An independent review into thefts at The British Museum has made a series of recommendations on risk management, auditing, governance and security, as well as introducing a comprehensive register of all eight million items in its collections.
The proposals insist the museum should “have a policy which defines what comprises its collection” and that it “should identify the unregistered or inadequately registered objects within the collection and register them fully”.
Efforts to document the museum's entire collection were announced in October and are expected to take five years to complete.
The review also advised changes in governance that will see The British Museum’s Director and Deputy share power. Collective decisions will be made by a management committee formed of the director, two deputies and four other senior staff.
It suggested trustees be granted more involvement in the day-to-day running of the museum, including being paired with individual departments and having oversight of staff issues, while also giving staff more representation through board members.
The independent review was led by Sir Nigel Boardman, a former corporate lawyer, Lucy D’Orsi, Chief Constable of the British Transport Police, and Ian Karet, a deputy high court judge. The museum has unanimously accepted the review’s recommendations.
The theft of around 1,500 Greek and Roman objects by an employee between 1993 and 2022 first emerged in August, causing considerable reputational damage.
The thefts were mainly of unregistered items – gems and jewellery. The museum said 351 items have been returned, with 300 further missing items identified.
In addition to the missing or stolen artefacts, 500 items were damaged, with 140 found to have tool marks, while 350 had portions removed, such as gold mounts for gems, which had likely been sold for scrap.
Details about the timeline of the museum's investigation were also included in the report, which said: “The museum was alerted to suspicions of thefts in 2021 by Dr Ittai Gradel. The museum’s investigation incorrectly concluded that there was no basis to the claims.”
Later that year, a spot check during an internal audit revealed an item not in its proper location within the Greece and Rome strongroom, triggering a more comprehensive collection audit in April 2022. Concerns arising from the audit were brought to senior management in December 2022.
Sir Mark Jones, who became Interim Director following the resignation of Dr Hartwig Fischer, said: “No one can pretend this has been an easy period for the Museum, but I have the utmost admiration for the commitment of the staff to building a stronger future for the Museum we all care so deeply about.”
George Osborne, Chair of Trustees, said the review, which was not published in full, “shows the British Museum is putting our own house in order".
"Indeed, we commissioned it because we were determined to learn the lessons of what went wrong. The British Museum was the victim of thefts over a long period, and we apologise again that this was allowed to happen.
"The ongoing police investigation means the full report cannot be published today, but we have accepted the recommendations in full and have started to recover hundreds of the stolen items."