“About 2,000” works of art have been stolen from the British Museum but some have already been recovered, the president of the prestigious cultural institution said on Saturday, the day after the resignation of the museum director. In office since 2016, Hartwig Fischer, 60, resigned from the management of the British Museum on Friday, under pressure since the announcement on August 16 of the disappearance of a series of pieces from the collections, some dating back to the 15th century BC.
Asked on the BBC on Saturday, the museum’s chairman, former Conservative minister George Osborne, said he was not sure how many objects were missing, but “I will give an estimate of around 2,000”. “We have started to find stolen parts which is a clearing in the storm,” he added.
Flights that have “damaged the reputation of the British Museum”
The stolen objects are small unexposed pieces kept in the reserves of the museum, which does not have a complete inventory of its collections acquired over the centuries. “Someone with knowledge of what is not listed has a big advantage,” said George Osborne, saying that the museum “must accelerate the process already underway to establish a complete inventory”.
The announcement of the thefts was a detonation for the museum and “damaged the reputation of the British Museum”, according to George Osborne. “We believe we have been victims of theft over a long period of time and frankly more could have been done to prevent it.” “Was there at the time a conviction 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 this? Yes, it’s very possible,” he said.
Founded in 1753, the British Museum includes in its collections of eight million pieces the famous Rosetta Stone, a stele that has made it possible to decipher the hieroglyphs, and is one of the most visited attractions in the United Kingdom. The institution had indicated in mid-August that it had dismissed an employee, while the London police said that they had questioned a man, without naming him, but had not launched any prosecution as such.