Alleged British Museum thief is a well-known curator

Peter Higgs is a well-known art curator who has worked at the British Museum for three decades. Now, he has come to light as the alleged thief of a jewellery collection he was guarding.

Recently there was news in the specialist media of a new theft of jewellery from the British Museum. This time it involved pieces of gold jewellery, gems and semi-precious stones and glass from the 15th to the 19th century, which had been disappearing from the research department and were therefore not permanent exhibits.

The museum’s internal investigation has revealed that items stolen from the British Museum first appeared on eBay in 2016. Higgs allegedly stole small items of jewellery, as well as precious gems from the collection, some from Ancient Rome. The items in question are believed to be worth tens of millions of pounds.

Christos Tsirogiannis, a UNESCO expert who deals with antiquities trafficking, calls the heist “probably the worst case yet…. Nobody expects that to happen in a museum”. Dating back more than 3,500 years, the value of all the stolen artefacts is estimated in the tens of millions of dollars. Of course, this comes at a rather ironic time, when the British Museum has been grappling with a series of debates about repatriation.

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