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Reposted from Security Management Magazine
More employees are working from home, and more employers are keeping an eye on them through use of remote monitoring technologies. These tools perform multiple tasks, such as tracking keystrokes and measuring employees’ active and idle time in key applications and websites. Monitoring tools also help companies enforce data security policies, and even take photos to see whether workers are sitting at their laptops at home.
But tracking tools aren’t without risks. Workplace monitoring is subject to a variety of federal and state laws regarding when employees have a right to privacy and if and when they must be notified that they’re being monitored. From a legal perspective, disclosing surveillance is the smartest tactic. Letting employees know that they will be monitored removes their reasonable expectation of privacy—the element that often forms the basis for invasion-of-privacy lawsuits arising under common law.
And while being transparent about the use of such monitoring tools is essential to avoiding legal pitfalls, it’s also key to building trust in the workforce around privacy issues.
According to a June study by Gartner, 26 percent of HR leaders report having used some form of software or technology to track remote workers since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. That’s up from 16 percent in April, when the pandemic was taking hold. The tracking includes monitoring of work computer usage, employee emails or internal communications, work phone usage, and employee location or movement.
Many executives are eyeing the use of such technology because they understand that remote work is here to stay. Gartner projected that 47 percent of employers plan to let workers work remotely full time moving forward. In addition, 82 percent of business leaders across multiple industries plan to allow employees to work remotely at least some of the time as they reopen closed workplaces.
It’s important for organizations to be clear about their intentions when using employee monitoring tools, says Josh Bersin, HR industry analyst and founder of the Josh Bersin Academy in Oakland, California, a professional development organization for HR.
“Is the purpose to benefit employees, to evaluate them, or perhaps to penalize them?” Bersin says. “If the idea is to benefit employees, it’s good; if it’s to evaluate employees, it’s potentially dangerous; and if it’s to penalize them, it’s probably a bad idea.”
Companies such as Teramind, ActivTrak, InterGuard, Sneek, and Hubstaff offer technologies that enable organizations to monitor their employees at home. “These are tools that many companies weren’t buying before,” says Brian Kropp, chief of research in the HR practice at Gartner.
Teramind’s technology can track employee time spent on apps, websites, or email; gauge team productivity levels; and help enforce data security policies. Teramind has seen three times the normal amount of sales leads arriving to its website since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, says Eli Sutton, vice president of global operations for the Miami-based company.
One way organizations use the technology is to track the time remote employees spend in productive versus unproductive or “nonwork-related” applications or websites, Sutton says. The tools have the ability to gauge active versus idle time spent in targeted areas.
Teramind’s tool gives workers an option to periodically log out of the monitoring software to briefly complete nonwork tasks, such as checking personal email. “It allows them to regain their full privacy, which is well-suited for today’s work-at-home environment,” Sutton says. The technology also can be automatically disabled if employees access sensitive websites, Sutton says, such as a healthcare portal or a personal bank account.
ActivTrak is another company offering technology that can give HR and line leaders greater visibility into how employees spend their time at home.
“A growing interest of our clients is looking for ways to improve the productivity and work habits of remote employees and teams,” says Javier Aldrete, vice president of products for Austin, Texas-based ActivTrak. “The technology also can indicate signs of potential disengagement or burnout, since it provides reports on when and how long employees are working on specific tasks each day.”
ActivTrak also helps ensure remote employees are using good data security practices. For example, if workers are saving files to storage areas not authorized by the company or using apps not approved by the organization, automatic alerts can be sent to managers who can follow up on such practices.
Employers using monitoring technology for remote workers face the same legal guidelines as when using such technology in the workplace, legal experts say. But there are special considerations when employees use personal devices for work purposes at home.
“In most instances state laws require you to protect employees’ privacy rights by giving them advance notice of your monitoring,” says Jennifer Betts, an employment attorney for Ogletree Deakins in Pittsburgh. “The best practice is to get employees’ consent for monitoring in writing.”
Such transparency is not only good legal practice but also good management practice. “We’ve consistently found that when employees are surprised by the use of monitoring technologies, they get very frustrated” and it impacts their morale, Kropp says. “The word will always get out that these tools are being used, so the question is whether you want employees to learn about it from management or from another source.”
When organizations install monitoring technology, they need to consider that remote employees may be using personal devices for work tasks, says Usama Kahf, a partner with law firm Fisher Phillips in Irvine, California. “Employees generally have an expectation of privacy in their use of personal computers and phones unless a different company policy has been communicated to them in writing,” he says. If you’re using any form of monitoring technology that affects employees’ personal devices and retaining information from that monitoring—beyond information gathered when an employee’s device is interacting with a corporate network—there should be a written privacy policy disclosing what the company is doing and why it’s doing it, Kahf says.
