Russian Hermitage Museum Thefts Uncovered

Great art treasures have incredible price tags, and we often hear about fabulous sums paid for rare masterpieces. But even though museums hold vast collections of such riches, few people realize what it takes to house, secure, and care for them. Recently Moscow disclosed the theft of millions of dollars worth of artwork from the Hermitage Museum. The robberies were discovered when precious drawings began to appear at an auction house in London. A now-deceased curator, her husband and son filched over 220 precious objects over several years. Opportunities for thievery were made easy because of the crisis in museum funding that began in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Shabby recordkeeping, poor inventory procedures, and disgruntled museum staff, combined with out-dated buildings and security to make the thefts easy. Since only a handful of objects have been recovered, the museum’s plan to modernize its security and monitoring is like closing the barn door after the horses have run away.

Look For and Use the 5 Universal Symbols

The cross-cultural anthropologist Angeles Arrien studied may traditions throughout the world and discovered that there are five geometric shapes that occur again and again and have common meaning. They are the circle, plus sign, triangle, square and spiral. People ascribe meaning to these shapes and use them in their art to convey ideas. What do they symbolize? Briefly, the circle represents unity, the plus sign is relationships, the triangle is a quest, the square is stability, and the spiral is creativity. To find out more about these symbols, read her book Five Universal Shapes and How to Use Them. In the meantime, look around you and see how often they're used every day. Here's one example to begin with: the wedding ring.

Irish "Dead Sea Scrolls"?
Art history students may have a new artwork to study. More pieces of a rare prayer book have been found miraculously preserved in a peat bog. About 40 pages of this prayer book were discovered last month by a worker using a bulldozer. The find created a huge stir because it was one of the greatest discoveries in 200 years. The ancient book is called a psalter because it contains biblical hymns or poems called psalms. It was written on vellum at least 1000 years ago and about 40 pages were found intact. More digging recently yielded additional fragments as well as the leather pouch in which it may originally have been kept. How the precious object was deposited in the bog is unknown. Scientists think it's possible that it was placed there intentionally and the owner hoped to retrieve it later. Sometimes ancient people placed objects of great importance in bogs for safekeeping from raiders. It may have been accidentally lost while being transported, or could have been discarded by pagan thieves. Look for more information about the manuscript as experts continue to painstakingly work on its preservation.