Hot Art (26 page)

“Auction houses disappear, too,” he said. “We had a case where someone bought an established auction house, and same story. It was doing business with hundreds of clients. Then suddenly it closed, and all the art was gone. You'd be surprised at how easily people, and businesses, can just vanish,” he said.

WHEN JUNE WAYNE
moved to Los Angeles, the city had no major museums, but now it holds over a dozen institutions, including the Getty Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. Hrycyk had toured all of them and had been called to investigate crimes at six museums, he told me.

The first was the Natural History Museum. “They have a lot of stuffed animals,” he said in a deadpan, “but they also have this sealed display case that contained Egyptian artifacts.” The case held a piece that was straight out of a mummy movie—an inscribed scarab ring from ancient Egypt. “Apparently it had a curse on it,” he said. The ring was stolen.

When Hrycyk arrived at the crime scene, the museum was spotless. “They'd completely cleaned it up. The debris had been swept away, and the shattered pieces of the display case had been tossed into a box. The staff didn't want anything to look out of order, nor did they want anyone to know that anything had been stolen. They thought I'd just take a police report and that would be the end of it. When we took fingerprints, they were surprised. It had never crossed their mind that we would work to solve the case.”

Hrycyk declined to name another major museum that had had a near theft, which he had heard about by accident. An employee from a different museum had called the detective to ask if he had heard the rumours about a
Thomas Crown Affair
– like heist gone awry. He hadn't. He made a couple of phone calls, got the name of the museum, and called them. The story turned out to be true.

“When I arrived at the museum, my skills were not wanted,” he said. The in-house security staff told the detective that they had already identified a suspect—they could handle this, they said. “I decided to do my job anyway.”

This is what had apparently happened: A thief hid in a secluded part of the museum that was under renovation. There he tried to pry large multi-million-dollar paintings off the walls: a $3-million Jasper Johns, a $3.5-million Fernand Léger, and a Picasso. “Had this theft been successful, it would have been one of the biggest in California history,” Hrycyk told me. The thief went for the Picasso first and took it off the wall, but the frame made it too big to walk away with. “You could see how he had started to take the frame apart from the back. It appeared that this was taking a long time. He'd exerted a tremendous physical effort. The only thing that defeated this man was that he hadn't brought the proper tools. He thought he could just lift these artworks off the wall, not knowing they were bolted down. I think he ran out of time and fled,” Hrycyk said.

“When I got there—and again, I wasn't even supposed to be called—the private head of security had already jumped to conclusions. Based on his perception of the facts, he was positive this was an internal theft, that it could not be anything else.” Hrycyk interviewed each member of the security staff and determined that although the security guards had walked through the gallery several times, they had gone through the process mechanically. “They turn on a light, cast a glow in the room, look around, turn the light off. Their eyeballs are open but they are not seeing anything,” Hrycyk said. A few days later Hrycyk decided that this was not an inside job: it was a crime of opportunity, and the would-be thief was still out there.

Hrycyk had cultivated relationships with key staff at several museums across the city, including at one of the world's richest and most secure private institutions, the Getty Center. The Getty had been embroiled in a long legal battle over a number of antiquities which Italy claimed had been looted and then delivered to the United States via a sophisticated network of traffickers. In 2007 the institution returned forty pieces to Rome, including a 5th-century ce marble statue of Aphrodite.

I toured the Getty twice, and it was an incredible experience. Visitors are dropped off or park inside the low-slung garage built into the foot of the hills. To get from the parking garage to the museum is a Disneyland-like ride. A tram arrives every few minutes to pick up passengers and ascend the hill. The ride lasts about four and a half minutes, and the scenery is beautiful: rolling hills, wild grass, and sky. At the top of the hill is a clearing in view of neoclassical stone steps that glide up to the reception hall. Then the visitor walks through the reception atrium and into a large interior courtyard with tables, chairs, a hotdog vendor, and a few to-die-for views of the hills, the property, and the Center's gardens. It is another minute-long walk across the courtyard to the door of the exhibition hall—a long journey from the entrance to the art.

