Some brief writings on my topic

Museum Security Guards are probably the most recognizable people in a museum. They stand, walk around the museum, or even talk to you while you are there. As faces of the museum they wear a standard dress, a suit or a tag that says their name or what museum they work for. They are a constant in a constantly changing museum environment.

But despite their consistant presence they remain a mystery or a stereotype of a position. Guards are mean, or weird, or even scary to some. They follow you around the museum or tell you what not to do.

Without guards Museums would not be the places that they are, protected and able to show delicate and priceless works. The position has an image but how did it begin, how it did evolve? And what are the very strong potentials for growth.

This paper will present a collected history of the position. How guards are trained, who is constant and who is contract, as well as the hybrids of the position.

To do a paper like this takes serious creativity as well as hunting skills in research. The Museum Security Guard has a face but not a literature surrounding it. Thus interview, articles, manuals, and other creative texts will be used to describe the idea of the position but also the evolving place of the guard.

If you are guard is the face of the museum, why is it so mysterious and isolated? People know what guards do but guards are oftentimes cut out of the larger structures and programming in the Museum. As the face (and oftentimes) voice of the museum, a museum can tap that resource for a variety of reasons.

Potential Titles:

Guarding the Museum: How museum security came, conquered, evolved, and what it can be today

On Guard: The History, Evolution, and the Exciting Potentials for Museum Security

We Stand: The story of Museum Security and It's Future

Thesis: in SUM

Idea in Brief

To dive into the security guard position. Where and how did it begin in the museum? What did the position mean? Tasks and roles for the guard and how has it evolved today.

Maximizing the position to be a strength to visitors, the museum, and the guards themselves.

Artists and Security Guards

Artists that use or have worked with Museum Security Guards

At the Walker Center - Tino Senghal

Guarded View - Fred Wilson - Whitney

Do the four museum-guard uniforms on dark-skinned but headless manikins (Guarded View, 1991) mean something more or something less in a museum in Harlem, where the guards, also black, are more casually dressed? Why does a spiffy uniform equal invisible? Why do we have to read the catalogue to find out that Wilson once gave a gallery lecture at the Whitney dressed as a guard? Why did people he had talked to a few hours earlier not recognize him until he began speaking? What does it mean that Guarded View is now in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum?

http://www.artsjournal.com/artopia/2004/05/fred_wilsons_quest.html

New Museum - Spatial Project http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/249

Diary of a Museum Security Guard - http://www.weeblackskelf.co.uk/cordsuit/index.php?page=Clip-On+Tie%3A+The+Diary+of+a+New+York+Art+Museum+Security+Guard

Fred Wilson - Tour of Whitney as Security Guard http://nashermuseumblogs.org/?p=1080