Special Constable... Dedham, Lock and Mill (1810-1815) was one of a pair of oil sketches stolen from the Victoria & Albert museum in November 1998. Two car dealers were eventually jailed after trying to sell it. Painting: PA/Victoria & Albert Museum.
The Art and Antiques Unit of the Metropolitan Police has come up with an intriguing new idea - to recruit curators and art historians as special constables.
The Met is aiming high and hopes to appoint these specialist volunteers from august institutions such as the Victoria & Albert and the British Museum, universities and other cultural organisations.
New recruits would be sponsored by their employers to work 200 hours a year or one day a fortnight. The scheme, quaintly dubbed Art Beat, is set to start in April.
"The aim is to build bridges between the police and the art world and maintain a high visibility presence in areas with a high level of art sales," detective sergeant Vernon Rapley told The Art Newspaper. "This could include patrolling antiques markets like Bermondsey or areas with clusters of art dealers like Kensington Church Street, Bond Street or Camden Passage, or undercover intelligence work."
Now, call me cynical, but will the lure of a special constable uniform and full police powers really be enough to tempt some of our most learned art scholars to trudge around a few London markets? Wouldn't plain clothes officers, or even a full-time team of art professionals working with the police, prove more effective at apprehending art world conmen?
But, apparently, it's volunteer or die. The Art and Antiques Unit currently consists of only four full-time employees and was told by the Metropolitan Police Authority that it could be disbanded if it did not become 50% self-financing by 2008. So it's curtains for the art squad or Juliet Bravo on the cheap to try and save millions of pounds worth of art treasures.
Nevertheless, the Met has already recruited archaeology and antiquities experts and hopes to have 14 "art" constables trained by April. Are Brian Sewell or Neil MacGregor free around Easter?
