ABSTRACT
Every cultural institution manager accepts responsibility for the cultural collections under the care of that institution. The institution manager, collection manager or registrar, and the protection manager work together to provide a collection protection program for institutional care. The program combines the administrative care of record keeping and inventory with that of physical care, including conservation, environmental controls, personal access, property movement control, staff checks, and loss prevention programs. Persons know about losses of cultural property as newspapers and the electronic media report them. Those reports are usually the unusual and high value losses from fire, burglary, theft from exhibits during the day and a few famous news incidents of ‘smash and runs,’ ‘grab and runs’ and surprising hold-ups. Persons do not think about internal losses. Some managers report only the first kind. Other managers do not report either kind.
