Brazilian artist swaps historical coin in British Museum for a fake

"The British Museum said it would inform police about the incident. “This is a disappointing and derivative act that abuses a volunteer-led service aimed at giving visitors the opportunity to handle real items and engage with history,” a museum spokesperson said."

Yeah, no doubt the bureaucrats are protecting their asses by informing the police and need to be seen doing the correct thing as a consequence of the publicity the prank would have generated (they'd also be in the limelight). But I'd reckon a more productive way of dealing with the matter would have been to analyze how it was done so that no other objects go missing. That should be the museum's first priority.

Art galleries, museums and such are fair game for thieves, ransom-seekers and such and given that many items are unique and irreplaceable so a main objective is to secure them at all costs.

I'm acutely aware of the point made about visitors having close access to the items on display because of an experience I had in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam years ago. I recall getting remarkably close to Vermeer's Milkmaid, in fact so close I could study it in detail. Similarly, I was left alone in an alcove with a Rembrandt self-portrait with the guard many, many metres away.

At the time I could not believe my luck, and that I could be so privileged to get so close to these remarkable works of art. However, I recall thinking how risky this was from the museum's perspective as only recently The Night Watch had been returned for viewing after repairs after a lunatic slashed it.

From my experience I strongly believe people need to engage with these objects and works of art in meaningful ways to maximize their enjoyment of them, so the issue of balancing the safety of objects versus having access to them is more acute and pressing in today's world than it ever was. It's why I reckon the museum should have taken this prank in the way it was intended, which was to point to deficiencies in the museum's security.

BTW, a classic and unsatisfactory example of a bad display is the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, one's better off looking at a photo of it because it's so well protected under glass that one cannot get a decent look at it. I'm not suggesting it be made more accessible to the public due to its notoriety, I'm only highlighting the problems that museums and galleries are faced with these days.