A judge has ordered a former curator who the British Museum says stole a whole bunch of artifacts to return gems and jewellery in his possession to the institution.
The museum alleges that former curator Peter Higgs, who once headed its Greek and Roman antiquities department, stole or damaged greater than 1,800 artifacts from the gathering, and court documents show he sold a whole bunch of them on eBay.
Officials also want Mr Higgs to make clear the whereabouts of other artifacts they consider the former curator was selling online. Court documents show Mr Higgs disputes the allegations against him.
During a hearing on the High Court in London, presiding judge Heather Williams ordered Higgs to return any items inside 4 weeks. Judge Williams also ordered online payments company PayPal to reveal details of Mr Higgs’ eBay accounts, including his transaction history.
Lost museum pieces include engraved gems and jewellery, a few of them hundreds of years old.
Mr. Higgs and his family didn’t reply to The Times’ emails and social media messages on Tuesday. In court documents, lawyers for the museum said the curator “suffers from severe mental distress” and is “unable to respond effectively to the proceedings.”
Since the theft was announced in August, the museum has recovered only about 350 missing artifacts.
London police are investigating, but a spokeswoman said in an email Wednesday that nobody has been charged in reference to the missing artifacts.
In court documents, the museum said it had “compelling evidence” that between 2009 and 2018, Higgs “abused his position of trust within the museum” to take artifacts, including items the museum had not fully recorded in its catalog. Higgs then sold lots of them on eBay to no less than 45 different buyers, the museum says. The buyers allegedly include people from the United States and Denmark.
In its filing, the museum also accuses the former curator of attempting to cover up the theft by modifying the museum’s digital catalog, including changing the descriptions of the missing objects.
Although British newspapers have long reported that Higgs was the curator at the middle of the scandal, Tuesday’s hearing was the primary time the museum mentioned his name.
When the museum fired Mr. Higgs in July for gross misconduct, he had worked there for greater than 30 years. In 2021, the museum promoted Mr. Higgs to acting head of the Greek and Roman department – a crucial position overseeing among the museum’s Most worthy artifacts, including the disputed Parthenon marbles.
Higgs curated several hit exhibitions on the British Museum, including: Exhibition dedicated to the history of Sicily 2016. Another of his exhibitions “Ancient Greeks: athletes, warriors and heroes”visited Australia and China.
The museum’s legal team told the court that the institution tried to force Mr Higgs to provide details of items it believed he had stolen because there was a risk they would soon “turn out to be irrecoverable”.
“While the items are at large, recovering stolen items becomes more difficult as they are sold and resold, potentially across borders,” lawyers for the museum told the court. “The sooner the museum can contact other buyers,” he adds, “the greater the likelihood of recovering additional property.”
