Festival Aims to Do a Crack Job on Egg Security

Robert Hause is director of security for the Cleveland Museum of Art, which owns several Faberge eggs. Hause said a big part of his job is worrying about the eggs, making sure no one cracks them, breaks them or steals them.

Consequently, Hause has been thinking a lot about San Diego.

Several of Cleveland’s eggs are in town, awaiting display as part of the San Diego Arts Festival: Treasures of the Soviet Union. Eight of the visiting Faberge eggs come from the Kremlin, 19 from private collectors.

All 27 constitute, in the words of one festival official, a “security headache,” so much so that almost no one is willing to discuss how, or by whom, the eggs will be guarded.

For that matter, security for the entire festival is, for the most part, a well-kept secret.

“The most important part of any security initiative is not to talk about it with anyone who doesn’t need to know about it,” said Bruce Herring, executive director of San Diego Festivals. “It would be stupid to talk about it. Our tactics, as it were, are closely guarded. Let’s just say we’ve taken more than adequate measures to make sure that all objects, and all individuals, are fully protected for the 3 1/2 weeks of the festival.”

“We cannot talk a lot about security, and that’s all there is to it,” said Mardi Snow, a spokeswoman for the San Diego Museum of Art, where the eggs go on display for the first time Thursday night before being shown to the public beginning Sunday. “Obviously, that would threaten the security of the eggs. We can tell you that we’ll have plenty of extra security on board.”

Extra security, in this case, is provided by the local branch of a national firm, Wells Fargo Guard & Investigative Services.

Asked about the value of the eggs, Hansel (Skip) Crawford, a spokesman for Wells Fargo, said, with awe-struck reverence: “We’re not talking tens of millions of dollars here. We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars. So, yes, our responsibility is huge.”

Crawford said his company beat out 169 others in bidding for the right to guard the eggs. He said bids were considered more for “thoroughness of protection” rather than cost-effectiveness. He said Wells Fargo’s work in securing the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics was a “big factor” in its being chosen to guard the coop.

Hause, of the Cleveland Museum of Art, said San Diego itself underwent “intensive screening” by everyone willing to offer up an egg, and that, “on all counts, they came up solid.”

Like everyone interviewed for the article, Hause declined to discuss details about the exhibit but did offer insight into what his museum does.

“This is pretty common knowledge, so I don’t think I’m giving away too much,” he said. “We have in our place motion alarms, movement alarms. . . . If you subtly shake the display without touching it, an alarm will go off. We have alarms attached to screws. Try to unscrew something, and a whole set of alarms go off. We have fire alarms. We have armed-response within seconds. I assume San Diego has all of the same, and maybe more.

“In terms of loaning these (eggs) to the festival, I supervised every aspect of storage, transport and display and was satisfied all the way.”

Then, having said that, Hause stopped short of endorsing the Wells Fargo crew.

“They’re the biggest firm of their kind in the country,” he said, “and generally, they have a good reputation. But I’ve worked with some good Wells Fargo guards, and I’ve worked with some pretty bad ones.”

Hause said Faberge eggs pose a problem in meeting three criteria of what art executives call a worst-case scenario:

“You consider their value, their size and their notoriety,” he said, “and that makes them the highest risk possible. You might have a Van Gogh or a Rembrandt stolen, but, because of their size, they’re not the easiest items to take.”

Some of the eggs on display in San Diego come from the private collection of Malcolm Forbes, two are from Queen Elizabeth and one--the so-called pine cone egg--belongs to Padres owner Joan Kroc. The others come from museums in New Orleans and, of course, Cleveland.

“You can bet none of those people would be willing to part with those eggs without complete assurances that they would be fully protected at all times,” Hause said. “We checked out San Diego’s electronic surveillance, their closed-circuit technology, their sprinkler systems, their fire prevention. . . . There was an unending checklist, and they came up near the top on every one.”

Hause said he worried more about earthquake damage than any other factor.

“How do you guard against that?” he said. “The possibility of an earthquake in California is very real, so we tried to take precautions in the actual display to guard against damage. But, with quakes, especially big ones, you just don’t know.”

Hause declined to say how many guards will be on hand in San Diego, but he offered a “museum rule of thumb: In some places, you have as few as six guards, as many as 700. Generally, you have two guards for every three galleries, 24 hours a day, and that includes exhibits like this.”

Vincent DiGiorgio, director of security for the New Orleans Museum of Art, from which several eggs came, said he accompanied his curator’s collection to San Diego and was “most satisfied with all the arrangements.”

“The thing I liked the best about them,” he said, “is that they promised to keep everything very tight-lipped. And they have.”

Robert Kimpton, director of security for the San Diego Museum of Art, did not return phone calls. A spokeswoman said he would have “no comment.”

Don Garson, a spokesman for Forbes Inc., said by telephone from New York that his boss--industrialist Malcolm Forbes--owns a dozen Faberge eggs, the least expensive of which costs “slightly under $2 million.”

Garson said that a security staff, headed by a former FBI agent, guards the eggs “around the clock” in the Forbes building. He said Forbes’ security chief went to San Diego to inspect arrangements and was “completely satisfied.”

He said San Diego is providing “ample” insurance coverage through a number of carriers, although he conceded that insurance, in case of theft, “only lessens the pain, because such items are priceless.” He, like everyone else, declined to name specific carriers or give a dollar amount.

Herring, the executive director of the festival, said the festival-wide liability policy is worth $10 million with premiums that cost organizers about $41,000.

He said the total budget for the festival is $6 million, half of which comes from the city’s hotel room tax. He declined to say how much of the $6 million is allocated for security.

But $663,000 of the budget is earmarked for the art museum alone. Herring said individual institutions are responsible for the security of all individuals and objects housed in their quarters during the festival. He acknowledged that, more than anything, it’s the eggs that have people nervous.

At least one man in San Diego is skeptical about security for the Faberge exhibit.

Stephen L. Gardella, who formerly worked with the San Diego Police Department and as chief of security for Pacific Southwest Airlines, said he was interviewed by the art museum but not hired as a consultant.

“I know I’m talking like an armchair quarterback, but I think they’re doing a lot of things wrong,” Gardella said. “They should be using metal detectors (to screen guests entering the exhibit). As far as I know, they’re not doing that. They should be using X-ray equipment, and they’re not doing that.”

Art museum spokeswoman Snow refused to confirm or deny details, but did say the egg exhibit will have its own entrance, apart from the museum in general, and that “all packages will be checked thoroughly.”

Cmdr. Keith Enerson of the San Diego Police Department said his staff is “working closely” with everyone at the art museum and with organizers in general. He said, however, that none of his officers will be involved in “hands-on” duty during the exhibit.

“And now I can’t say any more,” Enerson said.

He said he is most concerned with Super Powers Sunday, which kicks off the festival in Balboa Park this weekend.

“We don’t know whether to expect 10,000 people or 50,000,” Enerson said. “So it’s something that we’ll have to play totally by ear.”

Daniel Piersol, registrar at the New Orleans Museum of Art, who guards his Faberge eggs like a mother hen, said that, as a big exhibit draws near, “controversy flies” and everyone worries about security.

He said he is often asked if the “headache” is worth it.

“It can be terribly nerve-wracking the closer it gets,” Piersol said. “Your nerves are taut. You sleep less. But we expect to sleep well because of all that San Diego has done, and believe me, it’s a lot.”