Reposted from AAM

MUSEUMS & TRUST

Reposted from learning cultural heritage.org

We are excited to announce that the January AFR meetup will be a joint learning opportunity with our National Heritage Responder network. Please join us as David Carmicheal presents how to conduct your own tabletop exercises.

Tabletop exercises are the safest, cheapest, and simplest way for a cultural repository to test its emergency planning and response. Having a disaster response plan is essential, but considering how you will apply that plan during a crisis is equally important. Tabletop exercises are simple, effective tools that any group can use to explore their assumptions about emergencies, predict their response, identify gaps in their thinking, assess their capabilities, and determine how to optimize their response in an actual emergency. This webinar will explain how tabletop exercises work and provide guidance for conducting your own.

David W. Carmicheal is the author of Implementing the Incident Command System at the Institutional Level: A Handbook for Libraries, Museums, Archives, and Other Cultural Institutions (Heritage Preservation and RescuingRecords.com, 2010) and two publications for the Council of State Archivists, Rescuing Family Records: A Disaster Planning Guide, and its companion volume, Rescuing Business Records: A Disaster Planning Guide for Small Businesses.

The webinar will take place January 15th from 2:00-3:00 ET. To attend, please register at https://learning.culturalheritage.org/products/exercise-without-leaving-your-seat-tabletop-exercises-for-effective-disaster-planning

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Reposted from AAM

As you wrap up 2024, do you have the data you need to plan for the year ahead? 

Join a free webinar to hear what museumgoers had to say about inclusion, imagination, and repeat visitation, and learn how the Annual Survey of Museumgoers can help you make confident, data-informed decisions in the year ahead.  What is the Annual Survey of Museumgoers? It's a cost-effective way to learn about your visitors' experiences, what they value, and what your museum can do to keep improving. You simply sign up and send it out via email and social media. It's that easy.

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As in the past, we invite you to propose content for ASTC 2025 for several different types of sessions:

• Concurrent Sessions. 60-minute sessions featuring an array of presenters from diverse perspectives.
• Lightning Sessions. 10-minute presentations or discussions that are combined with others on related themes.
• Posters. Share your project or idea graphically and engage with attendees informally during designated Poster Palooza sessions.
• Hands-On Showcase Sessions. 15-minute slots to put activities directly in the hands of attendees in the Exhibit Hall.
• Preconference Intensive Workshops. Half-day participatory and highly interactive workshops that offer a deep dive on a specific topic that result in tangible learning outcomes, tools, and/or resources.

ASTC 2025 will be held September 5–8, 2025, in the San Francisco Bay Area and is hosted by a consortium of eight ASTC members in the region.

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Reposted from Art Loss Register

The Art Loss Register is the leading due diligence provider for the art market and maintains the world’s largest private database of stolen art, antiques and collectables. Experts around the world use our services to check the provenance of items before they buy or handle them. Police, insurers, the trade and the public may record items that have been stolen to maximize their chances of recovery, and to record disputes or items within collections. 

The Art Loss Register (ALR) was established in London in 1990. Our founding shareholders included major businesses from the insurance industry and art market. Satellite offices were subsequently opened in New York, Cologne, Amsterdam and Paris to cater to growing client bases in these countries. In January 2010, we consolidated the regional offices into one central, international office, run from London.

The ALR’s origin was The International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR), a not-for-profit organization based in New York. In an attempt to deter international art theft, IFAR established an art theft archive in 1976 and began publishing the “Stolen Art Alert”.

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Reposted from SafeHaven Security

Upcoming Trainings

Occupational Safety: How to Navigate New Workplace Violence Prevention Plan Laws

Webinar | Jan 30 | 10:00am CST

With incidents of workplace violence on the rise, promoting a safer and more secure work environment is becoming a priority for many employers. To try and address these concerns, the state of California introduced Senate Bill No. 553, raising the workplace safety standards by mandating specific actions employers must take around workplace violence prevention. What is the bill and what does it mean? What are the requirements? Join this webinar to learn more about SB 553 and how this affects your company, even if outside of the state of California. Be on the frontline of new laws and policies and prepare your organization for new standards.

Certified Threat Analyst Course

Training | Jan 23-24 | Springdale, AR

Receive life-saving instruction developed and taught by experts with decades of real-life experience in the field of Threat Assessment and Management. Methodologies used by mental health experts and agencies like the United States Secret Service to assess-mitigate-protect against potentially violent situations.

This is a two day in-person course held at the AR Law Enforcement Training Academy. Certification requires successful completion of a competency-based exam at the end of the course.

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Reposted from SafeHaven Security

Workplace violence is a serious issue that affects employees across all industries and can have significant physical, emotional, and financial consequences for your company. Any form of workplace violence disrupts the work environment, undermines productivity, and compromises employee well-being. To mitigate these risks and set yourself and your company up for success, many organizations are turning to employee workplace violence training as a key component of their safety protocols. Here’s why such training is crucial for ensuring a safe, respectful, and productive workplace.

1. Prevents escalation of conflicts
2. Improves communication and reporting
3. Promotes a positive workplace culture
4. Prepares employees for emergency situations
5. Reduces employee turnover

A proactive approach to safety is your best bet. Implementing employee workplace violence training will foster a healthy, safe, and productive work environment where employees are more engaged, businesses are more productive, and legal and financial risks are minimized. Investing in workplace violence training is not just the responsible thing to do—it’s essential for the well-being of your workforce and the long-term success of your business.