Hrycyk arrived at the Getty one afternoon in 2004, not long after a couple had strolled up to a Lee Miller photograph in one of the exhibition halls. The photo was powerful: a Nazi officer who had recently committed suicide, his blood running down his face, the revolver in his dead hand. Miller had worked in Paris for some of the war, documented London during the Blitz, and visited the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau shortly after they had been liberated. The photograph on the wall was taken at Buchenwald.

The couple stopped to inspect the gruesome image. The man stared at the Miller photograph for a moment, then he walked up close to the Plexiglas frame and started punching it. He didn't hold back, and his blows were so hard that the protective glass spiderwebbed. The woman, visibly frightened, watched as the man ran out of the gallery. Of course, the problem with vandalizing a work of art at the Getty is that the only way in or out is by the tram. The enraged man recognized this problem, and as security chased after him, he blended in with the crowds by slowing down to a walk and pretending to appreciate the artwork. He made it to the tram without being caught.

When Hrycyk showed up, he dealt with Bob Combs, director of security. They watched footage from an arsenal of cameras. Hrycyk identified the woman, and when he tracked her down at her home, she was embarrassed. Her male friend turned out to be a ucla graduate student. He was arrested and pleaded guilty. “Sometimes people do strange things,” said Hrycyk. “It shows you, people are not predictable.”

The Getty Center is equipped with one of the most thoughtfully designed security systems of any museum in the world, and when I met with Combs, he confirmed that the museum had never had a piece of art stolen. Combs was in his early fifties, clean-cut, wearing slacks and a shirt tucked in and carrying a walkie-talkie, which often crackled with reports and questions from staff all over the museum. “My Scout leader was a locksmith, so that's where it all started,” he told me.

Combs's career began when he was twenty, working security for the Art Institute of Chicago. He didn't have a lot of control over the environment there. At the Getty, he has almost total control: he presides over a staff of dozens of security guards, monitors an army of cameras and alarms, and keeps constant track of the flow of visitors wandering the galleries and grounds. In fact, he worked for the Center before it was built. “I had input on the initial architectural designs. Any thief would be hard pressed to get past the system that has been set up. We've got plenty of opportunities to stop you.”

His security parameter includes 6 buildings, as well as the 750 acres of land that surround the Center. “That land acts like a moat around us,” he said. Actually, the entire security system at the Getty was designed in concentric rings that overlap, with one purpose: “Protect the asset.” That means the art collection, including
Irises
by Vincent van Gogh, one of his most famous works, worth at least $100 million.

Some of Combs's concentric rings are more visible than others. A fence surrounds the property, far from the Center itself. A web of security cameras is built into the Center's design. Motion sensors are placed in rooms, in doorways, and in halls, and connected to alarms. “Most areas have redundancies.” The Center has what he calls “saturation coverage.” Translation: Anyone walking around looking at art is slathered in layers of security.

When Combs was consulting on the initial security design of the Center, he created a set of plans that were colour-coded: red, green, blue. Any area shaded in red held artwork; green was a public space, like the courtyard with the hotdog vendor. Blue was for transition areas between art and public space— the hallway to get from the gallery to the hotdog vendor. His idea: Don't have a lot of places where visitors travel from red to green. Instead, a patron should have to walk through a blue area before getting out to a public space.

“Security has two components: operations and technology,” Combs said. Technology, no matter how sophisticated, does not sufficiently protect the collection. “I can get all the alarms I want, but that won't do the job.” For Combs, the factor that makes the Center secure is the human presence—his security staff and the Center's other employees. When Combs was tasked with assembling his team, he searched the world for different models of training and settled on one.

