I’m brainstorming ways of describing art museum guards.
- Art museum security guard
- Art protector
- Gallery attendant
- Law enforcement
- Museum access control
- Museum patrol
- Museum protector
- Observer of visitors
- Parcel inspector
- Policy enforcer
- Preventer of suspicious actions
- Preventer of touching
- Proper propriety maintainer
- Property guard
- Protection services officer
- Security
- Security officer
- Vandalism deterrent
My favorite might be the last one, Vandalism deterrent. It’s so true, but also feels so odd to describe that of a human.
Now I just need to run these through the Syllable Stress Pattern test to match to see which match up to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. (hint: so far none of them match, because none of them are 8 syllables)
I got a bunch of these synonyms from a job description posted by the Art Institute of Chicago for “Protection Services Officer II”

What does the “II” in “Protection Services Officer II” mean? Maybe it’s a level-2 position? As in, this is not a level-1, which would be an entry-level security person?
Also, I love how descriptive it is. This screenshot gives only a very small portion of the entire job. I tried pasting the entire 977-word job description here, but it’s just too long.
The actual description goes into every possible detail. But I suppose that’s what a security job entails at a protecting multi-million-dollar artworks from thousands of people every day.
Why would I want different ways of describing art museum guards?
- It’s kinda fun.
The job of an art museum guard is a fascinating slice of our culture. - Make it easier to find photos on my computer.
I keep all my photos in Adobe Lightroom. In a recent blog post, Fun security guards at art museums, I have several photos of a security guard. I tagged the photo “security guard” in my Adobe Lightroom catalog, so I could easily find the photos again. A feature that Lightroom has is synonyms for keywords. That way, you aren’t limited to just a couple words, you can tag a photo with one keyword, but then a whole slew of keywords can also be associated with your photo.
