Vienna jewellery theft prompts scrutiny of Kärnten museum security

The theft of a necklace worth 3.8 million euros from Vienna’s Museum of Applied Arts has put security at museums in Kärnten under scrutiny, ORF reports. The focus is not only on the financial value of exhibits, but also on their priceless historical significance.

Museums including the Museum of Modern Art Kärnten in Klagenfurt, the Kärnten Museum, the Liaunig Museum in Neuhaus and St Paul Abbey in the Lavant Valley must protect collections worth millions. They follow required minimum standards, while lenders have increased their security demands after incidents in recent years, including activists smearing paintings with paint.

The Kärnten Museum has a security partnership with the provincial police directorate, according to Caroline Steiner of its management. This includes close cooperation with the police prevention department. Security measures for exhibitions and individual objects are set in each case and agreed with the lender. They can include display cases, technical equipment and staff to guard the objects.

Security is also a priority at the Liaunig Museum, which houses several thousand exhibits in its private collection, including the historically valuable Gold of Arkan. The collection comprises 600 gold, jewellery and cult objects from African royal tribes dating from the 19th century.

Peter Liaunig said the collection’s main value was not the gold itself but the cultural carvings. The display cases are fitted with vibration and glass-break detectors and made of laminated safety glass. A break-in would be difficult and create considerable noise, triggering alarms and notifying both the security service and police.

There is less protection against activists who try to spray-paint paintings, however, because it is impossible to place every work behind glass. Such a measure would be prohibitively expensive and would significantly increase transport costs, the museum said.

The Museum of Modern Art Kärnten is also directly connected to the police, and an alarm would be triggered if visitors caused damage, director Christine Wetzlinger-Grundnig said. But putting every painting behind glass would not be financially possible.

St Paul Abbey in the Lavant Valley displays the 11th-century Adelheid Cross, an object of immense value protected by extensive security measures.

All the museums rely on highly trained staff who monitor visitors. At the entrance, they take custody of suspicious objects, bags, umbrellas and coats while visitors tour the exhibitions.