“I studied El Al, the Israeli airline,” he told me. “They train their staff to understand the psychology of a situation, because they can't just rely on the technology.” El Al security trainees work a shift on every job at the airline. “That security guard works baggage, concessions, ticketing, parking.” El Al also does scenario training. Security officers have to sit down and pretend they are going to hijack a plane or blow it up. How would they do that, knowing everything they know about how the airline worked? When Combs trains a new security member, he gives that person a mission: “Your job is to steal that Rembrandt in Gallery 3. Think it through. What would you have to do? You're dealing with fire alarms, exits, security systems. What are all the steps?” By doing this, Combs also gets an idea of how thieves think and adjusts security accordingly.

Combs also borrowed another cue from El Al: his staff conducts psychological profiling. If a visitor at the Getty asks one of the gallery staff a leading question, that staff member notifies security. A security officer materializes in the gallery with a description of the patron and engages him in polite conversation—a few questions about the visit and whether he requires any additional information. “The guard is getting to know that particular guest. If the conversation arouses suspicion, that person will be monitored in an almost invisible fashion.” Staff will keep a watchful eye on the guest, and from the control room, a picture of the guest will be taken. “That profile is not based on looks. It is based on behaviour,” Combs said.

I told Combs that I'd visited the Getty a few days before our interview and spent time wandering through the galleries, the promenades, and the gardens. At lunch I'd bought a hotdog from the outdoor vendor. In front of me in line was a man with an earpiece, wearing a dark jacket. I asked him if he worked as security for the Getty. He looked at me for a moment and nodded. I said that I was writing a book about international art theft and that I was interested in meeting Bob Combs. The security official chatted with me for a few minutes and told me how much he liked working at the Center. He said it was very well secured in ways I couldn't even imagine. The conversation lasted for about five minutes. When I told Combs about the interaction, he frowned. “That should have been reported,” he said. “A visitor saying they're working on a book about international art theft ... that's a case where the system didn't work.”

The Getty's ability to pay well and the beauty of the environment itself provide a bonus security benefit: “Low attrition rate,” he said. The security personnel who work at the institution tend to stay. “We're fortunate. It's rare for a member of our staff to leave to work at another museum.”

I asked Combs if he had information about how other museums around the globe were affected by art theft. He is one of the rock stars of the museum security field, and each year he attends the international museum security conference held in Amsterdam. For his presentation in 2007, he had put together a list of thefts from museums around the world. It was fourteen pages long, in a miniscule font. At his desk, he flipped through the list for me.

In Los Angeles, an eighteenth-century manuscript that had once belonged to a powerful Italian family was stolen from the ucla Library. In Arizona, eight bronze statues that weighed thousands of pounds were stolen from the ranch of artist John Waddell. In Paris, two Picassos were stolen from the home of the artist's daughter. Also in Paris, eighty works of art vanished from the Arab World Institute. In Vienna, thieves broke into the Palais Harrach and stole thirty Fabergé eggs, twenty porcelain vases, and a painting—a haul worth over a million dollars. In Florida, a life-size statue of a bronze horse was stolen from outside the Museum of Florida Art.

In Takayama, Japan, three armed men had knocked down a security guard and stolen $2 million worth of gold bullion, displayed on the second floor of a museum. The three men had to drag the gold down a flight of stairs. They had another man in a getaway station wagon waiting outside.

In Australia, a painting by Frans van Mieris was stolen from the Art Gallery of New South Wales on a day when up to six thousand people had visited. The painting was worth about $1 million and was small enough to fit inside someone's coat. In Ireland, fifty sculptures were stolen from the National Wax Museum, including Fred Flintstone, Hannibal Lecter, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, and four Teletubbies. In Tehran, Iran, three manuscripts were stolen from the Reza Abbasi Museum; two of them were over two hundred years old.

Combs also included acts of vandalism. A Milwaukee man was looking at Poussin's
The Triumph of David
when he suddenly tore the painting from the wall and started kicking it, aiming for Goliath's head. When he'd succeeded in kicking a hole in the painting, he stopped, removed his shirt, lay down on the floor, and said simply, “I'm done.” In Paris, a few drunken men broke into the Musée d'Orsay around midnight. One of the men punched Claude Monet's
Le Pont d'Argenteuil,
tearing a gash four inches long in the canvas.