LONDON (AP) – The British Museum went to court Tuesday against a former curator accused of stealing hundreds of items from its collection and selling them online.
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The museum is suing Peter Higgs, who was fired in July 2023 after more than 1,800 items were found missing. Lawyers for the museum allege that Higgs “abused his position of trust” and stole ancient gemstones, gold jewelry and other items from the warehouse over a period of more than a decade.
Visitors walk outside the British Museum in Bloomsbury, London, on Friday, June 26, 2015. The British Museum is suing a former curator for stealing around 2,000 items from its collection and selling them online. Peter Higgs was made redundant in July 2023 after more than 1,800 items were found to be missing. (AP Photo/Tim Ireland)
High Court Judge Heather Williams ordered Higgs to list his belongings or return them within four weeks. She also ordered the disclosure of his eBay and PayPal records.
The museum says it has recovered 356 of the missing items so far and expects more to be returned.
“The items stolen from the museum are of cultural and historical significance,” Daniel Burgess, the museum’s attorney, said in a written legal argument.
Burgess said the defendants tried to “cover their tracks” by using false names, creating false documents, manipulating museum records and selling artworks for less than they were worth. He said that.
Higgs, who worked in the museum’s Greco-Roman department for more than 20 years, denies the allegations and plans to contest the museum’s legal claims.
He did not attend Tuesday’s hearing because he was feeling unwell, his lawyers said.
A separate police investigation into the incident is ongoing, but Higgs has not been charged with a crime.
After the missing items were revealed in August, the museum’s director, Hartwig Fischer, resigned and apologized for not taking seriously warnings from art historians that items in the collection were being sold on eBay. did.
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Chairman George Osborne acknowledged the incident had damaged the reputation of the 265-year-old institution.
The 18th-century museum in central London’s Bloomsbury district is one of Britain’s biggest tourist attractions, with six million visitors a year. They come to see collections ranging from Egyptian mummies and ancient Greek statues to Viking treasures, scrolls with 12th-century Chinese poetry, and masks made by Canada’s Indigenous peoples.
