The British Museum has finished investigating its own conduct and concluded that it broke the law after it discovered last year that thousands of artifacts had disappeared from its collection.
The museum confirmed last December that around 2,000 items went missing and its top brass admitted that they might be “unrecoverable” after being “sold for scrap” or defaced. The admittance sparked the British Museum to do an internal audit, which has now found that it was not compliant with UK legislation dictating how national treasures should be kept.
UK museums and libraries are required to “meet basic standards of preservation, access, and professional care” under the Public Records Act. The law also states that items should be “in the care of suitably qualified staff,” The Times reports.
Any organizations which do not maintain these standards are at risk of seeing their collection transferred elsewhere or handed over to the National Archives. However, someone from the British Museum reportedly said there was no suggestion the museum will suffer this fate, despite its admitted wrongdoing.
The former chancellor and chairman of trustees at the museum, George Osborne, and Nicholas Cullinan, the British Museum’s director, wrote in its 2024 report that “a number of actions are currently being considered by management, who are continuing to work with the National Archives towards compliance.”
As many as 1,500 items are feared to have been stolen as of 2023, while around 350 objects had parts removed, like gems or gold. So far, over 600 objects have been returned with the help of the FBI. Osborne said this “far more than many predicted we could recover.”
Peter Higgs, a senior curator at the museum, was fired in July 2023 after the museum accused him of stealing 1,800 items, estimated to be worth $130,000, over a decade. While Higgs denies the allegations has yet to be charged with any offense, the museum announced that it was suing him earlier this year.
