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  • February 05, 2020 2:18 PM | Anonymous

    Reposted from Pinnacol Assurance

    Each year, the influenza virus infects millions of people across the country, including over 3,800 who were hospitalized in Colorado last year. The flu attacks the respiratory system and is highly contagious. When just one person in a workplace contracts the virus, everyone is put at risk.

    February is peak flu season, and this year may be a rough one in Colorado.

    Through mid-January, the state has already recorded 909 hospitalizations, pacing ahead of 2019. Reports of patients with flu-like symptoms at Colorado outpatient clinics are pacing above seasonal baselines, with Denver experiencing a spike in emergency room visits.

    How can you protect your employees from the flu this year? Use these tips from Pinnacol experts to keep everyone as healthy as possible during flu season.

    1. Encourage flu vaccinations: The flu vaccination reduces the likelihood of developing the flu. If someone does contract the virus, his or her symptoms will be less severe. “It’s definitely not too late to get vaccinated,” says Pinnacol Senior Medical Director Tom Denberg, M.D.
    2. Know the flu symptoms: Help employees recognize the most common flu symptoms by listing the signs of flu on posters or in emails; these include aches, chills, fatigue, sore throat, runny nose and fever, though not everyone with the flu spikes a fever.
    3. Recognize at-risk employees: Certain groups are more likely to develop the flu, Denberg says, including people with diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and rheumatic conditions, or those undergoing immunosuppressive therapy. “It’s especially important for them to take preventive measures and minimize their exposure,” he says.
    4. Tell sick employees to stay home: Denberg says employees often ignore this directive because they worry about falling behind with their workload. Hearing their employer say it’s OK to take sick days reassures them while they recover. Infectivity can last up to four days, Denberg says, and it takes several days for the flu to develop. A person is contagious that entire time, so encourage employees to head home as soon as symptoms arise.
    5. Advise everyone to wash their hands: Denberg says employees should wash their hands with soap frequently during flu season. A person can get the flu by touching virus-infected surfaces, including phones and keyboards, and then touching one of his or her mucous membranes.
    6. Track flu outbreaks: Know when flu might strike and prepare for it. Follow the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s flu report page to view statewide flu trends. Is an outbreak creeping closer? Warn your employees, and disinfect shared devices such as doorknobs, coffee pots and copy machines more frequently.
    7. Promote preventive actions: Provide tissues for people to cover their mouths with when they sneeze, and supply hand sanitizer to workers for use at job sites where they can’t wash their hands immediately. Invest in no-touch trash cans too.

    See Original 


  • February 04, 2020 2:31 PM | Anonymous



  • January 21, 2020 3:23 PM | Anonymous

    Reposted from NBC News

    Federal health officials confirmed Tuesday that a case of the new coronavirus has been diagnosed in Washington state, just north of Seattle. In addition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they will begin screening passengers for the virus at two additional airports: the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

    The outbreak has spread from the central Chinese city of Wuhan to cities including Beijing and Shanghai, the CDC said Tuesday. Cases have also been reported outside China, including in South Korea, Thailand and Japan. At least six people have died.

    The patient in Washington state, a resident of Snohomish County, is a male in his 30s. The CDC said the man arrived in the U.S. around Jan. 15 after visiting Wuhan. He had not, however, visited the seafood market where this virus is said to have originated.

    Health officials said the man did not have any symptoms when he arrived, but had read about the viral outbreak online. When he started to develop symptoms, he reached out to his health care provider.

    He's currently in good condition but remains hospitalized "out of an abundance of caution," health officials said.

    "We are grateful the patient is doing well," Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said Tuesday during a call with reporters.

    In a later interview with NBC News, Messonnier said "the risk to American public is low," but added that more information is emerging day by day.

    Still, "we should expect to see additional cases in the US and certainly around the world," she said.

    The case in the U.S. comes amid rising concern that the illness could be transmitted through so-called super-spreaders — highly infectious patients with the ability to sicken dozens at once.

    Nearly all of the 300-plus cases have been reported in China, including at least 14 health care workers who have fallen ill with the respiratory virus, a coronavirus known as 2019-nCoV.

    It's unclear whether those workers were all infected in the same place, but if so, "it just smacks of a super-spreader event," said Michael Osterholm, an international infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota.