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Reposted from Walden Security

Picture this. You are driving and pass a billboard. But this time, it’s not advertising the local coffee shop. Instead, it’s your personal information—your name, home address, who you voted for and a family photo. Never going to happen, right? But where else could all that information be found? We all know where this is going. For better or worse, we live in the age of social media. Social media is a powerful tool that thrives on sharing personal information. It connects us like never before but is a tool that can be easily abused. You may think you are safe if your account is private and because you are selective about who you add as friends. But everyone is at risk on social media. Because posting to social media is, in essence, posting your information to a digital billboard. Read these tips to ensure you are protected on social media: Be selective with your content and cautious of oversharing. Social media is a public platform meant for connection, not a digital diary. Your individual posts are puzzle pieces. Together, they can reveal more details about your habits, location and relationships than you may realize. Keep these content tips in mind: • Realize you cannot take it back: Once you publish something online, it is available to other people and to search engines. You can change or delete it, but once something is out there, you cannot guarantee it is ever completely deleted. • Be careful with photos: Photos can reveal more details than intended. If a school logo on a uniform is included, someone could easily Google the school location. Street signs and mailbox numbers could reveal your home address. Take care in analyzing the small details. • Vacation posts: Wait until you are home to post vacation photos and details. There is no need to broadcast your absence to criminals. • Separate professional and personal accounts. Take some time to review the privacy settings of each social media platform, which can be difficult to find and cumbersome to change. The National Cybersecurity Alliance provides links and steps to access privacy settings for various popular services and apps. Remember to configure the privacy settings immediately when you download a new app or sign up for a new account. Using strong passwords is a simple way to increase the safety of your digital footprint. Use complex and unique passwords that are at least 12 characters long and include letters, numbers and symbols. Avoid recognizable words or phrases—or your kids or pet names. And, yes, use a different password for each social media account. For further protection, consider enabling multi-factor authentication—the process of providing two or more proofs of control associated with a specific digital identity. Examples include face scans and onetime login codes. Social media apps collect information about where you are and your hobbies to target ads and other suggestions. However, many apps request location permission, but that permission is not required for the app to function. Check the location settings on all your devices and turn off location sharing when applicable. Do not allow friends to tag you, as they may not be diligent with their settings. Occasionally, search yourself online to see what information is easily accessible. It is critical to know what information can be found by a free, open-source search. By knowing that and applying countermeasures to protect your identity, you can keep yourself—and everyone around you—safer on social media.

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Reposted from The Art Newspaper

One of the most difficult challenges that museums have faced this year is escalating attacks by protesters on some of their greatest masterpieces. Although there may have been no—or minimal—damage to the works, if it continues, then something is likely to occur. London’s National Gallery has now suffered five attacks. In October it therefore announced a ban on bringing liquids into its rooms. This has increased security costs (thereby diverting resources) and has lengthened queues for visitors. Many hundreds of paintings have recently been glazed, at a considerable cost, and making it more difficult to avoid the distraction of a narrow shadow strip at the top of a canvas. Vincent van Gogh has been the primary target of climate protesters. Soup was thrown at Sunflowers (1888) in October 2022 by two environmental activists from the Just Stop Oil group, causing minor damage to the painting’s 17th-century Italian frame. In September 2024, on the day the perpetrators were being sentenced, the same painting and another Sunflowers version (1889) on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art faced a similar attack. There were three other incidents. In July 2022, Just Stop Oil activists glued themselves to Constable’s The Hay Wain (1821). In November 2023, protesters used safety hammers to smash the glass of Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus (1647-51). And this October, two members of the Youth Demand group covered the glass of Picasso’s Motherhood (1901) with an image of a mother and child in war-torn Gaza.

Of course, other institutions in the UK and internationally have been hit. In January 2023, two protesters stenciled the logo of the global energy company Woodside onto Frederick McCubbin’s Down on his luck (1889) at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, and at London’s British Library in May this year, two environmental activists attacked the glass case holding the Magna Carta. Works of art have become targets in a way that Britain has not seen since the suffragette slashing of the Rokeby Venus in 1914. Sadly, we now have the spectre of copycats, with protesters of various persuasions seeing it as a quick way of getting a shocking image into the media.

War zones

Everyone in the art world and beyond has been horrified by the wars that are being fought in Gaza and Ukraine. Museums and institutions have generally tried to avoid involvement in the political issues, although the travelling show of Ukrainian Modernism represents a positive, non-provocative attempt to deal with the situation in artistic terms. In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900-1930s was at London’s Royal Academy of Arts until October. Individual artists have their own personal views and those from the conflict zones may try to represent something of what they observe and feel in their art. But artists—and art lovers—hold virtually no power in these desperate wartime situations. The military and serving politicians are the ones in command. However, what museums and galleries have demonstrated is that the art world is a truly global community. Hopefully ties between artists, and the dissemination of art internationally, might do a little to help bring diverse groups of people together.

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Reposted from CISA/DHS

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced the release of a new resource titled, De-escalation Action Guide, which is a companion product to the De-escalation Series. This new resource consolidates the existing De-escalation Series into a single, easily accessible product. The Action Guide provides organizations with strategies for empowering staff and community members to recognize, assess, de-escalate, and report suspicious behaviors that may indicate a potential threat.

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