“That policy should detail those situations and uses where employees won't have a reasonable expectation of privacy,” he says.
When an employee’s personal device is connected to a corporate network or virtual private network (VPN), Kahf says companies do have a legal right to require employees to agree to data security monitoring measures in those situations.
Legal issues also are arising around the use of videoconferencing to conduct business, Betts says, specifically related to the recording of the images and voices of employees without their permission. Organizations, for example, might use such video recordings to create transcripts or to document calls or for future training purposes.
“Some states have wiretapping laws that restrict employers from recording their employees’ voices or images without their consent,” Betts says.
Some organizations are using the data they gather from monitoring not only to keep tabs on remote employees but also to help plan for an eventual return to the workplace.
Kropp says one financial services company measures the performance of its front-line employees in two key ways: the number of insurance claims they process in an hour and the error rate associated with those claims. As the company analyzed the performance of remote workers during COVID-19, it discovered something of interest: Various employees were operating at peak productivity and efficiency levels at very different times of the day.
“They found that some people had a faster claims-processing speed and lower error rate earlier in the morning and others performed better on those metrics in the afternoon,” Kropp says. “Some also were doing their best work later at night.”
He says such findings may prove useful as the company begins to transition employees back to the workplace. “Many organizations will have to do social distancing in the workplace, and they may ‘time shift’ when employees work,” he says. “To the extent they can schedule worker shifts when people have proven to be their most productive at home may be beneficial.”
Whether business leaders are anticipating a return to the office, a fully remote workforce or something in between, monitoring tools can provide valuable insights into how work gets done and how organizations can support their frontline workers.
Business leaders have a wealth of technology options to choose from when monitoring the activities of remote employees. Experts say the decision on what type of software to use—or even to monitor at all—comes down to a few fundamental questions: Why are you tracking your workers? Is your primary motivation improving the productivity and working conditions of your remote workforce? Or are you applying greater oversight and policing to ensure work-at-home time isn’t abused?
While some technologies can address both goals, it’s important to be clear about your objectives, says David Johnson, an analyst with Forrester who specializes in workforce productivity issues. On its own, the knowledge of being watched usually improves human behavior, experts say. But when used in draconian fashion, surveillance can damage worker trust and reduce employees’ willingness to go the extra mile for their organizations.
Some companies in heavily regulated industries, such as finance or healthcare, may have a need to monitor workers for compliance reasons, Johnson says. But he encourages other organizations to use monitoring software with the idea of gaining a deeper understanding of the behaviors and challenges of remote workers, not to keep eyes on their every keyboard stroke.
“The software can give you good insight into how people are spending their time at home and whether they might have too much or too little on their plates,” Johnson says. “The primary goal of a leadership team should be figuring out how to support the needs of their remote workforce. That might require changes like more automation or better technical support. Companies that excel at creating a good employee experience look at the data created by monitoring software from a place of curiosity, not punishment.”
While monitoring software can gauge how often remote employees use work-related applications such as email, Word, Excel, or PowerPoint—as opposed to time spent on nonwork websites or apps—those metrics can sometimes be deceptive.
“Trying to draw conclusions about people’s productivity from software use can be a slippery slope,” Johnson says. “Does more activity mean that employees are being more productive? Not necessarily, especially where it involves knowledge work.”
The highest-performing, most productive employees don’t always log the longest hours, Johnson says. “Top employees might work fewer hours in a day but are far more efficient and effective in how they use that time.”
Transparency is key to effective use of monitoring software.
“If employees aren't told they’re being monitored by management but find out in another way, it becomes highly uncomfortable,” says Stacey Harris, chief research officer for Sapient Insights Group, an Atlanta-based HR technology research and advisory firm. “You not only need to be transparent about the technology's use, but employees also should know why they're being monitored.”
Intent makes all the difference in the use of monitoring tools, Harris believes. “It’s very easy to make policy based on the lowest common denominator, or the people who break the rules most in companies,” she says. “But the organizations who excel at this make policies not based only on those outliers but on employees who get their jobs done in the most productive fashion, to ensure those people have the support and resources they need to keep performing at the highest levels.”
While monitoring software has its place, it shouldn’t be viewed as a panacea. “There's no substitute for managers staying in frequent touch with their people, even in remote environments,” Johnson says. “That’s simply good leadership practice that can’t be replaced with a productivity tracking tool.”
See Original Post
Reposted from Artnet News
The de Young Museum in San Francisco will reopen for members on September 22 and to the public on September 25, making it the first major art institution in the city, and one of the first in the state, to do so since US museums abruptly shuttered in March.
“We are thrilled that we will soon reopen our doors and resume engagement with our friends and communities, especially when California is still undergoing so many hardships,” Thomas P. Campbell, director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, told Artnet News in an email. “Our air-conditioned galleries are ready to provide succor to those who are weary of the smoky skies and bad air caused by the terrible fires across the state.”