    That's when one patient inexplicably produces much higher levels of a virus in his or her lungs, giving the patient the ability to infect dozens of people at a time. Osterholm said super-spreader cases occurred during two well-known coronavirus outbreaks: the SARS and the MERS epidemics. The 2003 SARS outbreak reached more than two dozen countries, sickening 8,098 people. Nearly 800 died.

    "For those of us who dealt with SARS and MERS, it's like déjà vu all over again," Osterholm told NBC News. "When you see super-spreaders, you know you've got a problem."

    There is no indication the patient in Washington state is a "super-spreader."

    China's National Health Commission confirmed 298 cases as of Tuesday evening. The majority have been reported in or near the city of Wuhan, and linked to a food market with live animals. Since the strain was first detected in December, the number of cases and their geographic spread has increased rapidly.

    Severe cases have generally been limited to older adults with underlying health conditions. But increasingly, Osterholm said, younger, otherwise healthy adults are falling ill.

    What is a coronavirus?

    Coronaviruses are a group of viruses that can cause a range of symptoms including a runny nose, cough, sore throat and fever. Some are mild, while others are more likely to lead to pneumonia. They're usually spread through direct contact with an infected person.

    The coronavirus gets its name from the crown-like spikes on its surface, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Corona is Latin for crown.) Including the newly identified form of the virus, there are a total of seven coronaviruses that can infect humans, the CDC says.

    There is no specific treatment for the new virus, and no vaccine to prevent it. The National Institutes of Health confirmed Tuesday they are in the "very preliminary stages" of research to develop a vaccine for the new virus, but declined to provide details.

    The outbreak is coinciding with massive travel in and out of China in advance of the Lunar New Year on Jan. 25, and prompted the CDC last week to start screening passengers arriving from Wuhan at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, the San Francisco International Airport and Los Angeles' LAX. On Tuesday, the CDC announced that it would be screening passengers at two additional airports: Alanta's Hartsfield–Jackson and Chicago's O'Hare. All passengers whose flights originate in Wuhan will be rerouted to one of these five airports.

    On Wednesday, the World Health Organization will meet to discuss whether to declare the outbreak a global health emergency. Such a move would help guide countries on how they should respond, usually by offering financial and/or political support. It could also recommend against practices that could be detrimental to affected regions, such as travel and trade restrictions.

    "One thing that we've seen in outbreaks in the past is countries try to put up travel bans or propose restrictive travel in an attempt to stop the spread of an outbreak," said Alexandra Phelan, an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law who works on policy issues related to infectious diseases.

    North Korea, for example, has reportedly closed its border to foreign tourists until the current coronavirus outbreak is under control.

    But, Phelan explained, such policies are ineffective because people still cross borders. "When you put travel bans in place, people don't go through the normal processes. You lose the opportunity to give people medical information, conduct appropriate screening or provide medical treatment," Phelan said.

    See Original Post

  • January 21, 2020 3:16 PM | Anonymous

    Reposted from ArtNet News

    Senior officials at the Pentagon have rowed back on the possibility of carrying out US President Trump’s threat to bomb cultural sites in Iran. The US defense secretary acknowledged that carrying out the commander-in-chief’s threats, which have sparked worldwide condemnation, would contravene “the laws of armed conflict.”

    Trump provoked international outrage from museum directors, academics, and artists after he tweeted on Saturday that the US would strike Iranian cultural sites “very fast and very hard” should the country kill any Americans or attack American assets in retaliation for the US-ordered killing of an Iranian general on Friday.

    But in a news briefing at the Pentagon on Monday, January 6, Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper appeared to contradict the president, telling reporters: “We will follow the laws of armed conflict.” He had been asked whether striking Iran’s cultural sites would constitute a war crime.

    Another White House official told the New York Times that of the 52 sites in Iran that Trump tweeted were potential targets, none qualified as cultural sites.

    The news that officials are distancing the US government from Trump’s threats will be met with a measure of relief from heritage professionals. In the wake of his provocative tweets and a statement to reporters, leading members of the international museum community condemned the president’s words. Responses included an unusually outspoken comment aimed at the White House from director Max Hollein and CEO Daniel Weiss of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as a post on Instagram by its former director, Thomas Campbell. The director of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Matthew Teitelbaum, also expressed his outrage, tweeting: “The preservation of antiquities and cultural sites should not be endangered by any US administration.”

    Since Monday, more organizations have condemned intentional acts of destruction of culture, including the World Monuments Fund, which described Trump’s threats as “absolutely unacceptable,” and called on “people and governments everywhere to stand up for the protection of our shared heritage.”

