“About 2,000” works of art have been stolen from the British Museum but some have already been recovered, George Osborne, the museum’s president, told the BBC on Saturday. The day before, its director, Hartwig Fischer, resigned following this series of thefts in the collections.
On August 23, the BBC revealed the existence of emails from an art seller, Ittai Gradel, alerting the museum to thefts as early as 2021. should have been due to the 2021 warnings and the now fully visible problem, Fischer said, quoted in a statement. The responsibility for this failure ultimately rests with the director. »
Mr Osborne said the resignation – effective immediately – had been accepted and that an interim leadership would be put in place pending the selection of a new boss for the institution. Mr. Fischer, in office since 2016, “acted honorably in dealing with the mistakes that were made. Nobody ever doubted [his] integrity,” Mr. Osborne added.
The announcement of this series of thefts was an explosion for the museum. Founded in 1753, the latter notably includes in its collections of eight million pieces the famous Rosetta Stone, a stele that has made it possible to decipher hieroglyphics, and is one of the most visited attractions in the United Kingdom.
A fired employee
The stolen objects are small pieces kept in the reserves of the museum, which does not have a complete inventory of its collections acquired over the centuries. Among the missing pieces are gold jewelry, semi-precious stones or glassware dating from the 15th century BC to the 19th century AD.
“Someone with knowledge of what is not recorded has a big advantage,” Mr. Osborne said, saying the museum “needs to speed up the process already underway to establish a complete inventory”. “Was there at the time a mindset within the museum, at the highest level, that refused to believe that an insider was stealing objects, to believe that one of the staff was doing that ? Yes, it’s very possible,” he said.
The institution said in mid-August that it had dismissed an employee, seized the police and launched an independent investigation in order to shed light on these thefts and learn from them. She had assured that she would make every effort to find the stolen parts.
Parts sold on eBay
Since then, the revelations have multiplied in the dropper in the press. Some items would have ended up on sale on eBay for modest sums. The British press also identified the employee as Peter Higgs, a noted curator in art circles; he denies all responsibility.
According to some media, Mr. Higgs not only kept his job despite these suspicions but was recently promoted to oversee the Greek collections including the Parthenon Marbles, the museum’s famous pieces, at the heart of a heated discussion with Greece, which claims their return.
Despite the desire displayed by the museum management to reach an agreement with Athens, the British government is firmly opposed to any return of the 75-meter frieze detached from the Parthenon, acquired according to them legally by the diplomat Lord Elgin at the beginning of the 19th century. century.
The announcement of the theft of objects from the collection immediately revived the case. The British press quoted Greek archaeologists seeing this as a sign that coins from Greece are not safe in London, while British elected officials responded by crying opportunism.