When it opens its doors, the de Young will offer free general admission and discounted special exhibition tickets through December 2021 to essential workers. Advanced reservations are recommended, but a limited of number of tickets will be available each day at the door.
The city of San Francisco announced on Friday that it was giving museums and galleries the green light to reopen beginning September 21, pending approval of their health and safety plans. The de Young, having already devised its reopening procedures in anticipation of the day it would be able to implement them, was ready to act on these new permissions right away.
“The uncertainty of the reopening date has definitely been a great challenge, and we’ve had to pivot on many occasions!” said Campbell. “A task force with employees across museum departments has been hard at work over the summer, liaising with city authorities and planning and replanning the reopening of the de Young and Legion of Honor.
Other institutions are beginning to announce their plans as well. The Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, will have member preview days on October 1 and 2 before reopening to the public on October 3. The de Young’s sister museum, the Legion of Honor, is looking toward a mid-October reopening.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the city’s Contemporary Jewish Museum have yet to announce opening dates, but are likely feeling pressure to get visitors back inside the museum. Without revenue from admissions, ticketed events, and gift shop and restaurants sales, cultural organizations across the world have been hard hit financially by the year’s extended closures, leading to widespread layoffs in the field.
“We’re an institution that is heavily dependent on earned revenue, so extended closure has had a huge financial impact on our bottom line,” said Campbell. “We were fortunate to receive a federal loan in the late spring and our board and community responded very generously to our recovery fund appeal. Even with these contributions, we were still compelled to make the painful decision to reduce staff a few months into the closure. This was a very hard blow and we are thrilled to be able to bring furloughed staff members back to the museums after reopening.”
The state saw a limited wave of openings in June, but those institutions, including the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, the Laguna Art Museum, and the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, were soon forced to shut down once again, when Governor Gavin Newsom issued an order reinstating statewide bans on indoor business activities effective July 13.
After spiking in July and August, infection rates have dropped across California over the last month. Business restrictions will be loosened based on the number of new cases in a county and the percentage of positive coronavirus tests. Museums can operate at 25 percent capacity in counties that are in tier two, designated red for “substantial” risk levels.
Under the new reopening plan, some institutions in San Diego’s Balboa Park museum complex began welcoming the public on Labor Day weekend, including the San Diego Museum of Art on September 5. Other art institutions that have followed suit include the Laguna Art Museum (September 10) and the Bowers Museum (September 12). The grounds at the Huntington Library, Art, Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino have been open since July 1, but the art galleries and other indoor facilities still remain closed.
At the de Young, returning visitors can catch “Uncanny Valley: Being Human in the Age of AI,” the group show featuring artist interpretations of the implications of artificial intelligence, which was open for less than a month before lockdown, and “Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving,” which was supposed to debut in March after a blockbuster run at the Brooklyn Museum.
“Our Frida Kahlo exhibition closed before it opened,” Campbell said. “The paintings, costumes and artifacts that comprise this show have been hanging in darkness for six months. Frida is dear to the heart of many Bay Area residents and we are happy that our visitors will finally be able to enjoy this beautiful exhibition.”
But the closure also meant postponing the museum’s highly anticipated Judy Chicago retrospective. Originally slated to open in May, it will now bow in summer 2021, leaving the de Young scrambling to come up with a placeholder. The result is the “de Young Open,” featuring over 800 works by local artists.
“With our loan exhibition schedule up in the air, we decided to focus on the community by issuing an open call to all Bay Area artists,” Campbell said. “Anticipating perhaps a few hundred submissions, it was mind-blowing to see 12,000 works from almost 6,000 artists come through.”
Reposted from BBC
The works include first editions of Galileo and Isaac Newton.
They were taken by thieves in January 2017 who cut holes in the roof of a warehouse in Feltham then abseiled in, dodging sensors.
The men were identified as being part of a Romanian organised crime gang.
The gang is responsible for a series of high-value warehouse burglaries across the UK, London's Metropolitan police said in a statement.
Officers discovered the books underground during a search of a house in the region of Neamț, in north-eastern Romania, on Wednesday.
The find follows raids on 45 addresses across the UK, Romania and Italy in June 2019, investigators say. Thirteen people have been charged, 12 of whom have already pleaded guilty.
The hoard includes rare versions of Dante and sketches by the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya, as well as the titles by Galileo and Isaac Newton dating back to the 16th and 17th Centuries.
"These books are extremely valuable, but more importantly they are irreplaceable and are of great importance to international cultural heritage," said Det Insp Andy Durham, from the Metropolitan police's Specialist Crime South command.
The works were being stored in a warehouse ahead of being transported to a specialist book auction in Las Vegas, in the US, when they were stolen.
