Interviews

Rapley warning over arts unit

by Mark Rowe

Vernon Rapley, Head of Security and Visitor Services at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) has warned of the consequences to the arts world of any cuts to the Metropolitan Police’s arts and antiques unit.

He told the BBC Radio 4 The World Tonight programme that the UK museums and culture sector, and London, would ‘lose enormously’ without the unit.

He spoke of the scale of the unit’s work, that he was head of while a policeman, before moving into the private sector. In his time, he told the programme, it dealt with three and a half tonnes of antiquities looted from Afghanistan; besides objects similarly taken from within war-torn Iraq. “It also is an absolute essential for other police forces around the world, who are trying to recover their cultural heritage.”

When he was asked how big is the reputation of the unit, he recalled that an American ambassador once told him that the unit was like England; in that it ‘punches above its weight’: “It really does have a huge international impact and it is considered with great respect, by Interpol and Europol; it has an ability to focus attention.”

He was asked if it will fall to institutions such as the V&A to take up the unit’s work against ‘criminal elements’. Rapley replied that it was essential for the police, and the art trade and museums world, to work together, and that one could not work alone without the other. He pointed out that the V&A has a ‘culture in crisis’ programme, that looks to support countries that are suffering loss of their cultural heritage, whether for man-made reasons or through natural disasters. Police, he said, have a different function, and ‘it isn’t something a museum can take over, it’s something a museum relies upon’.

For such countries as Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria (that have been losing cultural objects in recent years through theft and black-market sales), museums rely on the unit as a ‘conduit’, he said, between the art world and policing: “There’s no point in museums identifying possible looted items unless someone can take executive action.”

Vernon Rapley was a speaker at the Security TWENTY 16 event at London Heathrow in November 2016, featured in the January 2017 print issue of Professional Security magazine. He chairs the National Museum Security Group (UK).

For a podcast featuring Vernon Rapley speaking about ‘preventing art theft’, visit the V&A website. And for a podcast on ‘library crime’ click here.

You can listen to The World Tonight interview on the BBC iPlayer.

Picture by Mark Rowe: Vernon Rapley at the ST16 event at London Heathrow.

The next V&A ‘culture in crisis’ event is a free talk on September 8, titled ‘Evidencing Cultural Destruction in Conflict’, at the museum in South Kensington. To book visit https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/3vdbb04R/culture-in-crisis-evidencing-cultural-destruction-in-conflict.

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