The British Museum says a member of its employees has been dismissed after objects had been discovered to be lacking, stolen or broken
ByDANICA KIRKA Related Press
FILE – Guests stroll outdoors the British Museum in Bloomsbury, London, Friday, June 26, 2015. The British Museum stated a member of employees has been dismissed after objects had been discovered to be lacking, stolen or broken. The museum stated Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2023 it has additionally ordered an unbiased assessment or safety and ordered kickstart a ‘’vigorous program to get well the lacking objects.” (AP Photograph/Tim Eire, File)
The Related Press
LONDON — The British Museum stated Wednesday {that a} member of its employees has been dismissed after objects relationship again so far as the fifteenth century B.C. had been discovered to be lacking, stolen or broken.
The museum stated it has additionally ordered an unbiased assessment of safety and a ‘‘vigorous program to get well the lacking objects.″
The stolen artifacts embody gold jewellery and gems of semi-precious stones and glass relationship from the fifteenth century B.C. to the nineteenth century A.D. Most had been small objects saved in a storeroom and none had been on show just lately, the museum stated.
“Our precedence is now threefold: first, to get well the stolen objects; second, to seek out out what, if something, may have been performed to cease this; and third, to do no matter it takes, with funding in safety and assortment data, to ensure this doesn’t occur once more,″ stated George Osborne, the museum’s chair.
“This incident solely reinforces the case for the reimagination of the museum we have now embarked upon,” Osborne stated.
The museum stated authorized motion could be taken in opposition to the dismissed employees member and that the matter was below investigation by London’s Metropolitan Police Service.
The 264-year-old British Museum is a serious London vacationer attraction, drawing guests from all over the world who come to see an unlimited assortment of artifacts starting from the Rosetta Stone that unlocked the language of historic Egypt to scrolls bearing twelfth century Chinese language poetry and masks created by the indigenous folks of Canada.
However the museum has additionally attracted controversy as a result of it has resisted calls from communities all over the world to return objects of historic significance that had been acquired through the period of the British Empire. Essentially the most well-known of those disputes embody marble carvings from the Parthenon in Greece and the Benin bronzes from west Africa.
Hartwig Fischer, the director of the British Museum, apologized and stated the establishment was decided to place issues proper.
“This can be a extremely uncommon incident,” stated Fischer stated. “I do know I converse for all colleagues after I say that we take the safeguarding of all of the objects in our care extraordinarily severely.”