 2022 was worth it – that is, are they in a better financial position at present, with the 2022 softening, than they would be had they continued to prioritize the number of donors over gift size? If yes, that’s an intriguing context to overlay on the Giving USA data. If the answer is no, these numbers may inspire new definitions of fundraising efficiency.”
Rosenbaum believes the cash is out there. “Theoretically, there is some limit to how much someone can give but there’s so much elasticity in the donor ecosystem that we are nowhere near that limit,” he said.
Gifts via donor-advised funds (DAFs) are becoming more popular, especially in times when holders of such accounts believe they can’t deposit as much into the accounts and therefore feel the need to grant more from the DAFs, said Rosenbaum.
It is hard to track the impact of DAFs in the Giving USA numbers. DAF funds are counted wherever the organization that hosts the donor-advised fund is counted. For example, a DAF that is held within a community foundation will be counted with community foundations in the giving to foundations subsector. Freestanding, national or commercial DAFs, such as Fidelity Charitable, are counted in the Public-Society Benefit subsector on the uses side.
According to the most recent data from the National Philanthropic Trust, $72.67 billion was deposited into DAFs and $45.74 billion was granted during 2021. The average DAF account was $183,842.
In addition, other types of organizations on the uses side sponsor DAFs. The contributions to these donor-advised funds appear in Giving USA in the specific subsector under which the primary organization is categorized. Some examples are DAFs within higher education institutions (in education) and within organizations such as World Vision (in international affairs), the Humane Society (in environment/animals) or the National Christian Foundation (in public-society benefit).
Americans continued remembering charities in their wills. Giving by bequest has captured between 7% and 9% of total giving during the past 40 years, with high points in the five-year periods beginning in 1993, 1998, 2013 and 2018, the data show. Giving by bequest saw its largest period of growth during the five-year period beginning in 1998, with an increase of 40.7%.
Many nonprofit advocates want to ensure living Americans have an incentive to give. “Nonprofits leaders and policymakers should be alarmed that the 2022 decline in donations from individuals illustrates the impact of a 20-year decline in the percentage of Americans who donate to nonprofits,” said Steve Taylor, a principal at public policy firm Integer in Washington, D.C.
“In 2000, two-thirds of American households gave. By 2018, that percentage had fallen to less than half of households,” said Taylor who spent more than 15 years at United Way Worldwide, most recently as senior vice president and counsel for public policy.
A coalition of nonprofits and others are working to reverse this trend by asking Congress to allow all taxpayers who donate to deduct those gifts from their taxes. “Since 2018, only about 10% of taxpayers have been able to take the deduction, with the exception of the $300/$600 non-itemizer deduction in place in 2020 and 2021,” said Taylor. “While renewing and expanding this deduction is just part of a solution, virtually all the empirical evidence shows that tax deductibility increases donations.”
More troubling is when these numbers are paired with earlier research from the Lilly School that showed just 5.4% of American believe they had a personal interaction with a nonprofit – despite more than 10% of the population working at a nonprofit and tens of millions of people involved with organizations such as YMCAs, YWCAs and scouting.
“The Giving USA results should be a bit of a reminder or maybe a nudge if not a direct catalyst for a lot of folks around the philanthropic sector to recognize and think about the importance of engagement and building those authentic relationships,” said Osili.
Giving USA estimates primarily rely on econometric methods developed by researchers in philanthropy and the nonprofit sector and are reviewed and approved by members of the Giving USA External Review Panel. Members of the External Review Panel include research directors from national nonprofit organizations as well as scholars from such disciplines as economics and public affairs, all of whom are involved in studying philanthropy and the nonprofit sector.
The Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy prepares all of the estimates in Giving USA for the Giving USA Foundation. Giving USA develops estimates for giving by each type of donor (sources) and for recipient organizations categorized by subsectors (uses). Most of Giving USA’s annual estimates are based on econometric analyses and tabulations of tax data, economic indicators and demographics.
Data for giving by foundations come from Candid (formerly the Foundation Center). Giving USA researchers update data found within Giving USA each year. This is because current Giving USA estimates are developed before final tax data, some economic indicators and some demographic data are available. The estimates are revised and updated as final versions of these data become available. Final estimates are usually developed two or three years after their initial release.
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