British Museum
Experts say the loss of 1,500 objects indicates lax cataloging and reinforces the case for returning objects to their countries of origin
Sat 26 Aug 2023 at 5pm BST
Close observers of the antique market tend to be a cynical bunch, having witnessed countless scams, shady practices and illegal trades. But last week there was a collective shock among them when news broke of the unexplained missing of some 2,000 objects from the British Museum’s priceless collection of ancient and historical artifacts, prompting the resignation of Director Hartwig Fischer.
“The amount of missing objects is huge,” says Christos Tsirogiannis, a forensic archaeologist who works with Trafficking Culture, which studies the global movement of looted cultural objects. “No expert would have guessed that something like this would happen in one of the largest museums in the world.”
Christopher Marinello agrees. The CEO of Art Recovery International, which specializes in stolen art recovery, says: “Our organization receives daily reports of thefts from various museums, cultural institutions and churches around the world. What surprised us was the fact that it was the British Museum, one of the most important museums in the world and a benchmark for safety.”
That benchmark has dropped several notches after reports of valuable artefacts being put up for sale on eBay, where a Roman object reportedly worth up to £50,000 was being offered for just £40. Last week the museum announced that Peter Higgs, a senior curator who had worked at the institution for 30 years, was fired earlier this year after items were discovered to have gone missing.
The museum has announced an investigation, more than two years after officials were first notified of illegal sales from its collection, and police have also launched an investigation. Museum director Hartwig Fischer announced his resignation after the alleged thefts on Friday.
The British Museum has come under fire for not returning the Benin bronzes to Nigeria. Photo: Jens Schlueter/AFP/Getty Images
However, the museum’s reputation has already been seriously damaged, adding new impetus to the case for returning objects such as the Parthenon Marbles (also known as Elgin Marbles), Benin Bronzes and Ethiopian Tabots to their original homes.
The link between security issues and cultural property was embarrassingly exposed by the revelation that Higgs, in his previous role as custodian of the Greek collections, had been responsible for the Parthenon marbles. Higgs denies any wrongdoing.
As Despina Koutsoumba, Director of the Association of Greek Archaeologists, put it: “We would like to say to the British Museum that they can no longer say that Greek heritage is better protected at the British Museum.”
This particular debate is only likely to grow louder as more details are made public, but in the meantime, what about the missing objects and any chance of getting their return?
“It’s going to take decades,” Marinello says, pointing to the legal and forensic complexities of tracing items, many of which appear to have been improperly, or at least not publicly, cataloged.
Marinello, an American lawyer who works in a London office, says he has been responsible for recovering around £475million in stolen art over the years, working on behalf of museums, collectors, dealers, artists, governments, cultural… and religious institutions and insurance companies worked from Bolivia to Cambodia, from Sweden to Iraq.
This recovery is significantly supported by solid evidence of origin and rate of response, both of which appear to be absent in this case. Each item sought must be clearly identifiable to prove that it is the item in question. If there are delays in locating stolen items, there is a chance that the items may change hands multiple times in different jurisdictions.
If, in every transaction, the parties claim that they acted on the assumption that the trade was legitimate, the recoveree’s task becomes significantly more difficult.
“Under the circumstances,” says Marinello, “it’s entirely possible that under their laws they acquired ownership, or at least a claim to ownership, of the objects.”
How many antique dealers don’t deal with objects without provenance?
But if a dealer were to buy an object from someone working for the British Museum, wouldn’t he be required to verify its provenance?
“That’s a big red flag,” agrees Tsirogiannis, “but then again, how many antique dealers out there don’t deal in objects with no provenance? I do not know anybody.”
There are many myths surrounding the illicit antiques trade, often cited as the third largest illicit trafficking activity in the world after drugs and guns. However, as argued in a scientific article published in Antiquity magazine earlier this year, there is little statistical evidence to support this claim, not least because it is very difficult to ascertain hard facts in such an opaque market .
But even if the trade is only worth hundreds of millions of dollars, rather than the commonly cited billions, that’s still a lot of trade that’s worth not being overly curious about how the items came into the seller’s possession.
A section of the Parthenon Marbles in the British Museum. In March, Britain’s Prime Minister said there were “no plans” to change the law blocking his return to Greece. Photo: Matthew Fearn/PA
After all, the story about the British Museum only came to light because a Danish antiques dealer, Ittai Gradel, says he became suspicious of a dealer he had done business with for several years.
According to Gradel, he alerted George Osborne, the museum’s chairman, after two years of being “fobbed off” by its managers. Apparently, he first had doubts about a seller in 2016 when he recognized an item he had seen in the British Museum many years earlier. When he asked the seller, who he had worked with since 2014, where he got his items from, he was told that the man’s grandfather owned a junk shop in York between the wars.
It’s the kind of cover story that allows both parties involved to go on with their business without pursuing further embarrassing questions or paying an expert to verify provenance, even though it’s a merchant’s legal responsibility to do just that.
It was another four years before Gradel, by his own account, realized he had accidentally handled the seller’s stolen goods. And that’s when, he says, the British Museum began to hesitate.
To illustrate the importance of quick action, Marinello cites the case of Anders Burius, a historian who was director of the manuscript department at the National Library of Sweden.
Artifacts stolen from the British Museum ‘may not be found’ due to poor records.
“He’s been selling properties for years. He robbed Skokloster Castle and a number of small Swedish museums. You don’t know how much he stole. He was operating under the radar,” he says.