The thieves cut through the roof of the warehouse in Feltham, near Heathrow airport, and abseiled 12m (40ft) to the ground, dodging movement sensors, according to AFP news agency.
They then spent hours rummaging through bags before making off with their haul by the same route.
Investigators say the Romanian gang flies members into the UK to commit specific offences, then flies them out shortly afterwards, with different members taking the stolen property out of the country by alternative transport methods.
The group is said to be linked to a number of prominent Romanian crime families who form part of the Clamparu crime group.
Earlier this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized burnout as a syndrome resulting from “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”
Security analysts are known for being at a high risk for burnout, which can lead to mistakes and increased vulnerability for the organization. As a former security operations center (SOC) analyst, I remember all too vividly the long shifts, the constant influx of alerts, the minimal room for error, and never seeming to have enough resources to do the job.
In the time since my days on the front lines of security, these issues have only been exacerbated by more alerts being generated by the myriad of threat detection and prevention tools that teams must leverage, an evolving and growing surface area to protect increasingly sophisticated bad actors, and a massive cybersecurity skills shortage. If all of that isn’t stressful enough, today’s security analyst is often working from home and trying to manage personal stress in an unprecedented situation.
In the wake of a global pandemic and civil unrest across the United States—and the world—we are all consuming a lot of information. Some of it is work-related, but a lot of it is not and bad actors are taking advantage.
For example, we have seen a huge increase in the number of phishing emails exploiting our trust relationships with organizations like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the WHO, and state and local governments.
But it’s not just the constant phishing attempts that are challenging, it’s the fact that adversaries know we are distracted. We are watching what’s happening around the world, trying to homeschool our kids, and helping our parents—or significant others—all while many businesses are in the fights of their lives. With so much going on both personally and professionally, the risk for burnout is higher than ever.
The number one way to begin conquering burnout within your own team is to increase its efficiency and overall effectiveness. If I were managing a SOC right now, before assessing new solutions or vendors I would ask these three questions:
1. How do you set people up for success and reduce opportunities for mistakes?
2. How do you ensure work is being done in a consistent and repeatable way?
3. How do you make sure the work that has to get done is actually getting done?
In short, focus on what you have to do and make sure the processes you must execute are effective, efficient, and have guardrails for an inevitably distracted team.
Start small. Define your incident response processes with documented standard operating procedures. Identify simple workflows or manual tasks that can be automated now. Set target metrics and key performance indicators, and generate real-time reports to track progress so you can pivot when necessary.
Automation is a crucial tool that can help increase the overall efficacy of your SOC. When it is combined with strong processes and documented procedures, your team is set up for success—minimizing stress and maximizing productivity.
Reposted from AAM
The authenticity of an organization’s actions to advance diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI) is judged by two key factors: their consistency and comprehensiveness. Companies that have been commended on their approach to racial justice, like Ben & Jerry’s, have been so because their efforts began before and will endure beyond when DEAI is in the spotlight on national news. Their commitment permeates the entire institution, from internal people practices, to supportive action with external partners, to their supply chain and products. And while Ben & Jerry’s readily admits that they still have room to grow and improve, their long-standing support of racial justice has garnered them widespread legitimacy in a national landscape where Americans remain divided on the genuineness of corporate responses to social issues.
Unfortunately, organizations like these are the exception. Many long-standing and widespread practices are directly at odds with advancing DEAI in the workforce, even at times when boards and CEOs are making external statements of commitment to racial justice. One example, which I would like to explore here, is that personal relationships often play a role in getting certain resumes to the top of the pile, or getting an “extra look” in the college admissions process for legacy students. Yet access to those critical relationships has never been equitably distributed. More often than not, these “recommendations” reinforce the advantages that uphold structural inequities, by lifting up those candidates already benefiting from the status quo, while blocking others who are already at the margins.
Over the course of my career, whenever a board member or senior leader has recommended a candidate to me for an open role, that candidate has typically been white, upper class, and from a select set of educational institutions. Regardless of the virtue of the recommenders’ intention, every time they put forth a candidate part of groups already overrepresented in the current workforce, they make it that much more difficult to advance racial equity on teams across the organization. Because of the power dynamics at play, their “suggestion” is often taken as much more than one—if I get a proposed candidate from a board member, I’m essentially receiving a request from someone in power who holds the purse strings to my job and livelihood. Though it is certainly conceivable not to move forward with the candidates they propose, it is not outside the realm of possibility that continuously denying these requests could lead to consequences, be they interpersonal or professional.
The effect is particularly damaging at smaller organizations where the number of open positions are few and turnover is low, meaning opportunities to meaningfully advance racial equity in the workforce are relatively rare unless people leave. This kind of nepotism can therefore seriously stymie DEAI efforts, even when those in leadership positions make claims acknowledging their importance.
