ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 2, 1997 TAG: 9702030094
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: ANGIE CANNON KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
UNDER TIGHTER GUARD than a state secret, Russia's crown jewels are visiting the United States for two anxious years.
It's probably the only negligee ever locked in vaults, handled with white gloves and displayed behind bulletproof glass.
But then, one can't be too careful with an 18th-century tasseled diamond string from Russia, known as ``The Negligee''- especially when the priceless piece, a part of Russian heritage, is on its first visit to the United States.
The "Jewels of the Romanovs: Treasures From the Imperial Court" exhibit opened this week at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington and will tour the country over the next two years - in armored trucks, of course.
Museum officials know the unthinkable could happen, and that may be enough to give ulcers to the very serious Russian curators.
One Corcoran official noted, only half-jokingly, ``If anything happens to the jewels, the Russians are thinking, `I don't want to go to Siberia.'''
Jan McNamara, a spokeswoman for the Corcoran museum, called the jewels ``priceless.''
``You could never replace them,'' she said. ``You would have to substitute a first-born child of someone on the curator's staff.''
The 115 gems in the exhibit, normally kept in a tightly controlled museum beneath the Kremlin Armory, have made it to this country as part of a major exchange project of the American-Russian Cultural Cooperation Foundation. The jewels are part of the State Diamond Fund, set up by Peter the Great in 1719.
The exhibit also includes costumes, paintings, icons and religious artifacts of the Romanov Dynasty from the 18th century to its end in 1917 with the Russian Revolution.
The Russian museum staff is so attached to the stones that one curator wept when she saw the empty display cases after the jewels were packed. ``They are like her children,'' McNamara said. ``They spend their lives worrying about the jewels, and she realized she wouldn't see them for two years.''
With risks so great, Corcoran officials are understandably reluctant to discuss specific security steps, and too many questions are greeted stonily. Suffice it to say that the security director will sleep more easily once the show leaves town.
``Every security director has to be paranoid,'' said Allen Gore, a private investigator who was the paranoid security director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 1974 to 1982. ``It's part of the job. You aren't effective if you aren't partially paranoid.''
Officials at the 150-year-old Corcoran say they have never ``in living memory'' had a theft. But across the country, an estimated $2 billion to $6 billion a year in art is stolen each year, according to Anna Kisluk, director of the Art Loss Register in New York, a private company with an international database of 80,000 stolen art items.
The logistics for the Romanov exhibit were complicated, even for curators accustomed to borrowing valuable art from collections around the world. Usually they would have two years to plan a project of this size, but this time, they had only a few months. For the last couple of weeks, they've been working 18 hours a day.
Hundreds of documents had to be signed and stamped, and each item was catalogued and photographed before shipping.
Thirty-three special wooden crates were built. The jewels were placed in foam-padded boxes, which fit inside drawers, which fit inside the crates, which then were sealed and locked.
Three planes brought the treasures here, so that one crash would not wipe out the entire cache.
When the jewels arrived in Washington in late November, they were locked in a vault at the Russian Federation's embassy. The same people who packed the pieces in Russia opened them in the United States - to make sure the genuine gems arrived. The jewels were taken from the embassy to the Corcoran in small batches.
Many rules govern the jewels: Only one jewel was allowed out of a case at a time. Only the Russian curators could touch them. And they had to wear white gloves. (``Your hands, however clean, put out a lot of oil and sweat,'' one museum official delicately explained.)
Guards stood by while the jewels were set up in the galleries. Another rule: Two Russian curators had to watch at all times.
The treasures are displayed in specially constructed, diamond-shaped cases. The exhibit likely is secured with alarms and sensitive motion detectors, private investigators said. Only 125 people will be allowed into the galleries every half-hour so the rooms don't get too crowded - making it more manageable for the guards.
The Russian State Diamond Fund houses one of the world's finest collections of precious stones and jewelry, unequaled in wealth.
There are huge precious stones, such as the hunk of aquamarine as big as a travel mug. And the world-famous gold and platinum nuggets such as the one shaped like a horse's head and another like Mephistopheles' profile, so realistic that it was first thought to be man-made.
``The Negligee,'' meant to be worn casually either tied or draped around the neck, often was worn by Empress Alexandra.
The exhibit also includes paintings, such as the oil portrait of Russia's last czar, Nicholas II, who was assassinated with his family in 1918. The canvas has patches where the Bolsheviks slashed his despised image.
``Logistics aside, it's all worth it,'' sighed the project manager for the Corcoran, Susan Peacock. ``We had endless odds and then suddenly at the last minute, it came together. It's like childbirth. You have this wonderful moment, and you think: All the pain was worth it, and I would do this again.''
LENGTH: Long : 105 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Diamonds surround a miniature of Peter the Great onby CNBa badge.