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Hartwig Fischer, since 2016 the director of the British Museum, has left his position on the London establishment. He had earlier this summer time introduced his deliberate departure, in 2024. Within the weeks that ensued, nonetheless, the museum change into the main target of intense scrutiny owing to allegations {that a} workers member there was stealing priceless treasures from its storeroom and promoting them on eBay for a comparative pittance. Fischer’s hasty exit comes simply days after it was revealed that high British Museum brass, himself included, had been warned of the thefts in early 2021 however had seemingly executed nothing about them till this previous July.
That month, the establishment fired Peter Higgs, a senior curator within the Greek and Roman antiquities division and an worker of three a long time’ standing on the museum. Higgs has been charged with no wrongdoing, however appears to be like to have some explaining to do within the wake of the invention that at the least one of many treasures being supplied on the market by a pseudonymous eBay consumer could possibly be traced by means of a PayPal portal to an X (previously Twitter) account bearing his identify.
Fischer stated in an announcement. “It’s evident that the British Museum didn’t reply as comprehensively because it ought to have in response to the warnings in 2021, and to the issue that has now totally emerged. The accountability for that failure should in the end relaxation with the director.” Fischer had earlier accused Ittai Gradel, the artwork historian who first and repeatedly warned museum officers of the theft, of getting withheld info concerning the larceny. He retracted these accusations, saying, “I additionally misjudged the remarks I made earlier this week about Dr. Gradel. I want to categorical my honest remorse and withdraw these remarks.” Fischer’s apology got here shortly after the publication of a Day by day Mail article quoting Gradel as describing the now erstwhile director as an “fool” residing in “cloud cuckoo land.”
Shortly after Fischer introduced his resignation, it was introduced that the museum’s deputy director, Jonathan Williams, would quickly relinquish his duties. Williams was revealed in a number of publications to have been the primary high-level official to have been notified of the attainable theft and sale of one of many museum’s artifacts.
The incident, described succinctly by The Guardian as an “personal purpose,” has prompted large harm to the British Museum’s fame as a safe repository of historical treasures from all over the world. Since information of the thefts grew to become public, Greece has stepped up its requires the establishment to return the Parthenon marbles, with the nation’s minister of tradition, Lina Mendoni telling Greek weekly To Vima that the difficulty on the establishment “reinforces the everlasting and simply demand of our nation for the definitive return” of the contested artifacts. Earlier at the moment, the Nigerian authorities demanded the museum repatriate the greater than 9 hundred Benin bronzes that it has to this point staunchly held onto, regardless of a refrain of voices calling for his or her return.
“It’s stunning to listen to that the international locations and museums which have been telling us that the Benin bronzes wouldn’t be safe in Nigeria, have thefts occurring there,” Abba Isa Tijani, the director of Nigeria’s Nationwide Fee for Museums and Monuments, instructed England’s Sky Information.
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