The director of the British Museum has resigned after around 2,000 artefacts were found missing or damaged, admitting failure to respond adequately to an earlier warning of theft, the museum announced on Friday.
The museum was warned in 2021 after an antiquities dealer stumbling upon some items on eBay, but didn’t conduct a full audit until 2022.
Hartwig Fischer, whose tenure was due to end next year, will now step down as soon as the board of trustees put together an interim arrangement.
The museum’s deputy minister Jonathan Williams has also stepped back from his duties pending the result of an independent review into the theft, the museum said.
George Osborne, chair of trustees of the museum, said the hunt for a new director is underway. He also said some of the lost items have been recovered.
Exact Number Unknown
The British museum revealed on Aug. 16 that it had sacked a member of staff and would take legal action against the individual after items in the museum’s collection were “found to be missing, stolen or damaged.”
Most of the missing items were “small pieces kept in a storeroom,” including gold jewellery and gems dating from the 15th century BC to the 19th century AD, that were “kept primarily for academic and research purposes,” according to the museum.
Mr. Osborne told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme on Saturday that an estimated 2,000 items were involved, but the figure is “very provisional.”
The former Chancellor admitted the museum didn’t have a complete catalogue of everything in its collection amassed over several hundred years.
“Someone with knowledge of what’s not registered has a big advantage in removing some of those items,” he said.
“Obviously, a clear outcome from what has happened is that the British Museum has to accelerate the process that was already under way of getting a complete register of the items in our collection.”
Early Warning
In his resignation statement, Mr. Fischer said he had reviewed the relevant events over the past few days and found it was “evident that the British Museum did not respond as comprehensively as it should have in response to the warnings in 2021, and to the problem that has now fully emerged.”The German art historian took responsibility for the failure and said he had become “a distraction.”
He also apologised to Ittai Gradel, a Danish antiquities dealer who alerted the museum in 2021, for suggesting the latter had withheld some information at the time.
Mr. Gradel later wrote to a museum trustee complaining the directors were “sweeping it all under the carpet.” And Mr. Fischer wrote to a trustee in October 2022, saying that the “three items” Mr. Gradel had mentioned were “in the collection” and there had been “no evidence of wrongdoing,” the report said.
Responding to the report on Wednesday, Mr. Fischer said the museum took Mr. Gradel’s warning “incredibly seriously,” but the “small number of items” mentioned were “all accounted for.”
He added, “We now have reason to believe that the individual who raised concerns had many more items in his possession, and it’s frustrating that that was not revealed to us as it would have aided our investigations.”
Mr. Gradel hit back by saying it’s “an outright lie” to say he had withheld information, and that the museum never contacted him despite he had been “explicit” that he was “entirely at their disposal for any further information or assistance they would require.”
Apologising on Friday, the museum director said, “I also misjudged the remarks I made earlier this week about Dr. Gradel. I wish to express my sincere regret and withdraw those remarks.”
Commenting on Mr. Gradel’s statement on Friday, Mr. Gradel told the BBC that the director’s resignation was “the right thing to do.”
Some Items Recovered
Mr. Osborne apologized on Saturday, telling BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme: “We believe we’ve been the victim of thefts over a long period of time and, frankly, more could have been done to prevent them.“But I promise you this: it is a mess that we are going to clear up. I can tell you today that we’ve already started to recover some of the stolen items.
“We’re going to deliver the stronger leadership that the public and the dedicated staff at the museum deserve and make sure we emerge with a stronger British Museum that’s fit for the 21st century.”
The chair of trustees said “a silver lining” is that the museum has “started to recover some of the stolen items.”
He also conceded that the debacle has “certainly been damaging to the British Museum’s reputation.”
Earlier this week, Despoina Koutsoumba, director of the Association of Greek Archaeologists, told the BBC that the Elgin Marbles, a group of Parthenon sculptures that Greek authorities have tried to get back for almost 200 years, “have to” be returned to Greece “because they are not safe in London,” while Tim Loughton MP, Chairman of the British Museum All-Party Parliamentary Group said, “What is particularly damaging is [the] blatant opportunism of the Greeks and others saying ‘Oh no, the British Museum is not safe…’ It’s incredibly rare that things go missing.”
