Visual Arts Center

Feb 1, 2006 12:00 PM

VANDALISM OR THEFT is detrimental to any business and makes security measures a solid business decision, particularly when there is a need to protect assets that are irreplaceable, especially in a museum.

Opened in April 2001 in an historic former main post office building in the heart of downtown Nashville, the Frist Center for the Visual Arts (FCVA) is a 105,000-square-foot facility with a gift shop, cafeteria, approximately 24,000-square-feet of gallery space and two parking lots. The nonprofit art-exhibition center is dedicated to presenting the finest visual art from local, state and regional artists, as well as major U.S. and international exhibitions in a program of continuously changing exhibitions.

The FCVA has featured works by masters such as Rembrandt, Monet and Picasso and is regularly entrusted with prestigious collections of historic artifacts. Responsibility for the protection of each collection it features is one reason the Frist Center uses a digital video solution from NiceVision (Nice Systems Inc., Rutherford, N.J.), for its surveillance requirements. The safety of the museum's 110 employees and its 200,000 to 300,000 guests per year is the other reason.

Providing practical, well-designed digital video surveillance systems to museums around the world is becoming a focus for NiceVision, whose automated, real-time video recording and analyzing systems identify threats and issue automatic alerts.

The Frist Center was conceived as a family-friendly museum, and one of the most popular locations in the center is the innovative ArtQuest gallery. This colorful space contains 30 interactive stations and is alive with the sounds of learning activities for people of all ages.

Martin Terrien, director of finance and operations of the FCVA, is responsible for all security activity at the Center and was instrumental in choosing NiceVision when the decision was made to implement an advanced security system at the Center. NiceVision's digital video solution was installed in late 2004.

The new digitized surveillance system allows FCVA to record real-time video of multiple locations and gives the Center the capability to archive and preserve images for security or safety investigations. The system provides a total solution that incorporates required camera controls, recording capabilities and a content analysis feature that will monitor and manage multiple cameras more efficiently by distinguishing between activities of interest and normal events.

“When we saw the system's capabilities, especially its content analysis, we spotted many opportunities to improve the security and safety of our center,” says Paul Cotter, FCVA security manager. “We needed an interactive camera system that could help security staff to be proactive to their environment.”

The new system was used to monitor an unusual exhibit at the FCVA this fall and winter. The exhibit, entitled Neural Architecture, by California artist Deborah Aschheim, is the latest in a series that she describes as “nervous systems for buildings.” The exhibit explores the intersection of surveillance electronics, neurobiology and architecture. Aschheim conceives of buildings as metaphors for complex biological organisms, with skin and a skeletal framework and mechanical systems for respiration and circulation. Neural Architecture imagines the subtle mutation of surveillance technology. In her installations, the gallery space appears to grow its own sensory capabilities out of equipment that was installed to protect the building's occupants. Clear vinyl tubing, incandescent light and “nerve cell” television monitors are joined to home security detectors so that visitors can witness themselves and others being observed, allowing a level of interactivity unusual in museum spaces.

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