As you stroll through the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, images of guns confront you, including Andy Warhol's hip-swiveling, gun-slinging "Elvis," Chris Burden's Los Angeles policemen and the gun-brandishing fascist thugs of Leon Golub. And there are other armed men at BCAM.
On a recent day, at least three security officers with holstered guns and batons guarded the new Los Angeles County Museum of Art addition. One carries a 9-millimeter pistol. Another, armed with a .38-caliber pistol, is assigned to stand a few feet in front of an artwork with a dead lamb, embalmed in a tank filled with formaldehyde and water, created by British artist Damien Hirst.
A third stood in the window in front of the monumental Richard Serra sculptures downstairs. Armed guards were not evident elsewhere on the sprawling 20-acre campus.
Armed security at art museums "is not common, generally, in the United States," said Douglas Hall, chairman of the Museum, Library and Cultural Properties Council of ASIS International, an association of 36,000 security professionals.
LACMA said its armed guards were not new. "Armed guards, stationed in galleries and throughout the campus, have always been a part of LACMA's security plan," spokeswoman Allison Agsten said this week.
Agsten said the guards were supplied by Inter-Con Security Systems Inc., a Pasadena-based global contractor whose website lists such present and former clients as NASA, the State Department and the U.S. Marshals Service. She declined to say how many armed guards patrol LACMA or provide further details.
The current guard in front of the Hirst piece has been there about a month, guards say, noting the potential for vandals to smash the tank and create a toxic leak. BCAM was evacuated for about an hour in April when a drop of formaldehyde about the size of a quarter leaked from the Hirst work, which is called "Away From the Flock." Another museum spokeswoman said that a change in barometric pressure was responsible and that a conservator had resealed the case.
Don Hrycyk, the senior detective of the Los Angeles Police Department's Art Theft Detail, said LACMA has had armed guards for a number of years.
"It's just one level of deterrent," he said, adding he was not aware of any instances in which an armed guard posed a problem at a museum. "You find security guards in every aspect of American life, at banks and markets and malls."
Art heists
