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Art & Design|Trying to Recover the British Museum’s Gems, and Its Reputation
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/19/arts/design/british-museum-gems-recovery.html
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The police haven’t charged anybody over the missing artifacts, but the museum is running its own investigations to get the items back.
Alex Marshall spent several hours with the recovery team and visited the British Museum’s security-tightened storerooms.
Aug. 19, 2024, 2:49 p.m. ET
A year has passed since the British Museum said it had fired a curator for stealing from its supposedly lock-tight storerooms and selling the artifacts online. Ever since, the museum has struggled to deal with the fallout from the scandal, which has battered its reputation as a protector of world treasures.
Hartwig Fischer, the museum’s director, resigned. Foreign governments used the uproar to renew claims for the return of artifacts from the collection. And the museum brought a lawsuit against a former curator to try to help get back the items, which include gems and carved glass.
Nobody has been criminally charged, but while a police investigation continues, the museum has asked an eight-person team based in its Greek and Roman department to secure the return of about 1,500 missing artifacts.
The team is searching for the items online, in public auctions and in other museum’s collections, and contacting antiquities dealers who may have bought the artifacts and then sold them to collectors.
In recent interviews, team members said they were making progress but might never recover every lost item.
“I don’t think we’ve ever said that we won’t get everything back, but I suspect we won’t,” said Thomas Harrison, who leads the Greek and Roman department.