    The Association of Art Museum Directors, which represents the heads of 225 art museums in the US, Canada, and Mexico, also issued a statement urging the protection of Iran’s cultural heritage. The AAMD noted that “the United States has a long and important history of safeguarding art and artifacts during conflict, such as with the Monuments Men during World War II.”

    James Cuno, the president of the J. Paul Getty Trust, weighed in as well: “It is tragic,” he wrote, “that today there would be any contemplation or rhetorical threat of further destruction of cultural heritage, particularly when what precious little remains in the world is already suffering from wanton destruction, looting, neglect, reckless overdevelopment, and climate change.”

    Iran has 22 cultural sites listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Here are five of the irreplaceable treasures that have—in all likelihood—been spared thanks to the backlash against Trump’s threat, and some cooler heads in the Pentagon. 

    Persepolis

    The royal city founded by Darius I was the political and religious center of the Achaemenid Empire in the 5th century BC. Now a spectacular ruin, it is Iran’s most important ancient heritage site. Every summer between 1967 and 1977, Persepolis and the nearby city of Shiraz served as the setting of a groundbreaking international cultural festival bringing together leading artists from the West, Asia, and Africa.

    The Friday Mosque

    The Masjed-e Jāme’ in Isfahan is the oldest Friday mosque in Iran, which inspired the design of mosques across the region. Begun in the 8th century, its magnificent architecture is the result of 12 centuries of construction, incorporating the different styles of the Abbasid, Buyid, Seljuq, Ilkhanid, Muzzafarid, Timurid and Safavid eras.

    Tabriz Historic Bazaar Complex

    A crossroads on the Silk Road linking the East with the West, Tabriz’s vast bazaar has been famous since the 13th century. Rebuilt under a brick-vaulted roof in the 18th century, its magnificence reflects the market’s importance on the ancient trade route. 

    Golestan Palace

    The walled palace is in the heart of historic Tehran. Built by the ruling Qajar family in the late 18th century, Golestan Palace was further embellished in the 19th century in a style that combines traditional Persian designs with European influences. 

    Shushtar Historical Hydraulic System

    A triumph of 3rd-century civil engineering, the canals and waterfalls that form the Shushtar hydraulic complex powered mills, irrigated a vast plain and provided river transport as well as a defensive system for the fortified city.

    See Original Post

  • January 21, 2020 3:13 PM | Anonymous

    Reposted from The Washington Times

    A former librarian and a bookseller have pleaded guilty in the theft of rare books from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in a years-long scheme.

    Sixty-three-year-old Gregory Priore, former manager of the rare books room, pleaded guilty Monday to theft and receiving stolen property. Fifty-six-year-old John Schulman, the owner of Caliban Book Shop, pleaded guilty to theft by deception, receiving stolen property and forgery.

    Allegheny County prosecutors said some charges were withdrawn in exchange for the pleas, but the deal contains no agreement on sentencing, which is scheduled for April 17 for both defendants. 

    Authorities alleged earlier that Priore stole prints, maps and rare books and handed them off to Schulman to resell them. Prosecutors said several hundred rare items worth more than $8 million were taken in a scheme investigators believed dated back to the 1990s.

    Authorities said last year that one of the items stolen, a Geneva Bible published in 1615, was returned to the library after it was traced to the American Pilgrim Museum in Leiden, about 45 miles (70 kilometers) from Amsterdam in the Netherlands. 

    The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that defense attorneys for Priore declined to comment following Monday’s hearing. Schulman’s attorney, Albert Veverka, noted that his client wasn’t acknowledging any role in a conspiracy but said in a statement that he accepted responsibility “for his association with books under circumstances whereby he should have known that the books had probably been stolen.”

    “Mr. Schulman has dedicated much of his life to contributing to the bookselling trade and regrets that today’s guilty pleas negatively reflected upon the antiquarian book industry, his family and clients,” the statement said.

    See Original Post

  • January 21, 2020 3:09 PM | Anonymous

    Reposted from The Washington Post

    Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf has ordered the agency to address several internal recommendations for preventing violence targeting religious communities, marking the start of a long-sought shift, it appears, in the federal government’s response to a rise in such crimes.

