The new, 360-foot-high museum is currently under construction and will be located in the Royal Arts Complex in King Salman Park. The building’s design is by Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill.

The Saudi Museums Commission announced the appointment of Fischer in a press release on July 11, calling the flagship museum “a pivotal moment in Saudi Arabia’s cultural renaissance” and part of the commission’s commitment to establishing state-of-the art institutions.

Fischer’s appointment and the new museum are part of several initiatives aimed at expanding its arts and culture sector while shifting the country’s reliance on oil. In addition to the $10 billion King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) development in central Riyadh, Saudi cultural initiatives include the city-wide art festival Noor Riyadh and the Diriyah Biennale, the most recent of which opened in February. The city has also been chosen for World Expo 2030 and the FIFA World Cup in 2034.

Fischer stepped down as director of the British Museum last August after the institution announced that more than 1,500 items from its collections were lost, stolen, or damaged. Fischer was initially expected to depart earlier this year. However, whistleblower Ittai Gradel said that he had alerted Fischer and other senior museum officials about the thefts in 2021. While Fischer initially claimed that he took Gradel’s allegations “seriously”, he later withdrew them and said he held responsibility as director for the British Museum failing to “respond as comprehensively as it should have”.

The law enforcement agency assisted the Metropolitan Police with the recent return of 268 items from a collector in Washington, D.C. The FBI also contacted a buyer in New Orleans via email about two items purchased on eBay.

The email from the FBI agent said they were assisting the Metropolitan Police in its investigation of the British Museum’s missing, stolen, and damaged items. The buyer, Tonio Birbiglia, told the BBC that he bought the two gems from the same eBay account later identified by whistleblower Ittai Gradel as selling items from the British Museum’s collection for as little as $51.

Birbiglia told the BBC that he paid £42 for an amethyst gem depicting Cupid in May 2016, and later purchased an orange scarab-beetle gem for £170.

The BBC reported that neither the FBI, the British Museum, nor British police requested further information from Birbiglia, and he is no longer in possession of these items.

The British Museum announced last August that ancient gems, jewelry, and other items from its collection were missing or damaged. Many of the items had not been cataloged or photographed by the museum.

The institution’s press release did not mention the name of the staffer who was fired, but the individual was soon identified by media as senior curator Peter Higgs. The museum is currently suing Higgs in a civil case. According to court documents, the British Museum alleges the thefts from its storerooms took place over a decade, and sales of the ancient gems to “at least” 45 buyers generated an estimated £100,000 in total.

Higgs has not been charged or arrested, and his family has denied the allegations.

The impact of the thefts at the British Museum has been immense, with resignations, testimonies at parliamentary committees, an independent review, as well as renewed calls for the repatriation of high-profile items: they include director Hartwig Fischer’s having immediately stepped down instead of departing early in 2024 as was previously announced; the subsequent departure of deputy director Jonathan Williams; the independent review’s 36 recommendations for the museum’s security, governance, and record-keeping operations; as well as plans for a complete documentation of the museum’s collection in five years at a cost of $12.1 million.

The lack of cataloging of the museum’s collection also prompted the creation of a web page requesting the public’s assistance in locating some of the missing and stolen items. The BBC also reported that in some cases, collectors have agreed to donate items to the British Museum so that staff can assess if they came from its collection.

Of the 1,500 missing, stolen, and damaged items, the Museum announced earlier this month it had recovered 626 pieces, and located 100 more that had not yet returned to the institution.

The British Museum did not respond to a request for comment from ARTnews. The FBI cited “longstanding DOJ policy” and wrote in an email to ARTnews “the FBI neither confirms nor denies an investigation and has no further comment.”

Cullinan has been the National Portrait Gallery’s director since 2015. He oversaw a three-year, $53 million redevelopment of the institution that increased the museum’s public spaces by approximately 20 percent. He has also worked as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and London’s Tate Modern, where a 2014 exhibit on Henri Matisse’s cut-outs that he organized broke attendance records.

