2023-08-19 01:29:12
Last Updated Saturday, 19 August 2023 – 01:29
The media point to Peter Higgs, who was in charge of the ancient Greece collection until his dismissal this year, as responsible.
Image from the exhibition ‘Agon! Competition in Ancient Greece’.S. DE ROMAN/ GETTY IMAGESArt Fourteen things you didn’t know about the British Museum in London Art Jewelery and other world treasures are stolen from the collection of the British museum
The family of the suspect in the theft, disappearance and destruction of valuable pieces from the British Museum collection claims his innocence. The UK national press has identified Peter Higgs, an expert on ancient Mediterranean cultures, as the 56-year-old veteran commissioner who was fired from his job at the head of the Greco-Roman endowment fund as a result of the internal scandal and the alleged sale on the Internet of world treasures. He hasn’t done anything … he’s lost his job and his reputation and he thinks it’s not fair, his son Gregory Higgs told The Times.
Peter Higgs has worked at the British Museum since 1993, in recent decades taking charge of the selection of works included in major exhibitions, such as Ancient Greeks: athletes, warriors and heroes (Ancient Greeks: athletes, warriors and heroes). His skills also included the preparation of select samples abroad and, in 2017, he traveled to Madrid with the director of the British entity, Hartwick Fischer, on the occasion of the opening of Agn! The competition in ancient Greece, a collaboration with CaixaForum.
George Osborne, chairman of the board of trustees of the bicentennial London institution, confirmed this week the suspicions of board members. The former conservative minister did not indicate when the alleged crime was committed -or the sequence of thefts- of small pieces from the vast national collection, which had not been exhibited to the public recently. They were kept primarily as a source of academic study and research.
The museum reported the looting in a press release, released through the web, on Wednesday night. British media agree that the institution was alerted three years before the presence of objects allegedly stolen from its Greco-Roman funds at Internet auctions. My colleague tried to warn the museum, but it seems that I did not agree to the right person. He was extremely upset and said it needed to stop, Oxford University professor and archaeologist Reverend Martin Henig told Sky News.
The former head of the Ministry of Economy maintains that the board of trustees was informed this year of the theft of items from the collection. Osborne withheld the name of the suspect, who has not been arrested and is not charged. My father has lost faith in the museum, Greg Higgs told the Telegraph. The institution has not revealed the number of pieces given up as lost, destroyed and stolen. So far, he has also not identified any treasures from the cache of gold jewelry, semi-precious stones and carved crystal relics that he misses from the collection. Most are small, according to the official note.
For his part, Fischer indicated that external experts are collaborating in the preparation of an inventory of the stolen pieces. The museum lacks an exhaustive catalog of its global heritage and, for the moment, the electronic database includes about 4.5 million of the estimated 80 million objects that accumulates from almost all cultures and corners of the world for more than two centuries.
1% of this universal fund is exhibited at its Bloomsbury headquarters and the rest travels on loan abroad or is stored in rooms closed to the public and in deposits assigned to the different departments. Knowing that you have neglected objects under your protection risks damaging your reputation as custodian of art, relics and curiosities from around the world, as well as weaken their traditional line of defense against repatriation claims of the treasures brought to London from abroad.
Antique dealers consulted by the Telegraph allege that valuable British objects have been sold on the Internet for ridiculous prices since at least 2016. The newspaper mentions the fragment of a Roman cameo (sculpted stone) in onyx that was offered that year at eBay for a starting price of about 45 euros. The precious lot was not sold despite the fact that its real value is between 25,000 and 50,000 euros, according to the newspaper.
Professor Henig’s colleague, whom The Telegraph locates abroad without providing his identity, discovered and wanted to stop the fraudulent practice. He suspected that some employee of the British was selling small pieces from the Greco-Roman collection, but he lacked evidence to support his hypothesis. The seller selected objects that were not visually documenteds in the digital archive of the institution, which made it difficult to prove its provenance visually.
The same anonymous source alleges that semi-precious stone and crystal items were regularly offered at eBay auctions from or even before 2016. It attributes their provenance to the series of Greco-Roman artifacts in the Towneley Collection, which was donated to the British Museum in the 19th century. XVIII. Two investigations run in parallel. It is speculated that thousands of objects have been stolen and several experts agree that gold jewelry and other precious objects have been melted down or have already entered the chain of the obscure antiquities market.
Scotland Yard’s economic crime department is leading the investigations focused on finding the culprit of the looting, in addition to detecting and aborting the resale of items. Internally, former member of the Board of Governors, Sir Nigel Boardman, is coordinating with the head of the British Transport Police, Lucy Dorsi, an internal review of security systems in order to provide recommendations to prevent a repeat of the humiliating incident. The British Museum has been the victim of the theft and we are completely determined to get to the bottom of what happened and ensure that lessons are learned, Boardman said.
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