    Wolf’s directive, quietly issued Thursday in a memorandum to leaders throughout the Department of Homeland Security, follows attacks late last month at a Hanukkah celebration in New York and, hours later, a Sunday church service in Texas. Calling the matter vital to U.S. national security, Wolf instructed the agency’s component heads to explain within two weeks how they will respond to guidance outlined in a recent internal report focused on preventing violent crime targeting faith-based groups.

    “The right to practice religion free of interference or fear is one of our nation’s most fundamental and indelible rights,” Wolf wrote in his memo. “As such, the targeting of houses of worship by violent extremists of any ideology is particularly abhorrent and must be prevented.”

    Wolf’s memo makes repeated reference to the 62-page report prepared by a DHS advisory panel and submitted to him on Dec. 17, days before the attacks in Texas and New York. The report recommends creation of a new leadership position at DHS to oversee faith-based programs, more consistency in the training provided to religious organizations and better coordination between state and local law enforcement.

    Findings by the Homeland Security Advisory Council describe a pattern of domestic extremism and hate crimes over the past decade — shootings, arson attacks and bombings targeting churches, synagogues, a Sikh temple and mosques across several states — that has put Americans’ freedom “under significant stress.”

    “If people start to change the way they behave, pray or even what they wear when they want to go to a house of worship of their choice, then we’re in a very dangerous time in America,” said Paul Goldenberg, a longtime security expert who co-chaired the advisory council alongside John R. Allen, a retired Marine general with expertise in the challenges associated with confronting international terrorism.

    Wolf’s predecessor as acting homeland security secretary, Kevin McAleenan, requested the study last year. The advisory council’s members met with experts, law enforcement personnel, community and government leaders, and visited several places of worship that have experienced violent attacks.

    Their report emphasizes that this is not the first time DHS leaders have been offered guidance for preventing violence against religious communities. The advisory council did so in 2012 and 2014 — and yet there was no evidence, the report says, that the agency acted upon actions urged in the past. And many of those recommendations, it notes, remain relevant and urgent.

    “This report should be converted into an implementation plan at the earliest possible moment,” it says.

    Homeland Security is a big agency dealing with a host of serious threats, said Goldenberg, a senior fellow at Rutgers University’s Miller Center who studies risks to places of worship across Europe. He noted that, as administrations change, people shuffle in and out of positions. That’s why one of the group’s top recommendations, he said, remains the establishment of a leadership position to oversee the department’s efforts to protect religious organizations.

    “We were looking for someone permanent to be assigned at senior level within the department that will own this portfolio going forward because this isn’t going away anytime soon,” he said.

    DHS has held emergency-response training events for religious leaders in the wake of some attacks. DHS hosted such an exercise for Jewish leaders in April, following the deadly mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

    In 2018, DHS also stood up the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, which made protecting religious institutions one of its core focuses.

    But the advisory council report warns that some federal policies are hindering law enforcement agencies’ ability to address threats to faith-based organizations. Even as attacks on places of worship spiked in the last three years, the group found training, resources and coordination between federal, state and local law enforcement “inconsistent” and “unlevel.”

    Brian Harrell, an assistant director within the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said the report proved timely in the wake of last month’s violence in New York and Texas, and pledged to further engage religious communities and to develop practices to keep places of worship safe.

    “We must consider threats highlighted in this report and be ready to respond in a quick, efficient and effective manner,” he said.

    Training is crucial, Goldenberg said, since those who encounter such attacks are the people praying in pews or celebrating religious holidays. He and Harrell acknowledged the challenges that come with protecting places meant to be open and welcoming.

    “It’s talking about somebody standing out in front of a mosque, synagogue or church with a trench coat on in the middle of the summer,” Goldenberg said. “It’s recognizing behaviors — suspicious behaviors. People need to understand that if they see something suspicious, they need to call the police.”

    The federal government should provide tools to help law enforcement agents spot troublesome threats online, he added, citing, for example, warnings that have appeared on the anonymous message board 8chan ahead of past attacks.

    The report also recommends Congress increase security grant money for faith-based organizations. The program overseen by the Federal Emergency Management Agency is a vital source of funding for religious groups looking to bolster security, the report states. But the group found that it is insufficiently funded. The $60 million available in 2019 for nonprofits covered requests for only about one-third of the 2,037 applications received.

    “Churches, mosques, temples, synagogues have been attacked by heavily armed extremists executing military style tactics, bent on killing, attacking, terrorizing people of faith while praying within safe sanctuaries,” Goldenberg recently told lawmakers.