In order to shift this paradigm, organizations should consider the following:
Most importantly, organizations must model institutional goals around workforce diversity and racial justice at every level, all the time. It is not enough for us to put forth statements of solidarity without backing them up with consistent and concrete action. This starts by changing internal practices that continue to preference the well-networked and by “calling in” leaders whose actions get in the way of real change. Shifting this paradigm requires a deeper understanding of our own roles in advancing racial justice and creating a more equitable playing field, by recognizing age-old practices of privileging personal connections as a form of nepotism that perpetuates racial inequity. Our actions must align with the organizations our words say we want, so that we may actually become them.
On August 27, three days after getting the green light from New York State, the Museum of Modern Art reopened to the public, with mandatory reservations, limited capacity, and new safety protocols in place. But museum staff has already been back for weeks: unlike many other art institutions across the city, MoMA required that all employees resume working on site in staggered shifts beginning July 6, the same day the city entered phase three of its reopening.
“The heart of the museum’s mission is being accessible to the public,” reads a message to staff on MoMA’s Returning to the Workplace webpage. “This requires us to reactivate our building, and be physically present to interact with our visitors, space, and collection.”
In order to keep working exclusively from home, staff members had to provide documentation demonstrating insurmountable childcare challenges or medical conditions that put them at an increased risk from the virus—and were required to reapply for these exemptions ahead of Labor Day.
That decision has proven controversial among some staff members, who contend that the institution’s response to the pandemic and its approach to reopening are intrinsically linked to problems that have come under the microscope across the museum sector in recent months: structural racism and inequitable treatment of workers.
“We’re here to serve the public and we want to be available to people, but the entire return to work policy has been framed in a really punitive way, and not taking into account the real concerns about the virus,” one staff member, who asked to remain anonymous, told Artnet News.
“It almost feels like there are more staff here right now than there are visitors,” another worker, also speaking anonymously, told Artnet News. “There is not much actual reason for us to be at the museum right now.”
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests that spread across the country this summer, many museums have faced calls to look inward and to address issues of racial discrimination. At the same time, the ongoing push toward unionization within the field, coupled with widespread layoffs and furloughs in an increasingly cash-strapped sector, has raised new concerns about how institutions treat their staffs.
To date, MoMA has avoided making headlines like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum, both of which unveiled new equity and diversity plans in the face of public criticism.
But behind closed doors, similar concerns have been raised at MoMA. On June 11, the museum’s education department sent a letter to senior leadership and the president of the board of trustees outlining 11 concrete steps the museum should take to combat structural racism, including the formation of a cross-departmental Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion task force.
In an all-staff email on June 22, MoMA director Glenn Lowry announced that he had formed a steering committee made up of BIPOC staff from across departments. A museum representative told Artnet News that the committee was formed “in response to a museum-wide commitment to prioritize anti-racism in all aspects of our work” and has “a combined tenure of 68 years experience at MoMA.”
The education department had also asked that its letter be shared with the entire MoMA staff, which it was not. As staff returned to work on site on July 6, a larger group of employees—229 staff members across 30 departments—sent a follow-up email to the full workforce expressing concern with the reopening procedures and what they saw as the museum’s lack of action regarding anti-racism efforts.
“The current plan, though framed in the name of equity, does not adequately consider the disproportionate impact that COVID-19 has on the health, safety, and well-being of Black frontline staff and communities of color living in an already inequitable system of white supremacy,” the letter stated. “Black frontline, non-management staff members have not been meaningfully involved in MoMA’s decision-making around the pandemic, despite the fact that many of these staff members have continued to physically work at the museum since March.”
The museum, meanwhile, has suggested it has gone above and beyond to ensure the safety of workers. To help devise safe reopening procedures, it hired Bernard Camins, the director for infection prevention for the Mount Sinai Health System, as a consultant.
Under Camins’s guidance, MoMA “implemented staff health questionnaires, temperature checks, PPE and social distancing requirements and new health and safety workflows, configurations of the workspaces, and protocols in the galleries,” a museum rep said.
MoMA also co-led the city museums reopening task force, a coalition of top museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney that formed to develop uniform safety measures. But unlike MoMA, many of its peer institutions, including the Guggenheim and the Brooklyn Museum, are instructing office workers to continue doing their jobs remotely where possible.
MoMA is operating with office staff at just 50 percent capacity (all employees rotate in and out), but, sources contend, different employees face vastly different degrees of risk. Some workers live close enough to walk or bike (Lowry lives in an on-campus apartment provided as part of his compensation), but others have hour-long subway commutes that greatly increase their potential exposure to the virus. And those disparities don’t go away once workers set foot in the museum.
