The argument that the Parthenon Marbles are safer there than in Greece was dismantled by the thefts of antiquities, the British Museum is scrambling to repair its reputation while Greece is keeping an eye on how it’s handled.
Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said that developments at the museum are being followed “very carefully” after she said that the Marbles the British said were lawfully obtained from a Scottish diplomat who took and sold them were stolen.
Museum Director Hartwig Fischer, a German art historian who said that Lord Elgin committed a “creative act” in stealing the marbles with the permission of the Ottoman Empire – which didn’t own them – is quitting over the debacle.
That came after he and museum officials said his resignation was a coincidence not linked to the thefts of some 2,000 antiquities that also a curator, Peter Higgs, sacked but not prosecuted.
“It is evident that the British Museum did not respond as comprehensively as it should have in response to the warnings in 2021, and to the problem that has now fully emerged,” Fischer said in a statement. “The responsibility for that failure must ultimately rest with the director.”
“It is evident that the British Museum did not respond as comprehensively as it should have in response to the warnings in 2021, and to the problem that has now fully emerged,” Fischer said in a statement. “The responsibility for that failure must ultimately rest with the director.”
Fischer’s announcement included an apology to a whistleblower, Ittai Gradel, a British-Danish art historian and dealer who said he saw the stolen antiquities on sale on eBay for a fraction of their worth but that he was pooh-poohed for notifying the museum.
Gradel traced the two items he didn’t buy to the museum. The object he bought wasn’t listed in the museum’s catalog, but he discovered it had been owned by a man who turned over his entire collection to the museum in 1814.
Gradel said he found the identity of the seller through PayPal and it was the person at the museum who has since been sacked. Gradel said that 69 other objects he bought from the same person were then “guilty by association.”
Gradel said that Fischer was right to quit and accepted his apology. But he said Deputy Director Jonathan Williams should also resign because he had assured him an investigation found no wrongdoing, no word whether there was a probe.
“We want to tell the British Museum that they cannot anymore say that Greek (cultural) heritage is more protected in the British Museum,” Despina Koutsoumba, head of the Association of Greek Archaeologists, told the BBC.
The missing objects were said to include gold jewelry and gems dating from the 15th Century BC to the 19th Century AD, and officials there’s no inventory of items, and many are stored in an 18th Century basement.
The museum board Chairman George Osborne – who offered to loan Greece the stolen Parthenon Marbles as long as collateral was put up in the form of other valuable artifacts – said “We are going to fix what has gone wrong.”
The thefts battered the museum’s claims of being a world-class institution that also has on display other items stolen by the British from its former colonies in generations of plunder to stock it.
Read more at thenationalherald.com
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