Moving a museum: high security, low profile

From San Francisco:

Anders Noyes drove through Golden Gate Park at a leisurely pace in his shiny new gray Chevy pickup.

He carried a loaded 9mm semi-automatic pistol, and he was focused on the unmarked white truck in front of him. It was filled with millions of dollars' worth of irreplaceable Asian art.

"I watch what's going around me," said Noyes, a former Pacifica cop who's director of security for San Francisco's Asian Art Museum. For months, he's been trailing trucks moving the prized collection of 14,000 objects -- valued at around $4 billion -- from the old museum in Golden Gate Park to its new $160 million home at Civic Center, which opens March 20 after a four-year renovation of the old main library.

The last few pieces were being moved out Thursday, when a 4 1/2-foot chunk of concrete was bashed out from a second-floor railing so a forklift could remove an 1,800-pound, ninth century Indian stone temple guardian and two other big works.

My wife was working at the Getty during the move from the villa in Malibu to the hilltop fortress in Brentwood. Many of the precautions cited in the article sound quite familiar.

Posted by David on January 17, 2003 10:23 AM