The museum’s director, Hartwig Fischer, said he had not taken warnings about theft from the museum’s collection seriously enough.
The director of the British Museum has announced he will resign after admitting a failed investigation into the theft of items from the museum’s collection.
More than two years ago, the museum was warned by an art historian that he was skeptical of items being sold online and that valuable items may have been stolen or lost.
But the museum’s director, Hartwig Fischer, said the warning wasn’t taken seriously enough, saying investigators had identified hundreds of missing items, including gold jewellery, semi-precious stones and antiques dating back to the 15th. He said he announced his resignation on Friday as he worked out what happened to the company. BC century.
German art historian Fischer, who has headed the museum since 2016, responded to warnings that employees could be stealing items and that any negligence was “ultimately” the employee’s fault. He said there could have been a better response.
“It is clear that the British Museum is not as comprehensive as it should be,” he said in a statement.
“Ultimately, the director should be responsible for that failure.”
The museum, one of London’s most popular tourist attractions, said its staff were fired last week after gold jewelry and gemstones dating from the 15th century BC to the 19th century AD were found stolen from a warehouse. Announced.
Police said Thursday they had questioned an unnamed man about the stolen artifacts but had not charged them.
The British Museum initially said in a statement that Mr Fischer would resign “immediately”, but later deleted that wording and said he would resign as soon as an interim leader was found.
Fischer said he retracted his remarks about the art dealer who first reported the stolen items to museum authorities. He claimed earlier this week that antiquarian Ittai Gradel withheld information about the scale of the stolen items when he contacted the museum.
Mr Fisher said he was “deeply sorry” for his “misjudgment” comments.
Mr Gradel said Mr Fisher had done the right thing to resign and accepted the apology. But he said deputy secretary Jonathan Williams should also resign, adding that Williams assured him that a thorough investigation would find no wrongdoing.
The museum announced on Friday that Williams will be out pending an independent review.
“He basically told me to finish my day and take care of myself,” said Gradel. “I don’t understand how the responsible museum staff could have seen this evidence without raising alarm bells immediately.”
The museum’s board of directors, chaired by former finance minister George Osborne, has accepted Fisher’s resignation.
“We’re going to fix the problem,” Osborne said.
“The museum has a mission that spans generations. We will learn, regain our confidence and deserve to be celebrated again,” he said.
The museum has also controversially resisted demands from communities around the world for the return of historically significant items acquired or stolen during the British Empire and British colonial rule.
The most notorious of these controversies include the marble carvings of the Parthenon in Greece and the bronzes of Benin in West Africa.
“We want to tell the British Museum that it cannot be said to be Greek any more. [cultural] Heritage is better protected in the British Museum,” Despina Kutsomba, president of the Greek Archaeologists Association, told the BBC this week.
Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego reports from London that the resignation is the culmination of a week’s turmoil for the museum, which has been in dispute for years over the Parthenon sculpture known as the Elgin Marbles. said it highlighted the controversy.
“Greek’s Minister of Culture has said that the whole argument that these works should be placed in the British Museum for the sake of safety and preservation must now be truly questioned,” Gallego said.
Greece wants to return the sculpture “to its country of origin as soon as possible,” she added.