Anonymous BlogBack on the Goya Theft

Before yesterday’s happy news about the FBI’s recovery of the Toledo Museum’s Goya, a CultureGrrl reader employed at an art museum (not Toledo or the Guggenheim) shared his reactions to the shipping slip-ups that reportedly contributed to the theft. His own museum, he said, had a previous incident in which art transporters had wanted “to stop at a motel under non-emergency conditions.” According to my source (whose identity I know):
Our head registrar hit the roof when they said that, and told them to keep driving. Part of the point of having two drivers is that one can sleep while the other drives, switching back and forth for the whole trip. Nothing should get in the way of delivering art as fast as possible. They never should have stopped overnight unless it was an emergency–and even then, at least one person should have been with the truck at all times.
I know drivers often dislike having to wait at a museum (especially in New York), but I have trouble believing that if their dispatcher had notified the Guggenheim the delivery would be in the morning that there would have been a problem. In any event, scheduling a stop of that kind should have been handled and agreed to by the two museums and the shipper in advance—and I can’t imagine the museums agreeing to it if they had known.
People doing exhibition budgets often complain that couriers represent one of the single biggest expenses in getting loans and request that institutions only resort to using them when they really need it. I bet the Toledo Museum wished they had had one on the truck. I also bet that everyone else will be taking this incident into account when deciding whether to send a courier with a loan.
Art lenders have a legitimate interest in knowing the name of the shipping company that lost the Goya, even if, as a Guggenheim official told me yesterday, it turns out to be a transporter of high repute. In the fullness of time, the truth may out.
But if I were that shipping firm, I’d out myself now, rather than wait for law enforcement officials or others to do it for me. And I’d elucidate, in great detail, the stringent new safeguards being instituted so that such a thing won’t happen again.