When finally confronted, he confessed to the theft and sale of 56 valuable books (Marinello, who was involved in the case, believes there were many more).
In December 2004, before authorities could really investigate, Burius killed himself by slashing his wrists and cutting the gas line in his home, leading to an explosion that injured about a dozen people.
More than a decade later, millions of pounds worth of books sold by Burius were returned to the National Library of Sweden by the US Attorney’s Office.
“I’m still looking for things for Swedish museums – it’s almost 20 a year,” says Marinello. “The sooner the British Museum releases a detailed list of the items, the greater the chance of getting them back.”
The British Museum doesn’t have enough money to pay its people, and apparently not enough to improve its security
Marinello says he’d be happy to help the British Museum locate and recover the missing objects, and he doesn’t charge a fee for his work.
“Half my business is volunteer,” he says. “I mean, what am I supposed to do, charge the British Museum? They don’t have enough money to pay their own people and apparently not enough to improve their security.”
Tsirogiannis would also volunteer his services, although he doesn’t wait on the phone.
“I am always available to help anyone who is a victim of theft, including the British Museum,” he says.
However, he is harsh on the museum’s lax cataloging system. The museum is said to have around 8 million objects, most of which are in storage. Despite this massive number, Tsirogiannis says in the digital age, where smartphone cameras and scanners make capturing objects a breeze, there is no excuse for any gaps in the museum’s records.
The primary goal of any museum, he says, should be “to capture its objects” as soon as they are possessed. “It’s the top priority and the most fundamental responsibility,” he says.
While he sees the apparent failure to do so as a reputational disaster for the museum, he also believes that the current crisis presents an opportunity for the museum to improve its international image in another way.
Tory MP accuses Greeks of opportunism over missing items from British Museum
“You don’t have to be an expert to understand such objects [as the Parthenon marbles] belong to the countries of origin. “These objects were stolen without the request of these nations,” he says.
Historically, he says, the British Museum’s arguments about its property rights were based on the belief that its guardianship was higher than that of the countries of origin. This argument is difficult to sustain when in fact so many antiquities have disappeared.
“But I’m afraid the British Museum won’t see a chance in that,” Tsirogiannis continues. “Instead, they will treat it as an unfortunate isolated incident in the hope that it will soon be forgotten.”
On the contrary, should the claims examined prove to be true – and no one seems to deny the basic facts – this episode will be remembered around the world for a long time to come.
Marinello understands the international dimensions but also has some domestic advice. He points out that the Museum’s charter establishes a primary fiduciary responsibility to the British people and an obligation to protect and conserve the objects in its collection. This means that the situation requires public reassurance.
“Mr Osborne and the Trustees need to come back from their summer vacation, put away their tuxedos for whatever events they’re going to, and hold a press conference and say, ‘This happened.’ That’s what we do. We’re not allowed to reveal that because it’s a police investigation. It’s how we prevent something like this from happening again.’ I think the British people have a right to it.’
It’s not hard to discern the warm scent of a Mediterranean vacation amid the cool institutional silence that largely surrounded this story until Fischer’s resignation. It’s August’s return to the lands of antiques, the places from which so many artifacts in the past were taken for ‘custody’, only to be auctioned off almost unnoticed many years later in the dark corners of the digital bazaar eBay.
Artful robberies in Britain
The Duke of Wellington by Francisco de Goya. Photo: Fine Art/Corbis/Getty Images
In 1961 Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington was stolen from the National Gallery in central London. The thief entered through an open window in the men’s room. Letters were sent to newspapers claiming, among other things, that the artwork had been stolen in protest at the neglect of the poor in an affluent society. In 1962, a copy appeared as a visual joke in the James Bond film Dr. No” and was displayed in the hideout of the eponymous villain. In 1968 a letter was received with a luggage tag leading to a locker and the painting. A former bus driver, Kempton Bunton, was arrested but acquitted on all but one charge. The story was told in The Duke, the 2020 film starring Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent.
In the early 1970s A junior clerk at Lambeth Palace stole more than 1,300 valuable books from the library. These included Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 2, which is believed to be worth around £50,000 today, and a copy of Theodor de Bry’s America, estimated to be worth £150,000. Although staff were aware that many books were missing, they did not know the extent. Only when a letter from the thief arrived after his death in 2011 did the truth emerge and a library load of books was recovered from his attic.
The Guitarist by Johannes Vermeer. Photo: The Picture Art Collection/Alamy
In 1974 Thieves broke down the iron bars of a window at Kenwood House on Hampstead Heath and made off with Vermeer’s The Guitar Player. Police believed it had been stolen in order to extort a ransom and one demand received was that the Price sisters, two IRA activists imprisoned in the UK, should serve their sentences in Northern Ireland. It was never proven that the IRA was behind the theft and the painting was found wrapped in newspaper in the graveyard of St Bartholomew’s Church in London, according to an anonymous tip.
Madonna of the Yarn Winder, buccleuch version, by Leonardo da Vinci. Photo: Alamy
Twenty years ago Leonardo’s Madonna with the Threadroller, said to be worth £40million, was stolen from Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire when two axe-wielding men overpowered a tour guide. Four years later, two private investigators were arrested in an undercover operation and put on trial along with three lawyers who claimed to have brokered the reward money for a group of businessmen. All ran free, one still trying to claim the reward.
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