Staff at the British Museum in London were alerted in 2021 by an outside source that someone within the institution was stealing priceless artifacts and selling them on eBay, according to multiple sources. Art historian Ittai Gradel, an expert on Greco-Roman engraved gems, contacted deputy director Jonathan Williams via email in February 2021 after suspecting the provenance of a Roman cameo offered on the e-commerce site. Gradel named veteran curator Peter Higgs as the thief, offering detailed evidence against him and suggesting that if he were not to blame, another museum employee would be impersonating him. Williams promised to investigate the matter, but withdrew further communication. Gradel wrote again months later, and this time sent a copy of his original email to the director of the British Museum, Hartwig Fischer. Williams wrote to Gradel in July to confirm that “the objects in question have all been accounted for,” further assuring him that “procedures are robust and that the collection is protected.”
The issue apparently remained there, until last July, when Higgs was fired following the discovery that a number of valuable objects had gone missing from the London institution's warehouse beginning in 2016. The alleged thief is one of the world's leading authorities on ancient Greek and artifacts. Mediterranean and was a member of the British Museum’s “Monuments Men” team; he had been at the institution for more than three decades.
In addition to the alleged loss of the jewels, the museum must now face the loss of its reputation as a secure repository of some of the world's most precious treasures, including the much-contested Parthenon marbles, which Greece would very much like to have back.
“These are priceless objects that belong to the nation and should be safe,” Parliament Minister Ben Bradshaw, England's former culture secretary, told BBC News. “The Culture department will want to ensure, with the board of trustees and [British Museum chairman] George Osborne, that it has the governance in place to protect these items now and in the future, to prevent something like this from happening again. .”
Meanwhile, Hartwig Fischer, director of the British Museum since 2016, left his position last Friday. He had announced earlier this summer his planned departure in 2024. Fischer's hasty departure comes just days after it was revealed that senior officials at the British Museum, including himself, were warned about the thefts in early 2021, but apparently they did nothing about it until last July.
“It is shocking to hear that countries and museums that have been telling us that Benin bronzes would not be safe in Nigeria, have thefts taking place there,” Abba Isa Tijani, director of Nigeria's National Museums and Monuments Commission, told England's Sky . News.
Source: Artforum