RFID and the Arts
Arts organizations are turning to RFID as a flexible and cost-effective way to track and safeguard precious objects.
By John Edwards
Feb. 26, 2007—On New Year's Day morning 2000, a smoke canister crashed through a skylight at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England. Fire alarms sounded at the world's oldest public museum, and as security guards rushed from the building, a thief dropped a rope ladder through the skylight, lowered himself into a gallery and helped himself to a Cezanne painting entitled "Auvers-sur-Oise". The thief—and the £3 million ($5.9 million) artwork—were gone well before police and firefighters arrived.
The theft—one of the largest art heists in recent U.K. history—delivered a wake-up call to the National Gallery, a London-based institution maintaining one of the world's greatest collections of European paintings. "After the theft of the Cezanne, we decided we needed to reinforce our security," says Jon Campbell, the gallery's head of visitor services and security. Pondering its options, the museum decided that RFID technology, which helps eliminate the need for costly and intrusive wiring, should play a key role in its overall security strategy.
As RFID matures, the technology is quickly expanding its presence beyond warehouses and factories, and into the genteel world of museums, galleries and theaters. "Yet the goals are really the same," says Ellen Daley, enterprise mobility research director for Forrester Research, a technology research firm in Cambridge, Mass. "It's all about identification and tracking"
Feb. 26, 2007—On New Year's Day morning 2000, a smoke canister crashed through a skylight at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England. Fire alarms sounded at the world's oldest public museum, and as security guards rushed from the building, a thief dropped a rope ladder through the skylight, lowered himself into a gallery and helped himself to a Cezanne painting entitled "Auvers-sur-Oise". The thief—and the £3 million ($5.9 million) artwork—were gone well before police and firefighters arrived.
The theft—one of the largest art heists in recent U.K. history—delivered a wake-up call to the National Gallery, a London-based institution maintaining one of the world's greatest collections of European paintings. "After the theft of the Cezanne, we decided we needed to reinforce our security," says Jon Campbell, the gallery's head of visitor services and security. Pondering its options, the museum decided that RFID technology, which helps eliminate the need for costly and intrusive wiring, should play a key role in its overall security strategy.
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| London's National Gallery |
As RFID matures, the technology is quickly expanding its presence beyond warehouses and factories, and into the genteel world of museums, galleries and theaters. "Yet the goals are really the same," says Ellen Daley, enterprise mobility research director for Forrester Research, a technology research firm in Cambridge, Mass. "It's all about identification and tracking"
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