    “The question of whether the faith-based community is targeted by hatred and terror is not up for debate.”

    See Original Post

  • January 21, 2020 3:06 PM | Anonymous

    Reposted from ArtNet News

    A group of activists failed in their attempt to dismantle Berlin’s most controversial Holocaust memorial. They were upset that the provocative sculpture originally contained the ashes of victims of the Nazi regime along with soil collected from the sites of concentration camps.

    Around 20 members of the Action Artists Committee (AKK) tried to take down the temporary monument near the Reichstag, Germany’s federal parliamentary building, on January 5. The activists, who were stopped by police, used an angle grinder and a sledgehammer against the eight-foot-tall steel column installed by the art collective the Center for Political Beauty (ZPS) in December.

    “No one should make art and politics with ashes of Holocaust victims,” AKK group member Eliyah Havemann told the German media. During their action, members carried the flag of Israel. Havemann’s grandfather, Dagobert Biermann, was a German resistance fighter in World War II who was murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942.

    The Center for Political Beauty, a self-described “assault team,” had installed the monument, which it claimed contained remains of Jewish victims of Nazi persecution. The ZPS apologized for the upset caused to Holocaust survivors and their relatives. It has since said it has removed the human remains.

    The monument was originally intended as an artistic gesture to warn German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, the CDU, against cooperating with the far-right AfD party. In 2017, the ZPS installed another Holocaust memorial near the home of an AfD politician.

    The column is said to contain soil gathered at 23 sites near Nazi death camps across Germany, Poland, and Ukraine. The ZPS said it found traces of human remains in around 70 percent of the more than 200 samples it collected. After the outcry in December, the group says that it gave the human ashes to the Orthodox Rabbinical Conference so they could be properly buried in a Jewish cemetery. It is against Jewish religious law to use human remains.

    “We would like to sincerely apologize to those affected, their relatives and surviving dependants, who we have hurt in their feelings,” the collective said, according to Die Zeit. 

    For the time being, the collective’s memorial remains in place, though the local government office told rbb that it is trying to remove the installation as quickly as possible.

    The controversial column stands on the former site of the Kroll Opera House, which served as a home for the German parliament after the Reichstag burned down in 1933. Hitler used the fire as a pretext to seize power as a dictator.

    See Original Post

  • January 21, 2020 3:02 PM | Anonymous

    Reposted from The New York Times

    A painting by Gustav Klimt that was stolen from an Italian museum almost 23 years ago — only to be found inside one of the museum’s walls last month — is authentic, an Italian prosecutor announced on Friday at a news conference.

    X-rays of the painting, called “Portrait of a Lady,” were key to its authentication, Jonathan Papamarenghi, a councilor in Piacenza, where the museum is, said in a telephone interview. The X-rays showed that another portrait of a woman was underneath the painting, as had been expected, he said.

    It had the museum’s stamp on it as well, Mr. Papamarenghi added.

    A team of experts led by Claudia Collina of the Institute for Cultural Heritage in Bologna verified the work, he said.

    The whereabouts of “Portrait of a Lady” has been one of the art world’s biggest mysteries since the painting was stolen from the Ricci Oddi museum in 1997.

    Investigators found the painting’s frame on the museum’s roof, leading some to believe someone had used a fishing line to hook it off the wall and pull it through an open skylight. But Salvatore Cavallaro, one of the investigators on the original case, told the BBC in an article in 2016 that could not have happened, as the skylight wasn’t big enough.

    Two months after the robbery, it was briefly thought that the painting had been located: A package addressed to Bettino Craxi, a former Italian prime minister who had fled to Tunisia in the middle of corruption allegations, was intercepted at the border between Italy and France. But it turned out to be a recently painted fake.

    In 2015, someone claiming to have stolen the painting told an Italian newspaper that it would be returned on the 20th anniversary of the theft. It never arrived.

    Then, on Dec. 10, 2019, gardeners tidying ivy on the gallery’s walls found a metal panel that, when opened, had a bag with a painting inside. Mr. Papamarenghi said he was overjoyed that it had turned out to be the real artwork. “It’s a great, great moment for the city, and for the art community,” he said.

    Filippo Sardi, a spokesman for Piacenza’s police force, said in a telephone interview that the painting would not immediately be returned to the museum as it was still needed for investigations into the crime. It would be kept in the vault of a branch of the Bank of Italy, he said.