Under Cullinan’s leadership, the National Portrait Gallery has also been criticized by climate activists for its sponsorship agreement with Herbert Smith Freehills, a major law firm that has represented corporations linked to fossil fuels. In 2022, the museum ended its controversial 30-year partnership with the oil giant BP, which had previously sponsored an annual portrait prize.

Last April, the National Portrait Gallery also finalized a landmark £50 million acquisition of Joshua Reynolds’s Portrait of Omai (Mai) ca. 1776 through a partnership with the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Cullinan called the deal the “largest acquisition the UK has ever made.”

Cullinan comes to the British Museum during an especially fraught period. The museum is trying to recover a significant number of missing items. Meanwhile, it is also tightening its security and inventory records, and is also facing renewed and impassioned calls for the repatriation of objects that many have claimed were looted. Among those objects are the Parthenon Marbles and the Benin Bronzes, both of which have long been main attractions of the British Museum collection.

When the institution listed the high-profile permanent position, it acknowledged “significant challenges” involved with it. This was an unsubtle reference to last year’s theft scandal, which led to the resignations of director Hartwig Fischer and deputy director Jonathan Williams. Mark Jones, a former director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, was picked as an interim director.

The announcement of Cullinan’s appointment was also made only a few days after the British Museum filed a lawsuit against former curator Peter Higgs, who the museum claimed stole more than 1,800 items from its collection. A judge has ordered Higgs to list or return any items from the museum still in his possession within four weeks, and to disclose his records of transactions done via eBay and PayPal.

Higgs was fired in July 2023. The museum’s initial announcement in August about the approximately 2,000 missing, stolen, and damaged items did not name Higgs, but news reports in the Times of London and the Daily Telegraph quickly identified the veteran curator of Greek and Roman art. He has continued to deny the allegations.

A press announcement from the British Museum said Cullinan’s appointment received “unanimous approval of the Board of Trustees and the agreement of the Prime Minister.” Cullinan will officially take over the director position from Jones during the summer.

Higgs was fired in July 2023. The museum’s initial announcement in August about the approximately 2,000 missing, stolen, and damaged items did not name Higgs, but news reports in the Times of London and the Daily Telegraph quickly identified the veteran curator of Greek and Roman art.

The missing, damaged, and stolen items were ancient gems and gold jewelry, plus other small pieces that had not been on public display. According to the Associated Press, the museum’s lawyers said Higgs “abused his position of trust” and took the items over a 10-year period.

“The items that have been stolen from the museum are of cultural and historical significance,” museum lawyer Daniel Burgess said in written legal arguments.

The orders from High Court judge Heather Williams include requirements that Higgs list or return any items from the museum still in his possession within four weeks, as well as the disclosure of his records from eBay and PayPal.

Burgess also wrote that Higgs tried to hide his activities through the use of fake names, false documents, manipulation of museum records, and listing and selling items for less than their value. This allegations corresponds to previous reports that Higgs had listed some of the missing items on eBay for as little as $51.

Higgs has denied these allegations. The AP reported that he intends to dispute the British Museum’s legal claim, but he did not attend a hearing on March 26 due to poor health.

In addition to the lawsuit, there is a separate, ongoing police investigation. Higgs has not been charged.

The fallout from the thefts scandal includes the immediate resignation of director Hartwig Fischer; the resignation of deputy director Jonathan Williams; an independent review urging the tightening of security and collection records; plans for a complete documentation of the museum’s collection in five years at a cost of $12.1 million; and renewed calls for the repatriation of items such as the Benin Bronzes and the Parthenon Marbles from Nigerian and Greek officials.

Board chairman George Osborne has also acknowledged the reputation of the British Museum has taken a hit.

On February 15, the museum opened an exhibition showcasing 10 of the 351 recovered gems as part of its efforts at greater transparency.

The majority of those 2,000 items were classical gems and gold jewelry. None of the objects had been on public display recently.

