The British Museum has sued former curator Peter Higgs for serious theft.
The London museum has today, March 26, granted access to the eBay and PayPal records of a departed employee after detailed allegations were made at London’s High Court detailing years of theft from its collections. Higgs, who worked in the museum’s Greek collections department for 30 years before being fired last August, will be ordered by the judge to release information about the artifacts he is accused of stealing.
The museum says that Higgs sold objects from the stolen collection to more than 45 buyers over a 10-year period, that the former curator used pseudonyms and even altered artifact records to confuse the thefts. According to the British Museum, Higgs mainly pocketed ancient gems and gold jewelry from warehouses. The works had not been exhibited recently and some had no official record.
The museum has around eight million objects in its collection, of which only around 1% are on display, Council Chairman George Osborne said. BBC that about 2,000 of these works of art, which were not shown last summer, were missing.
Higgs, who was not in court Tuesday but was represented by his attorneys, reportedly plans to contest the claims. BBC. The British Museum did not immediately respond Hyperallergicrequest for comment.
According to today’s hearing, London’s Metropolitan Police raided Higg’s home last August and found instructions on how to change records on objects taken from the museum’s collection, which the museum claimed were taken from its collection, which Higgs denied.
There were two cases in 2021 where antique dealers marked up collectibles listed on eBay separately. Denmark’s Ittai Gradel bought the jewelry along with 69 other items from the same seller on eBay, and disclosed it to the museum, suspecting that the sales were facilitated by an employee. The museum later launched an internal investigation, but found no evidence of wrongdoing.
In 2023, when reports of the thefts coincided with Higgs’s dismissal, the then director of the British Museum, Hartwig Fischer, voluntarily resigned from his post, saying that the institution “did not respond sufficiently in response to the warnings of 2021”. and accepting responsibility for losses.
The museum has since recovered around 356 stolen objects and asked for the public’s help in finding the rest, before announcing last October that it would fully digitize its collections over the next five years.
The museum appears to be in good spirits with an exhibition of recovered stolen gems, but the thefts have reignited bids to return the Parthenon marbles and Benin bronzes to Greece and Nigeria, given the museum’s security concerns.