“Senior leaders can go into their office and close their doors and not see anyone for the rest of the day,” said the first MoMA employee. “People on the front lines have to interact with the public.”
In what some staff described as a heated Zoom staff meeting on June 29, Lowry insisted that having all staff on site was a matter of solidarity. “The idea that some of us can work at home because what? We’re better educated? We’re white? We’re privileged? You make up the reason why we think we can work at home, but others of us actually have to be at work,” he said in a recording obtained by Artnet News. “That’s not the institution I want to be part of. I think we’re all in it together.”
“While some of us might be able to argue we never have to be in the museum to still do our work, that’s not equity—that’s the opposite of equity,” Lowry added. “To suggest somehow that one population can be at risk, and another population shouldn’t be at risk to make it less risky for the population that’s at risk, is absolutely crazy.”
Some employees felt Lowry’s attitude skirted the real dangers posed by MoMA’s approach. “Equity is looking at how we are all affected differently and trying to find a solution that gives us all the same opportunities for better outcomes—as opposed to equality, which gives us the same solution, but where our outcomes are still affected by our context,” a third MoMA staffer said. “As a Black staff member, I’m extremely aware of how my community has been impacted by COVID.”
The third employee recalled a recent virtual all-hands meeting that offered a stark example of the divisions within the staff. “There was this really laughable moment when we were asked to applaud for all the security officers and none of them were on the call—like one person from security was on the call!” the employee said. “The health and safety discourse can’t be divorced from the lack of movement on race and racism at the museum—they are totally bound up with each other.”
As the museum prepared to welcome back the public, it hung a new sign in the lobby listing the names of MoMA’s essential workers, thanking them for their continued work throughout the crisis. To some, the move felt like an empty gesture after the museum stopped offering hazard pay in July. (MoMA did not answer inquiries regarding hazard pay.)
“It starts to feel like this is being done in order to ease the trustees’ anxieties,” the second worker said. “Getting all of us back to the museum gives the board a sense the museum is operational and will at some point go back to being more financially self-sustaining.”
MoMA has yet to disclose a projected deficit resulting from the closure, but the lockdown has placed unprecedented pressure on its balance sheet. “We all have to recognize that we have to be present, and that at some point the money is going to run out if we can’t get the museum up and running,” Lowry said in the staff Zoom meeting.
Before lockdown, and on the heels of its $400 million renovation, which was unveiled in October 2019 after a four-month closure, MoMA offered an early-retirement program. A spokesperson described it as “a generous offer keeping in mind long-serving senior staff who worked hard to finish the years-long building project… and who might have otherwise taken an earlier voluntary retirement program.” A similar offer was extended after the 2004 expansion; about 40 employees signed on this time around.
Now, with Lowry enacting a $45 million budget cut, down to $135 million from $180 million, sources at the museum tell Artnet News that MoMA has also introduced a voluntary buyout package. The hope is that buyouts, in conjunction with leaving 60 open positions unfilled, will allow MoMA to eliminate 220 positions without layoffs (other than the 85 museum educator contracts terminated in March).
“Like other museums in New York City and across the country, this pandemic and its economic impact is the most serious financial crisis we’ve ever faced,” said MoMA’s spokesperson. “We will continue to look for ways to bring costs down, to maximize revenues, and to push through this fiscal crisis.”
The museum did not offer any comment on the terms of the buyout, but some staff members are not appreciative of the offer.
“People are faced with the possibility of either forcibly losing their jobs or having to take a buyout package,” the first employee said. “Or coming into the office to risk their life, when they could do their work perfectly fine from home.”
Reposted from The Washington Post
In an action streamed live on Facebook, a group of activists took a Congolese funeral statue from a Dutch museum, saying they were recovering art looted during the colonial era. The activists were quickly arrested and the statue returned undamaged, the museum said Friday.
The Afrika Museum said in a statement that the statue was removed Thursday from the museum located in Berg en Dal, near the eastern Dutch city of Nijmegen.
One of the Black rights activists, Mwazulu Diyabanza, said in a post on Facebook that the removal of the statue was “part of the recovery of our artworks that were ALL acquired by looting, robbery, violence” in colonial times.
The incident came amid continuing anger at symbols of colonialism and slavery in the United States and Europe after George Floyd’s death while in police custody led to global protests against racial injustice.
The statue action in the Netherlands came the day that prosecutors in neighboring Belgium said that a tooth presumed to be from Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba would soon be handed back to his relatives after years of lobbying efforts.
In June, five protesters, including Congo-born Diyabanza, were stopped before they could leave the Quai Branly Museum in Paris with a 19th century African funeral pole and placed under investigation by French prosecutors.
The Dutch museum said that to avoid a conflict that could have caused damage to the statue, its security officers did not prevent the activists from leaving the building with the artifact as they knew police were nearby.
