The latest twist in the Hermitage theft saga, involving an alleged private deaccessioning spree by a trusted, highly placed curator who tried to market the wares herself, raises the urgent question of whether other museums have sufficient safeguards in place to protect their own hoards from marauding employees.
The unthinkable has now become thinkable, and whether it’s security cameras, tagged objects that trigger alarms, searches of people leaving storerooms, or some other strategem that only security experts can devise, something must be done to make certain that it doesn’t happen here.
Museum officials, rightly, never discuss this issue in detail, because the more information is divulged about security systems, the easier it is for wily thieves to circumvent them.
As for making sure that other curators aren’t similarly tempted, I’m not convinced that raising their salaries, as has been recommended, will help turn potential thieves into paragons of virtue. That’s not to say that I’m not aghast at the historically low level of compensation for Hermitage employees. In my February 1998 article on St. Petersburg museums for Art in America magazine, I noted:
Russian prices have soared to Western levels, but…state-funded museum staff salaries still average a mere $850 a year (supplemented by the museum with money earned from such other sources as sales of tickets and image rights). Performance rewards, annual bonuses and subsidies for transportation and food from the staff cafeteria last year provided “the equivalent of two additional salaries to our staff,” according to [Mikhail] Piotrovsky [the Hermitage’s director].
An article in Friday’s St. Petersburg Times indicated that Piotrovsky is not going to lose his job because of the theft scandal. It also provided a comprehensive rundown of the arrests and recoveries to date.