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British Museum gems for sale on eBay – how a theft was exposed
- alephnerd 2y agoDr Higgs seems to have been doing this for decades. There is even an article published by the Times in 2002 about artifacts being stolen from the British Museum and how Dr Higgs was in charge of that investigation [0] [0] - https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/breakages-and-bungling-at-british-museum-3h2rjbt6g7h https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/breakages-and-bungling-at...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dmix 2y agohttps://archive.is/ZaWfP https://archive.is/ZaWfP > Curators with years of experience get as little as £12,000 a year and many complain they cannot afford to live in London. Curious if that statement came from Higgs. And possibly this incident inspired him to do later do the same. Note the original article said this as well: > He had been described by the UK government as “a world-renowned curator” in 2015 after helping to return a stolen 2,000-year-old statue to Libya. Dr Higgs later appeared on BBC’s Crimewatch to describe his work.
- alephnerd 2y agoBased on the original article, it sounds like the British Museum was heavily politicized with well heeled donors strongarming museum staff to do their bidding. > One big donor threatened to withdraw her funding from the museum when she was told that she could not drink red wine in one of the galleries during a party. At another function, a catering trolley rammed into a glass case and damaged a valuable artefact. Although the incident happened five years ago, the artefact is still being repaired. I think this is what Dr. Higgs used to rationalize his thieving - the donors clearly didn't care about the works but collectors did, and it I'm getting paid it's a win-win. I guess it's another vaunted institution that has turned rotten, like much of the UK. But tbf, £12,000 in London in the early 2000s was not great but livable (equivalent to $18k in 2002)
- eterm 2y ago12k was shockingly bad for London in the early 2000s. You can't really convert currency and/or then apply inflation or try to compare to 2002 US living costs. London back then still cost a fortune to live in, 12k definitely wouldn't have been comfortable. Yes, the pound was stronger against the dollar back then, but that's little comfort for someone trying to live in London!
- alephnerd 2y agoFair point! I guess I was assuming almost $20k a year back then would have been livable back then, like it was for much of the US excluding a handful of cities like NYC or SF at the time. I think minimum wage was around £9k/yr back then so I assumed 25% above minimum wage was acceptable (not great, but acceptable) Clearly not though.
- avianlyric 2y agoLondon is the UKs capital city, and largest most wealthy city. It’s cost of living in more-or-less on par with cities like New York and San Francisco. It’s substantially higher than the rest of the UK, and minimum wage in London has generally been higher than the rest of the UK (either in law, or as a de-facto standard, with companies paying a “London bonus”)
- alephnerd 2y ago> It’s cost of living in more-or-less on par with cities like New York and San Francisco More like Chicago in my limited experience, but the pre-tax salaries are way lower in London than for similar roles in the US. I never understood how people can afford to live in London by the late 2010s/early 2020s. > It’s substantially higher than the rest of the UK, and minimum wage in London has generally been higher than the rest of the UK (either in law, or as a de-facto standard, with companies paying a “London bonus”) Ofc, I'm just assuming London used to be relatively cheaper 20+ years ago and the cost of living ratio was not as bad then compared to today. Like Tower Hamlets seemed to have only started gentrifying in the early 2000s.
- darth_avocado 2y agoVery ironic considering one of their excuses on returning artifacts to countries of origin is “they wouldn’t be cared for and would be stolen”.
- twixfel 2y agoSame excuse every museum gives. The US is full of European art and artifacts.
- alephnerd 2y agoAmerican museums also seem to have a stronger financial muscle [0] as they tend to be overwhelmingly funded by self sustaining endowments and more open to monetization strategies like IP Licensing (eg. MoMA+Uniqlo's partnership) [0] - https://www.sothebysinstitute.com/news-and-events/news/the-business-model-of-the-nonprofit-museum https://www.sothebysinstitute.com/news-and-events/news/the-b...
- bossyTeacher 2y agoThe US is a former British colony so it makes sense for it have british artifacts
- twixfel 2y agoEuropean, not just British.
- bossyTeacher 2y agoBrits had all sorts of European forces on their lands and each brought cultural artifacts with them
- aprilthird2021 2y agoThere's a difference between museums and galleries where pieces were purchased and have a good chain of ownership and pieces where the museum knows one of the owners in the chain looted the piece
- dmix 2y agoThe FBI is investigating the sale of the gems to US buyers as well: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3gqq7xy5xdo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3gqq7xy5xdo > The British Museum says of 1,500 items it estimates are stolen or missing, 626 have so far been recovered and 100 more have been found but not yet brought back.
- nopakos 2y agoThis doesn't exactly strengthen the museum's case against returning artifacts.
- balderdash 2y agoI don’t understand how the museums collection can go un-cataloged for decades, it seems to be a pretty fundamental element of running a museum (knowing what you have in your collection)
- asperous 2y ago> estimated 2.4 million items That's 5 years if one person worked on it nonstop without sleeping and each item took 60 seconds. I would assume they probably sit in a secure location and items on display or items leaving/transferred are catalogued first so there's bit of a triage and backlog. Museums probably don't want to turn down valuable item donations even if they don't have the resources to catalogue if right away.
- shanemhansen 2y agoThis seems like a reasonable use of resources and time? I'm assuming the British Museum has been around a bit longer than 5 years and hopefully plans on being around longer than 5 years. Maybe than can hire a couple people. [edit] removed inflammatory last sentence.