The Facebook livestream ended with police handcuffing one of the activists on a road near the museum. Diyabanza did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment that was left on his cellphone voicemail Friday.
The Afrika Museum is part of a group of Dutch museums that last year published a set of principles for handling claims on cultural objects in their collections. A spokesperson for the museums could not immediately be reached for comment.
Reposted from The Flathead Beacon
A man suspected of starting several arson fires in the Pablo area is dead after barricading himself inside The People’s Center and setting it ablaze on Sunday, Sept. 6.
The body of Julian Michael Draper, 33, was discovered inside a back office at the museum, educational and community center owned and operated by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. Firefighters arrived on the scene late Sunday evening unaware that anyone was inside the building and found Draper’s body when they broke out a window as part of their fire containment efforts.
It wasn’t immediately clear how Draper died. His body has been sent to the Montana State Crime Lab in Missoula for further analysis.
The People’s Center was constructed in the early 1990s to house cultural artifacts significant to the Salish, Kootenai and Pend d’Oreille tribes, and the fire destroyed a number of “irreplaceable” items, according to Shelly Fyant, the Chairwoman of the CSKT Tribal Council and a former director of The People’s Center.
“I was in shock. It’s so devastating,” Fyant said of her reaction when she first received the news. “That was my baby, you know? I feel like I birthed that center in between my two kids … it’s just so devastating to see all those years of work and collecting history and artifacts and family heirlooms (destroyed).”
Fyant and current director Marie Torosian said the fire appeared to have started in the back office area before spreading to a repository where a number of artifacts were burned, including historic photographs, Eagle-feathered bustles, bone-and-bead breastplates, beaded moccasins and vests, and a collection of beaded bags. Employees are just beginning the process of sorting through the damage and will be consulting with experts from around the state in an effort to preserve or restore as many damaged items as possible.
Torosian said she will be establishing an online fundraiser to assist in the preservation and restoration efforts that lie ahead.
“It’s my hope and my goal to take what we have left and try and rebuild a facility and open back up again and continue to do our work,” she said.
Not every area of the building burned, however, and the fire mostly spared the facility’s museum and educational center, preserving dozens of one-of-a-kind pieces that were on display, including a vest worn by Salish Chief Charlo that was donated just two years ago. Torosian said she and others were allowed in the building for the first time on Monday and that the sight of the museum and educational center still intact brought her to tears.
No determination has been made on the viability of the building itself, which Torosian described as a “sturdy structure” that nonetheless suffered major damage. Firefighters at one point used a bulldozer to break through a concrete exterior wall in order to gain entrance to the facility, something made more complicated by Draper’s efforts to barricade himself inside. Torosian and Lake County Sheriff Don Bell said Draper lived nearby but otherwise had no formal connection to the facility.
The fire Draper set was apparently the second he started on Sunday, according to Bell, who said Draper was seen running from a nearby storage shop that was set on fire shortly before the blaze at The People’s Center. Less than two weeks earlier, on Aug. 26, Draper was arrested and charged with arson after he ignited a small wild land fire near the former Plum Creek sawmill in Pablo, less than a block from Sunday’s fires. Draper was out on bond at the time of his death.
Bell said no clear motive for the fires has been discovered.
Reposted from CNN
A woman barred from entering one of France's most prestigious art galleries apparently because she was wearing a low-cut dress has received an apology after sharing details of the incident on social media.
The Musee d'Orsay in Paris tweeted its regrets after the woman, identified only as "Jeanne," also took to Twitter to accuse the museum -- home to some of the world's most famous nude paintings -- of "double standards."
Jeanne, who shared an image of herself taken on the same day, says she was initially denied entry while visiting Musee d'Orsay with a friend during a warm day in the French capital.
After questioning why she wasn't allowed inside, the museum's staff apparently pointed to her cleavage, leaving her "excruciatingly embarrassed."
"Arriving at the entrance of the museum, I don't have time to take out my ticket before the sight of my breasts and my appearance shocks an officer in charge of reservations," Jeanne writes of the female officer's reaction.
"At this moment, I am still unaware of the fact that my cleavage has become the subject of this controversy."
Another officer, this time from security, eventually told her that she had broken the museum's rules.
Jeanne says staff told her that "rules were rules" and she would need to cover herself up before going inside.
While the guidelines on the museum's website state that a visitor "wearing an outfit susceptible to disturbing the peace," can be denied entry, it doesn't specify what type of clothing would warrant this.
"I do not want to put on my jacket because I feel beaten, obliged, I am ashamed, I have the impression that everyone is looking at my breasts," she says.
At this point, the friend accompanying her pointed out that her midriff was on display and questioned why Jeanne was being singled out.
Jeanne says she eventually agreed to put her jacket on, and she and her friend were permitted to enter.
