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Ahead of consultant Andy Davis’ IAASF conference on museum and heritage security in County Durham on September 8 and 9, Mark Rowe looks at the sector.
As in previous years, the setting of the IAASF event – the lovely Redworth Hall outside Darlington; previous venues have included the Baltic art gallery on Tyneside – serves as a reminder that Britain abounds in historic places that need protecting, both the sites and their holdings. Likewise the former Mayor of Manchester and prospective prime minister Andy Burnham after returning to Parliament chose the People’s History Museum in downtown Manchester to give a speech.
You too can hire that museum, next door to the crown court. The museum’s website shows various capacities. The largest ‘space’, the Engine Hall, where Burnham spoke, can take 200 standing, which places it (just) inside the ‘standard tier’ of the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, commonly known as Martyn’s Law, whereby venues and events have to take steps to counter the threat of terrorism. The consultant Claire Fry is a day one speaker to the IAASF on Martyn’s Law.
That museums readily hire themselves out not only speaks to a cultural motive to place museums in wider civic life, but shows how museums seek to make ends meet, given (though not something the Labour government, whoever is PM, is dwelling on) that the public sector is having to tighten belts. With people through the door, including out of hours, comes risks, even (as featured in the December 2024 edition of Professional Security Magazine) the risk of a diner or corporate guest spilling red wine on objects (hard to remove). As that suggests, the threats to museums aren’t only theft and other crime, although the robbery of former royal jewels from The Louvre in Paris in October 2025 sent a shock through the museum world. Partly, the shock outside France was a guilty sense of ‘there but for the grace of God’; partly, at the top end of the museum world, it’s genuinely international.
Bayeux Tapestry
Museums, like universities, have sought to spread their brand, by setting up in the Middle East (such as the Louvre in Abu Dhabi); routinely museums will loan and exchange their most famed objects, to draw in (paying) customers. In 1972, the treasures of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun at the British Museum (pictured) were the talk of London (see link for the security around the bringing of the exhibits from Egypt into Bloomsbury); from September to July 2027, the Bayeux Tapestry is there. In The Times on July 10, the French President Emmanuel Macron wrote of ‘the protocols enabling the artwork [the Bayeux Tapestry – in fact an embroidery] to travel and be exhibited under the best possible conditions in terms of security and conservation’.
Balance
Museums must balance preservation of the things they are stewards of, with access to the public. At 224 feet long, the Bayeux Tapestry is hardly something that the opportunist or organised thief can steal; an obvious risk however is of damage, whether out of malice or by some activist to win worldwide publicity for whatever cause. The National Gallery not far from the British Museum still has a policy of not allowing large ‘cabin’ bags or suitcases inside, to guard against protesters bringing in paint or soup to splurge on artworks.
Mid-market risk
Such national, top end of the market museums (and cathedrals, which for much of the day are visitor attractions rather than places of worship) at least have the staff and budget for security, at the door (the National Gallery advertises its walk-through metal detectors) and layered inside, whether shutters between galleries, glass cabinets, and human eyeballs (whether called, changing with the generations, warders, invigilators or customer assistants). At the other end of the spectrum are small places such as the charming Whitstable Museum on the north Kent coast, run by volunteers. In the school holidays it’s open 24 hours a week over four days, less otherwise, whereas the British Museum opens 52 and a half hours a week over seven days, the half being late opening until 8.30pm on a Friday. At Whitstable, on entry you may well find yourself in conversation with the enthusiastic volunteers. That good service, plus a small Hikvision camera system with a monitor at one of the entry desks, serves the museum well in security terms. Besides, some of the exhibits such as an early steam engine, are hardly stealable. As featured in the August edition of Professional Security Magazine, a Public Accounts Committee of MPs report featured the 2023 high-profile cyber attack on the British Library and theft from the British Museum, as part of a wider questioning of the financial and other resilience of museums, and the oversight of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). Arguably however the museums with greatest security risks are the middling ones, whether privately-run or owned by a council, that may have some quite valuable (and portable) objects, whether medals, coins or jewellery, and relatively little in the way of security, whether technology or a presence. As ever, crime is displaced; criminals will go where they can avoid detection.
More in the September and October editions of Professional Security Magazine.
About the IAASF
For more about the International Arts & Antiquities Security Forum (IAASF) visit https://www.tridentmanor.com/iaasf/. The September conference features cyber, fire risk, and Ukraine.