- nickff 2y agoBritish Museum seems to have about 439 employees who work on "care, research, and conservation", of a total of around a thousand employees. Seems like they have enough budget and staff to get such a high-priority task done. https://www.britishmuseum.org/sites/default/files/2023-07/british_museum_annual_reports_accounts_2022_2023.pdf https://www.britishmuseum.org/sites/default/files/2023-07/br...
- londons_explore 2y ago> That's 5 years if one person worked on it nonstop without sleeping and each item took 60 seconds. Or... 2 people doing regular working hours for 3 years taking 10 seconds per item. Each item can literally be 'photo' + drawer/cabinet number. All other details can be crowdsourced or done later. How long does it take to take a photo?
- jpablo 2y agoThere's a spanish saying: Ladrón que roba a ladrón tiene 100 años de perdón. A Thief that stoles from a Thief has 100 years of forgiveness.
- frutiger 2y agoNot taking a side in this debate, but what is ownership? As far as I can tell it is an invented concept and has no objective truth, only a "truth that we all agree on".
- haiku2077 2y agoI like the word "possession" for this. Either actual possession, when you physically control and can use something, and constructive possesion, where you might not have physical contact with something but still control it. Ownership is when you convince the right people that you should possess something.
- 725686 2y agoCome on, you know exactly what he means.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 2y agoGiven the debate about the ethics of how the museum sourced its artifacts, I think this is a prime example of ownership being complicated.
- jmprspret 2y agoIts quite simple, actually. The complication only comes from the mental gymnastics required for legitimising how a museum sources its artifacts.
- outlore 2y agoWould you philosophize about ownership if someone stole your laptop or phone? Side tangent: there is an interesting Vox story about a Greenland meteorite. It illustrates the real human cost of these expeditions that filled museums. Therefore I find it hard to disentangle “ownership” from “violence”. In this story, the change of ownership is a violent and traumatic event. https://youtu.be/yvdtWfHpCR4 https://youtu.be/yvdtWfHpCR4
- upmind 2y agoWhy would they sell these gems on eBay, seems a bit daft to be honest.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 2y agoBecause he needs a way to sell them and it's a niche enough item that it'd be hard to sell elsewhere unless you have a good connection - who would likely get suspicious if all of the stuff was going through them.
- lotux 2y agoBritish Museum itself is the master of all thieves, should return everything to real owners
- jfoutz 2y agoI very much wanted to make the, have a navy and invade everyone, joke. But this isn’t Reddit. I’m not sure how this all works going forward. There were some plausible arguments about protecting artifacts, the uk was pretty stable in comparison. This article seems to make it clear, that’s no longer the case. If you have some money, seems like you can bribe out whatever artifacts you want.
- varjag 2y agoThere are clear cut cases like with Pantheon, but for many artefacts there are no real owners left. Their cultures have been wiped out, and the people who wiped them out were wiped out too. And frankly it's fine to care about survival of (otherwise publicly accessible) pieces of art and culture first and foremost. There's not going to be more of them.
- s_dev 2y ago>There are clear cut cases like with Pantheon The fact that these aren't handed back really shows the true colours though. The one that personally disgusts me is the Irish Giant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Byrne_(giant) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Byrne_(giant) A man who's only wish in life was not to end up a museum and the British stole his bones and put him on display.
- MatthiasPortzel 2y agoA reminder that not only open-source projects are at risk of sabotage from trusted members.
- veggieWHITES 2y agoIsn't the most surprising thing is that a curator would sell a $15,000 item for $40??? Was he addicted to meth and just really needed an easy $40 or what? Or perhaps he really was a moron and was just breaking the stones out, selling the gold for melt value, and selling the stones for whatever worthless sum he assumed they were/just rocks?
- ayewo 2y agoMuch more likely he was trying to stay under the radar. The article mentions more than a thousand items went missing under his charge. He typically removes the gold casings and sells that to dealers directly.
- mrkramer 2y agoThey say this kind of stuff happens on Dark Web but on Ebay?! C'mon man....this is so ridiculous.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 2y agoThe museum is very lucky that they got any further cooperation after initially dismissing the person reporting it.
- nopakos 2y agoIt looks like the museum was dragged to do something thanks to Mr. Gradel's determination.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bparsons 2y agoComical hearing the British Museum complaining about theft.
- ak_111 2y agoShows you the total lack of imagination in public policy that is the UK. Currently there is no apprenticeship route in archaeology. Simultaneously there is something like millions of objects uncatalogued at the British museum (note cataloging is not simply recording, it is more like expert annotation). So you could literally keep an army of apprentices occupied and rigorously trained for at least three generations by just maintaining the British museum catalog. What is annoying is that the main imaginative policy that will come out of it is a politician giving a full newspaper spread on how they intend to use AI to solve the cataloging issue and, to rub salt on the wound, by outsourcing the AI system to Microsoft/Accenture.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> outsourcing the AI system to Microsoft/Accenture Who will solve 80% of the problem by hiring archaeologist apprentices in America. (Source: friend is in an archaeology programme in Arizona. They're managing a dig in Turkey for a European museum that outsourced the task to an American consultant, which makes no sense.)
- yair99dd 2y agoThis artifact deserves a place here https://vimeo.com/39864880 https://vimeo.com/39864880
- lotux 2y agojust dropping a historical reference here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looty_(dog) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looty_(dog)