How much space do 2,000 items take? That's what was missing from the British Museum. I wondered if an every-day kitchen has in the range of 2,000 items and it could be empty in a flash. But there's no quick answer. The stuff that went missing from the British Museum disappeared over years, even decades. Think of the forks in the draw. There just don't seem to be the right number.
I guess it was the case for the British Museum as well. They don't seem to have inventoried everything in their collections. I can't imagine having to explain this now - 2,000 forks are missing.
The head of trustees at the British Museum says they have recovered "some" of the 2,000 items "believed" to have been stolen by an insider. The head trustee had to say that they don't have records of everything. The extent of not having records is a worrisome sort of thought.
Not only have they been exposed as mishandling the thefts, they are exposed as being incompetent at the very heart of a museum's purpose - initial inventory is essential, then reviews to ensure artifacts remain in stable physical condition.
They don't actually know if it is 2,000 items - their indication is that this is a "Very provisional figure". And they don't know since when - one article says items had been missing since 1963. And a "dossier of evidence" was presented in 2021 that they refused to respond to.
Then the promise made is that this is a "mess that we are going to clear up".
Can you imagine being able to buy 3,500 year old items - some of them jewels - on eBay? The person who is reported to have blown the whistle several times - Ittai Gradel - was able to figure things out - he says the eBay items had belonged to a man who turned over his entire collection to the museum in 1814. So they have been "not cataloguing" for hundreds of years. I can see the scenario - pushing boxes and boxes of donated stuff on shelves with general location information of the boxes and nothing about the contents, since 1814. I suggest the opposite approach was taken to trophy items that are considered "stolen" like Parthenon friezes, Greek statues and Benin bronzes from west Africa. Those are trophy artifacts, so I am sure the cataloguing is extensive.
Wouldn't this encourage employees who see this professional malaise as possible disrespect for such precious objects? Why not make them available for someone to enjoy and experience? They won't be missed, ever, given how things work in the Museum. It would be easy to justify these thefts. It is a sad moment that the British Museum "created" the slippery slope some poor employee slid down.
Whether the institution is in crisis as the articles indicate, remains a question to me. What is referenced in the articles is that there are six million people who come each year to see what I term "everything taken from everywhere." Egyptian mummies, ancient Greek statues, the Rosetta Stone, Viking artifacts, 12th century Chinese items and of course, things taken from the Indigenous peoples of Canada. There are the contentious friezes that belong on the Parthenon in Athens and Benin bronzes from west Africa. The claim of the British Museum is that they protect all this heritage more than the originators could. And they give access to more people in the world than the originators could. I define that as "tourist-access" -- that's "making money" access. Six million people would spend a lot of tourist money in London.
And a final quote that continues to reveal: "I don't myself believe there was a sort of deliberate cover-up, although the review may find that to be the case". The underlying concern that is being denied - that there is a low regard for the artifacts and a cover-up to preserve reputation is more important.
I seem to think that figuring out whether it is artifact or artefact is relevant. But not so. American English has it artifact, and British English, artefact.
Here's the Toronto version of Museum folly - the Royal Ontario Museum's architectural extension by Daniel Libeskind. Makes a beautiful abstract.
