Top UK museums admit hundreds of items lost, stolen or destroyed
Comes as British Museum appoints new director after institution faced alleged thefts scandal
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Top UK museums have admitted that hundreds of important items have been lost, stolen or destroyed over the past five years.
The Imperial War Museum, the Natural History Museum and the National Museum of Scotland are among those who reported missing items in response to Freedom of Information requests by The Independent.
The revelations come as the British Museum has appointed a new director after the London-based institution was thrown into crisis over an alleged theft scandal.
National Portrait Gallery chief Nicholas Cullinan was hired to lead the British Museum last week as the 265-year-old institution grapples with the apparent theft of hundreds of artefacts and growing international scrutiny of its collection.
Previous director Hartwig Fischer resigned in August after the museum disclosed that more than 1,800 items were missing in an alleged case of insider theft, with many of the items offered for sale online. However, hundreds have subsequently been returned, including a first-century Roman profile bust of the goddess Minerva/Athena in black glass with a white band, and a glass cameo with a bust of the god Cupid/Eros in layers of brown, white and purple glass.
Now, it has been revealed that hundreds of items have gone missing from other key museums.
The Imperial War Museum recorded 539 items as lost between 2018 and 2023 and one item as stolen, while the Natural History Museum disclosed 13 items had gone missing over the last five years. During the same time period, the National Museum of Scotland reported six items were lost from its collections, one item was stolen and another destroyed in a fire.
Among items missing from the Natural History Museum are mammal teeth from the Mesozoic Era, which would be over 65 million years old, while a gastrolith was a specimen assumed to have been stolen from the Dinosaur Gallery. The National Museum of Scotland said a telephone handset belonging to the de Havilland Comet 4C, which was the world's first commercial passenger jet aircraft, was the item that was stolen from its display in 2022.
Former officers at the Metropolitan Police’s Art and Antiques Unit told The Independent of the impact of budgetary and staff cuts over the years when it comes to investigating art crime in London, with the team even facing closure at times.
An example would be in 2017 when three of the four officers on the unit were moved across to deal with the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy, leaving just one officer on the team.
When it was put to the Mayor of London that the squad had in effect been temporarily closed, Sadiq Khan insisted at the time that “the work of the unit is very much operational”, although he “recognised that for the interim, matters will be managed in a different way”.
One source, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “The budgetary cuts did have a massive impact on investigatory powers. It was an incredibly small unit punching way above its weight with a worldwide reputation. When you start to strip the team from three or four people, it clearly will have an impact. It’s sad.”
The Science Museum Group reported four objects recorded as lost between 2018 and 2023, while the Museum Wales said a total of 16 items had gone missing since 2017, and 1,921 is the overall number of items that have been lost since the museum started caring for objects.
However, the National Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Tate all reported no missing or stolen items over the same time period.
Meanwhile, it emerged last year that a famous sculpture by Auguste Rodin had been missing from the Glasgow Museums Collection for 75 years. Les Bourgeois de Calais was last seen when it was exhibited in 1949 in Kelvingrove Park, where it “suffered damage while on display”, according to Glasgow Life, which is the organisation in charge of many of the city’s cultural venues. Jérôme le Blay, the director of the Comité Rodin, which maintains a catalogue of the artist’s works, estimated the value of the 2-metre sculpture would be around £3m today.
The British Museum committed to immediately acting on all recommendations of an independent review of security that concluded at the end of last year after items from its collections were found to be missing, stolen or damaged.
The museum fired a longstanding curator, Paul Higgs, over the missing items, and is suing him at the High Court. Lawyers for the museum say Higgs “abused his position of trust” to steal ancient gems, gold jewellery and other pieces from storerooms over the course of a decade.
Higgs, who worked in the museum’s Greece and Rome department for more than two decades, denies the allegations and intends to dispute the museum’s legal claim. Police are also investigating, but no one has been charged.
A former member of staff at a top UK museum, who wished to remain anonymous, said he was not at all surprised upon hearing of the issues facing the British Museum, because he said the problems are sector-wide.
He blamed cataloguing failures caused by a drain of expert skills, which in turn has at least partly come about as a result of funding cuts amid an industry expansion. He said: “People having to learn on the job without expert knowledge are expected to catalogue stuff they’re not sure about.”
The Imperial War Museum said its figure only includes items that are still lost, with the museum “frequently” recovering other items that have gone missing. It added that the figure should be set within the context of the scale of the museum’s collections as a whole, which stood at 33,680,654 items in its last annual report.
Museum Wales said it currently has more than 5.3 million items, having cared for objects since the 1870s, with the majority of those lost being small, domestic or of low financial value. A spokesperson said: “While we have vigorous collection management and security procedures in place, due to the scale of the collection and with at least 1.3 million people visiting our seven museums per annum, some losses are unfortunately inevitable.”
A spokesperson for the Natural History Museum said: “We take the security of our collection very seriously, so over the last decade we've had just fourteen instances of lost or missing items from a collection of 80 million, limited to small things like teeth, fish and frozen animal tissue, and just one confirmed theft.”
A spokesperson for Glasgow Life said: “The process of recording, cataloguing and caring for the Glasgow Museums Collection has improved significantly since it was founded in the 1860s... Where historic thefts have been conclusively identified, we have robust processes in place including notifying the police and adding the items to the Art Loss register which makes it difficult to secure sales at legitimate auctions.”