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The armed guards were definitely out of place. The Cleveland Art Museum had a long standing, no-guns policy when it came to security, opting for the soft touch of smiling guards armed only with walkie-talkies. Semi-automatics were certainly not conducive to art appreciation. Already, the students nearby sketching one of the museum's three sculptures of Rodin's Thinker  fidgeted nervously as Susan Ross, her finger on the trigger, stood watch.

But a rash of art thefts in the Midwest placed museums on heightened alert. In June, Japanese Shinto icons from the 12th century were stolen en route to a Minnesota gallery. Two weeks later, the unmarked van carrying the Krishna Govardhana, a statue recently unearthed from a dig site in Cambodia, was hijacked. Just last month, a collection of Chinese stone carvings from the Yuan dynasty was stolen from Detroit. Then last night, the Cleveland museum's alarms sounded, indicating a breach in the shipping area. Fortunately, nothing was stolen. The statue had yet to be placed in its crate. Arabella Shin, the new curator of Asian collections at the museum, was not about to take any chances today.

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