    Patrizia Barbieri, Piacenza’s mayor, said in a telephone interview that when it is eventually returned, the Council “will do everything it can to protect the painting,” including potentially investing in a new security system. “In the past 22 years, things have changed a lot with security systems, fortunately,” she said.

    The town had already been contacted by film companies and book publishers looking to adapt the story of the theft, she added. But the saga is still ongoing. The painting may be back, but who stole the painting and how? “It remains a mystery,” Ms. Barbieri said.

    See Original Post

  • January 07, 2020 2:47 PM | Anonymous

    Reposted from Artnet News

    As devastating wildfires continue to rage in Australia, Canberra’s National Gallery has been forced to temporarily shut down as a protective measure. Air quality conditions in the city have deteriorated due to smoke from the worst bushfire season in modern history, and opening the building’s doors could jeopardize the artwork.

    The move marks the first time in the museum’s 53-year history that it has closed due to smoke (or ever closed for two or more consecutive days). “Closing our doors allows us to mitigate any risk to the public, staff, and works of art on display. We are sorry for any inconvenience,” wrote the museum on Twitter on Sunday. A second post on Facebook extended the closure through Monday. Would-be visitors to the current exhibition, “Matisse & Picasso,” (on view through April 13) can return at any point during the exhibition’s run or return their tickets for a refund.

    The flames have been stoked by hot weather and strong winds and so far the bushfires have burned some 12.4 million acres of land across Australia, according to the Associated Press. The state of New South Wales, around both Canberra and Sydney, is among the hardest hit regions, with the New South Wales Rural Fire Service reporting 136 fires, 69 of them currently uncontained.

    It’s estimated that the bushfires could kill up to one billion animals, while the human death toll has climbed to 24, with 2,000 homes burned to the ground, reports Sky News.

    The fires also present a significant threat to works of art. “Smoke is suspended airborne particles,” National Gallery of Australia director Nick Mitzevich told the Sydney Morning Herald. “Those airborne particles can have any number of carcinogenics in them. If they settle on a painting or a textile or a photograph, they could have a corrosive effect on the surface. Anything in the air that is a foreign body has the potential to deteriorate artworks over time.”

    The museum’s current exhibition on Matisse and Picasso includes loans from the Tate in London and the Musée national-Picasso Paris. “All our lenders have been informed of what we have been doing and the way we have been protecting the collection,” Mitzevich told the Daily Telegraph. “At the moment the artworks are not under any threat at all.”

    Other Australian museums are also being affected by the ongoing disaster. Air quality in the city of Albury, home to the Murray Art Museum Albury, is even worse than in Canberra. Nevertheless, the institution has opted thus far to remain open, offering an air-conditioned respite from the heat, particularly for those displaced by evacuation orders. The Show and Tell Gallery in the small town of Corryong even served as a temporary shelter for 30 local residents on New Year’s Day. The space’s director, Joshua Colling, was among those whose homes burned down.

    The unprecedented intensity of this year’s fire season is forcing institutions to reconsider how and when they mount shows in the future. Until the air has cleared, the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, host of the upcoming National Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition, is trying to limit how often the gallery doors are opened. “In future years we will be programming our exhibition space through summer to focus on exhibitions that can’t be damaged by smoke,” a Blue Mountains City Council spokesperson told the Herald.

    See Original Post

  • January 07, 2020 2:42 PM | Anonymous

    Reposted from Thomas Insights

    Scholars still mourn the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria, burned to the ground by Julius Caesar’s forces in 48 BC. Up to half a million scrolls were incinerated, including works by Homer, Plato, and Socrates.  Some historians believe the loss of scientific research, cultural, and historical knowledge at Alexandria set human civilization back as many as 1,000 years.

    It’s important, therefore, to do everything we can to protect our cultural institutions. While it’s unlikely a modern-day Julius Caesar is going to pillage and burn his way through the Guggenheim any time soon, we are now facing a force even more formidable and destructive than the legions of Rome: climate change. 

    In recent years natural disasters have been more frequent and more severe. In 2018, the U.S. suffered 14 disasters that cost the economy over $1 billion each, with the total annual cost estimated at $91 billion. Natural disasters in the last three years are more than double the long-term average.

    Confronting these issues head-on seems to have come naturally to the art world. The Climate Museum, established in 2015 in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, became the first museum in the U.S. solely dedicated to the climate crisis, and museums are increasingly working to go green. Last year the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) joined forces with The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation to replace incandescent bulbs of Chris Burden’s sculpture Urban Light with LEDs, which will prevent five million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions within the next decade.

