2023-09-02 12:36:01
Although the case of the thefts from the British Museum is exceptional both for its scale – approximately 2,000 objects stolen over almost ten years – it is not the first time, alas, that a major cultural institution has been the victim of employees or unscrupulous curators.
In France, a former chief curator of Hebrew manuscripts at the National Library of France was sentenced on appeal in 2007 to fifteen months in prison for the theft of a rare Hebrew manuscript from the 13th century, sold to an English collector, then auctioned at Christie’s. In 2017, a former storekeeper, still from the BNF, was sentenced for the theft of more than 200 old engravings from the 16th and 17th centuries, which he sold on eBay.
The tragic affair of the Jacques-Doucet Library
The venerable Jacques-Doucet Library in Paris, a treasure trove of thousands of famous writers’ manuscripts, has also been the victim of thefts of dozens of books, some of which have been put up for sale on the Internet. A tragic affair which led to the suicide in 2022 of the deputy director, after the suspicions against her were revealed by the press. His mother, from whom the police seized a number of books and documents, will be tried on January 24, 2024 for concealment.
It is a bequest to the library in 2010 of more than 15,000 non-inventoried books that seems to have favored the first disappearances. It is always easier to sell an uncatalogued work on the market…
A similar misadventure occurred at the Museum of printing on fabrics in Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin), rich in nearly 50,000 pieces never precisely recorded. Massive disappearances were discovered there in 2018. Again, the worm was in the fruit. The museum’s former conservation delegate is now indicted for theft and fraud, while a full inventory has been launched.
An insufficient proofing rate in France
To avoid such breaches in the security of public collections, the law of January 4, 2002 requires the 1,200 “museums of France” to have an inventory of their collections and to carry out its verification every ten years.
Clearly, it is a question of verifying whether what is listed in the catalog is still physically present within the museum or in its external repositories. An operation all the more tedious as the collections are vast, and the teams, reduced. In 2014, at the end of the first ten-year census, 40% of works had been collected, varying between 35% in regional museums and 54% in national museums.
Disappearing deposits
A second ten-year review is underway, at a still insufficient pace. At the end of 2022, at the Louvre Museum, the reference institution, which preserves 500,000 works – a far cry from the 8 million works in the British Museum! –, 49.72% had been harvested in seven years.
A major subject of concern concerns the works of the major national collections deposited in regional administrations, embassies or museums. According to the latest report from the commission for the inventory of works of art deposits, out of 10,427 objects collected in 2022 (excluding deposits from the Sèvres factory), 19% could not be located, which resulted in 386 deposits. of complaint.
Works inventoried by “lots”
Another sensitive point: the so-called sets « indescribable », especially in archaeological collections. A ministerial circular of May 4, 2016 authorizes counting by « lot » some series “homogeneous by nature and by origin”, but these are shards, loose bones or fossils, the overall volume of which must be quantified or weighed. This is to prevent dishonest employees from taking advantage of the vagueness of certain sets in the reserves to subtract elements. This is what happened, it seems, at the British Museum, where the thefts concerned, this time, pottery, coins, jewels and cameos, some of which, bought in batches, would have remained inventoried en masse and not piece by piece.
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