"Inside: paintings of naked women, sculptures of naked women, artists advocating as well as engaging," she continued, pointing out that many of the other visitors were also wearing skimpy clothing.
Jeanne went on to criticize the museum's staff for "discriminating on the basis of cleavage."
"I question the coherence with which the representatives of a national museum can prohibit access to knowledge and culture on the basis of an arbitrary judgment determining if the appearance of someone is decent," she says.
"I am not just my breasts, I am not just a body, your double standards will not be an obstacle to my access to culture and knowledge."
In its apology, posted on Twitter, Musee d'Orsay said it had reached out to Jeanne.
"We have taken note of an incident that occurred with a visitor during her visit to the Musée d'Orsay," it reads, before stating that the museum "profoundly regrets" what happened and has contacted the "concerned person" to apologize.
Edouard Manet's "Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe" and Gustave Courbet's "The Origin of the World" are among the many famous works depicting nudity that are on display at the museum.
CNN has contacted the Musee d'Orsay and Jeanne for comment.
When the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York reopened to members on August 27 after five months of closure, eager visitors with masks lined up on carefully marked social-distancing indicators outside the museum’s glass doors.
When one museum-goer in the lobby asked where visitors would get their temperatures taken, museum COO Amy Roth replied: “You already did.”
Thanks to a tripod-mounted thermal-imaging camera that scans visitors as they walk through the vestibule, those checks happen automatically.
And that’s just one of many new precautions that resulted from an unprecedented alliance of 25 New York cultural institutions across all five boroughs that formed make sense of how to reopen after the citywide museum shutdown in March.
“We knew there would be guidance from the government, but we didn’t know what that would be,” Roth tells Artnet News.
What museums did know was that they would have to figure out some things for themselves. The government, for instance, was unlikely to weigh in on whether handing out audio-visual headsets would be okay in an era of extreme hygienic caution.
The museums “determined that we were better served working together” to answer those and many other questions, Roth says, noting that the institutions were inspired by the way hospitals had begun to collaborate since the onset of the pandemic.
Many of the discussions revolved around how to develop uniform safety measures across the institutions, so that “visitors wouldn’t see a major difference between a visit to the Whitney, and say, MoMA, or the Queens Museum.” Differences, she says, “lead to doubt, and feelings of discomfort if the standard of care is different.”
The first museum task force meeting, which took place in April, had about 15 institutions participating, and grew from there. Weekly meetings are still held each Wednesday.
“It turns out reopening a museum is much harder than closing one,” says Laurel Britton, senior vice president of revenue and operations at the Met, which has been part of the task force from the start.
The Met also has its own internal task force of 12 that has been meeting each day for the past four months. That group came together to solve a host of related issues: Staff reentry, visitor reentry, and physical circulation. One of its first steps, in June, was to poll staff on everything from returning to the workplace, to commuting, to continuing to work from home.
“We found that many staff needed to be reassured we were going to open the building in as safe a manner as possible,” Britton says, noting that workers were fairly evenly split between those who were comfortable with returning, those who were not, and those who felt neutral about the issue. (Upon the Met’s reopening, one visitor experience employee told Artnet News they were feeling “a little uneasy,” but pleased that “so far the museum seems to be making the right choices,” while another New York museum staffer said they felt museums should remain closed.)
The bottom line? “Communicating with staff and doing it early, was critical,” Britton says.
The Met also had to deal with the logistics of signage. With a space of its size—at roughly 58,800 square feet, it’s the largest museum in the US—workers needed to place about 800 social-distancing reminders throughout the building.
But one big issue was keeping up with changing regulations. In July, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that museums would have to remain closed even as New York City entered the fourth phase of its reopening on the 20th of that month.
“All the goalposts kept moving,” Britton says. Throughout that time, the Met kept in touch with local and state officials. “The goal for us was never to pressure people to allow us to reopen, but to show them that we’re doing everything we can to meet the requirements for when we are given the green light,” Britton says.
On the museums’ opening days, one thing became crystal clear: The Whitney and the Met, two world-renowned institutions, were going to become local museums, at least for the time being. On its first day, the Met reported roughly 8,400 ticketed visitors—a far cry from the usual summer high of 25,000 visitors a day. The Met’s post-COVID capacity is capped at 14,000.
And perhaps not surprisingly, given all the travel restrictions, 80 percent of the visitors on opening weekend were from New York City. Pre-lockdown, roughly 70 percent of daily visitors came from outside the city.
The Whitney, meanwhile, drew 2,700 visitors over the five days of its member preview, and more than 500 on the first day. The museum is currently capped at 25 percent capacity.
The next step? Keep working at it, says Roth. The Whitney is now in touch with peer institutions looking to reopen in the weeks and months ahead.
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