A pioneering museum’s security study in Portugal (1980-2000): a past lesson for future ways?

This paper describes the first interdisciplinary crime prevention project for the protection of cultural heritage created and coordinated by the Portuguese Judiciary Police Museum, the National Catalogue of Stolen Artworks from Portuguese Public Collections. Formally approved in 1995 by the Ministries of Justice and Culture, it was dedicated to the prevention of thefts in museums, following international practices. It counted with the participation of several departments of the Portuguese Judiciary Police (including Interpol office) and two external partnerships: the now extinguished Portuguese Institute of Museums and the Geira Project, which united two universities - the University of Minho and the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro. However, what seemed relatively simple - gathering and publishing photos and minimal information on cultural assets stolen from Portuguese public museums for their dissemination and recovery (as well as deterring theft), ended up implying a series of retroactive structuring procedures, including a national questionnaire to all Portuguese public museums concerning thefts from their collections in the period 1980-2000. It had less than 50% responses. Nevertheless, its results provided unprecedented and therefore valuable information in this field. In spite – or precisely because - of its incompleteness, this pioneering project can be assumed as a past lesson for future ways.