Elgin Marbles

• The theft is suspected to be an inside job that took place over a period of twenty years.
• This is not the first time the Museum has come under fire and its custodianship has been questioned.

The Duveen scouring

• There can be little doubt that the most notorious of them is the Duveen scouring scandal, so-named after Joseph Duveen, an ultra-rich art dealer of dubious ethics and benefactor of the British Museum.
• The marbles were later placed in the Duveen Gallery, named in honour of the man responsible for the damage to their historic surface.
• The Duveen scouring was not the only cleaning of the marbles to cause consternation.
• It is probable that, if these early warnings had been headed, the Duveen cleaning could have been avoided.

Other controversies

• During a 1999 conference in the museum, a sandwich lunch was served in the Duveen Gallery, and the delegates were encouraged to touch the ancient sculptures.
• Many among those present found the gesture so inconsiderate that they walked out of the gallery.
• A controversy of a different kind concerns contested objects in the Museum’s collection that are the object of repatriation requests.

The Museum’s current troubles

• About half of the Museum’s 8 million items are uncatalogued and this lack of an inventory has certainly facilitated the thefts.
• The fact that it took so long to discover the thefts also raises the question of what else might have gone missing without a trace.
• Yet one can’t help but wonder: Do the Museum’s current woes have other museum directors fretting with anxiety?
• What if some of the identified stolen items are contested items that have been the object of restitution requests?

Crisis as an opportunity

• Every crisis is an opportunity, and here too there is an opportunity.
• After the resignation of the director Hartwig Fischer, an interim director, Sir Mark Jones, has been appointed.