    Perhaps this makes it unsurprising that museums and galleries are way ahead of the pack when it comes to establishing weather-resistant institutions. Here are some of the ways they are future-proofing themselves against the impacts of climate change and the disaster management techniques that are being employed.

    Fire

    One of California’s most headline-grabbing fires of 2019 was the Getty Fire, named after The Getty Center – the self-proclaimed safest place for art during a fire.  As Vice reports, when the flames came within a mile of The Getty Center, the staff didn’t flinch and resting firefighters were accommodated in the on-site café.

    Some of the fire-fighting measures implemented by a range of conscientious museums like The Getty Center include:

    • Fire-resistant Architecture – The Getty Center’s walls are made of stone, concrete, and protected steel, which are highly fire-resistant. The Santa Barbara Museum of Art is undergoing major renovations including humidity control and fire prevention.
    • Fire-resistant Landscaping – The Getty Center planted drought-resistant plants and trees close to the buildings that are fire-resistant and retain water. These plants are regularly pruned to prevent them from becoming additional fire fuel. The garden is regularly watered and surrounded by an irrigation system that can be used to shield the center from a fire.
    • Goats –  As a preventative measure, the Ronald Reagan Library enlisted the help of a herd of goats earlier this year to munch up the flammable scrub surrounding the complex.
    • Art First-aid – The Foundation for Advancement in Conservation trains museum staff to clean damaged works and how to triage through soot removal, mold prevention, and dye bleeding stoppage. Many works are salvageable if immediate steps are taken to limit the damage. Jessica Unger, emergency programs coordinator at the Foundation, likened it to an “ambulance getting onsite to help stabilize [art] collections that are saved for later surgery.” The Chicago-based Conversation Center provides a similar service, offering a 24-hour disaster response team to salvage works of art. During Hurricane Sandy, they triaged and attempted to repair over 2,000 works of art.
    • Prioritization – Not all institutions have the funding to invest in sophisticated disaster plans or the redesigning of buildings. The Rubin, for example, invested most of its budget in staff training and education. Saving the most important works of art might simply depend on staff knowing which pieces to prioritize. The Santa Barbara Museum of Art shares this mentality. Chief Curator Eik Kahng said, “Staff are aware of the most highly valued works of art in the collection and know which to move first out of harm’s way.”

    Earth

    A severe seismic event can easily destroy an art collection if protective measures aren’t implemented. Conducting comprehensive structural assessments can highlight the most vulnerable areas in a museum and allow for precious pieces to be moved to a safer location. Many museums in areas prone to earthquakes are preparing their collections for potential impact: 

    • Isolation Technology: The Getty has implemented seismic isolator technology that safely stabilizes vulnerable artworks by isolating them from the ground’s movement. Sculptures are bolted to a base, which consists of frames that slide on rollers to absorb and diffuse the earth’s movement.
    • Fortification: The Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida protects its collection with fortified glass and 18-inch-thick walls that can withstand a Category 5 storm.
    • Putty Usage: Institutions also make use of museum putty (sometimes known as earthquake putty), a blended rubber material that can secure items such as statues and antiques without inflicting any damage, reducing the risk of artifacts tipping and being jostled.

    Water

    Flooding has dramatically impacted the art world in recent years. Scientists predict that Miami will be underwater before the end of the century. So it’s unsurprising that The Bass Museum in Miami Beach has re-thought its art collection, choosing not to purchase pieces such as humidity sensitive watercolors. In 2017 the Louvre flooded and two pieces by Nicholas Poussin were damaged. The University of Iowa Museum has been unable to secure insurance since its collection was evacuated in 2008 following a flood.

    In light of these losses and impacts, other museums are considering preventative measures to limit water impacts in the event of severe weather: 

    • Floodgate Installation: The Smithsonian Institution has been investigating what can be done to protect institutions that are at risk of flooding, while some museums are taking matters into their own hands. The National Museum for African American History and Culture installed a $300,000 floodgate with a built-in flotation device, which means the gate rises with the water level.
    • Flood Doors: The Whitney invested $12 million in re-evaluating and redesigning its entire site mid-construction following Superstorm Sandy. The museum is now waterproof up to 16.5 feet and its flood door can withstand the force of a floating semi-truck.

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