IT has been an ignominious couple of weeks at the British Museum, where the scandal over the alleged theft of potentially thousands of objects from the collection stores has already claimed two jobs.
A senior curator, Peter Higgs, has been fired, and having announced on July 28 that he would be leaving his post next year, the museum's director, Hartwig Fischer, hastily amended that last week to say that his presence was "proving a distraction" and that he would step down as soon as a temporary replacement could be found.
After the story was revealed by Ittai Gradel, the art historian who had alerted the museum to the losses some two years ago but had been fobbed off by senior leaders, the museum's chair of trustees, George Osborne, referred in an interview to "potential group think" at the museum "that couldn't believe a member of staff was doing this".
I think this is the key to what's gone wrong. This was, apparently, a scandal waiting to happen; a grievous and utterly avoidable failure of processes that could have been spotted a mile off. Speaking this week, a former curator at the museum described a shoddy system, where stores are "alarmed but not otherwise monitored".
"I would call up security, tell them which room I was entering, get the key and that's all I needed to do to have access to a huge range of objects," she said. "Many of the collections are stored. in the same rooms as others, so if a person were dishonest they would have the cover of knowing that scores of other curators, conservators, specialists and researchers would have been in that room in the same week or even day."
ãã®èšäºã¯ Evening Standard ã® September 01, 2023 çã«æ²èŒãããŠããŸãã
7 æ¥éã® Magzter GOLD ç¡æãã©ã€ã¢ã«ãéå§ããŠãäœåãã®å³éžããããã¬ãã¢ã ã¹ããŒãªãŒã9,000 以äžã®éèªãæ°èã«ã¢ã¯ã»ã¹ããŠãã ããã
ãã§ã«è³Œèªè ã§ã ?  ãµã€ã³ã€ã³
ãã®èšäºã¯ Evening Standard ã® September 01, 2023 çã«æ²èŒãããŠããŸãã
7 æ¥éã® Magzter GOLD ç¡æãã©ã€ã¢ã«ãéå§ããŠãäœåãã®å³éžããããã¬ãã¢ã ã¹ããŒãªãŒã9,000 以äžã®éèªãæ°èã«ã¢ã¯ã»ã¹ããŠãã ããã
ãã§ã«è³Œèªè ã§ã? ãµã€ã³ã€ã³
Who is to blame for the lack of elite English managers?
Replacing Tuchel with a homegrown candidate will be no easy task
Who your club will sign and sell in the January market
Kolo Muani has more than one interested club in London, while there are big names unsettled and looking to move
The debt disaster threatening to leave Londoners without a drop to drink
Crisis-hit Thames Water could go under in days
Is 2025 the year of the first-time buyer?
This could be your best chance to buy a home in more than a decade here's where to look
Kick back in the Caribbean BodyHoliday, Saint Lucia
Green juices, beach workouts and supercharged facials: more and more of us are swapping piña coladas and indulgent food for a healthier, but no less glamorous, holiday.
Dishoom's Kavi Thakraron why Mumbai is his inspiration
The best street food, fantastic markets and bars where the hours just disappear...the restaurateur shares his guide
On the sauce - Adiamondis forever, after all
Double Diamond was supposedly Prince Philipâs favourite beer. Heâs said to have enjoyed a bottle, nightly.
At the table - Queen of W1 expands empire with chic Italian
I understand it's not the done thing to compare restaurateurs to murderous mob bosses, given it's rude and, well, they're notoriously litigious. But when I think of Samyukta Nair, sometimes I hear Jack Nicholson's mutterings in The Departed, Martin Scorsese's Boston gangster flick. \"I don't want to be a product of my environment,\" Nichol- son says. \"I want my environment to be a product of me.\"
The Royal Academy's masterful show and mind-expanding surrealist paintings
Known for his intricate and stunning handmade tapestries, Siributr creates these vast hangings to explore his native Thailand past and present.
Review - Adrien Brody's power and depth shine in this colossal epic
The Brutalist, director Brady Corbetâs third feature, is a movie of such colossal size and scope it may well have been carved from marble; an epic paean to the immigrant experience in America in the wake of the Second World War.