An unnamed staff member, later revealed to be senior curator Peter Higgs, was fired in connection with the stolen items. He had listed some of those items on eBay for as little as $51, and is thought to have conducted the thefts over a period of around 25 years. In the wake of Higgs’s firing, director Hartwig Fischer and deputy director Jonathan Williams resigned.

The museum has been working to rebuild after destructive reports in the British press about how it handled the missing items. After the British Museum was urged to strengthen its records for its collection to prevent future thefts, board chair George Osborne promised a £10 million digitization project.

The British Museum said the incident “sparked a renewed public interest in these objects,” and prompted a display exploring the significance of classical gems and their impression left throughout history. In addition to being worn as jewelry, classical gems were used as seals or simply collected as beauty objects, especially by royalty, aristocrats and artists.

The exhibition “Rediscovering gems” will include two Roman glass items from the late 1st century BCE to early 1st century CE: an intaglio which features a profile bust of Minerva and a cameo with a bust of Cupid.

“We promised we’d show the world the gems that were stolen and recovered – rather than hide them away. It’s another example of culture change underway at the British Museum, as we open up and take ownership of our own story,” Osborne said in a statement.

Viewers will be able to see the items at the institution beginning on February 15.

The job posting for the high-profile permanent position acknowledges “significant challenges,” a nod to the consequences of the theft scandal, low morale among its 1,000 staff, a five-year plan to digitize its entire collection, and renewed calls for the repatriation of objects such as the Benin Bronzes and the Parthenon Marbles.

Hartwig Fischer resigned from the position in August after news that approximately 1,500 items from its collection were missing, stolen, or damaged. A staff member was fired and some of the items were sold on eBay.

Mark Jones, a former director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, was named interim leader of the British Museum in September.

The new director will also be tasked with leading fundraising efforts for a significant refurbishment project, which includes infrastructure improvements to the institution’s plumbing, heating system, and leaky roof, as well as a reorganization of its galleries. According to the Financial Times, the project will cost around $1.27 billion (£1 billion).

In October, board chairman George Osborne described the challenges of finding the right person for the prominent position while giving oral evidence to the UK Parliament’s Culture, Media, and Sport Committee. The challenges included the museum’s high volume of visitors, negotiations with other countries, the institution’s functions as a research institution and a library, its ongoing interpretations of Britain’s history of colonization, and commanding the respect of the academic community.

“It is a very, very complicated job, so finding the right person is something we take very seriously,” Osborne said on October 18 last year.

Osborne said he was confident the museum would receive good candidates for the director role, but the institution would need to consider an “interesting balance” of academic scholarship and the individual’s experience of “managing large, complex organisations in the public sector.”

He also acknowledged museum directors are paid significantly less in Britain compared to the United States. “It is a different culture here, and also a different culture from on the continent of Europe.”

The position’s pay is listed at approximately $275,000 (£215,841), a small fraction compared to the $1 million base salary the Metropolitan Museum of Art gives director Max Hollein each year, according to tax filings. Several museum directors in the US, including the Museum of Modern Art, also get the benefit of tax-free luxury housing or housing allowances on top of their salaries.

The New York Times reported that serious contenders for the director position include Ian Blatchford, the director of the Science Museum in London; Nicholas Cullinan, the leader of Britain’s National Portrait Gallery and who recently oversaw a three-year, $53 million renovation; and Taco Dibbits, the director-general of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which last year mounted a blockbuster Vermeer retrospective.

So it was a shock when the British Museum announced earlier this year that a staff member had been fired after the discovery of lost, stolen, and damaged items from its collection. The small Greco-Roman items had not been on public display, and many of them had not been catalogued or documented. Since then, news reports have revealed a stunning array of details about what caused such a scandal to take place at the venerated institution.

News outlets identified the fired staff member as senior curator Peter Higgs. A whistleblower tried to alert museum officials in 2021, but Dutch art dealer Ittai Gradel was told the issue was resolved. The items worth $63,000 were reportedly being listed on eBay for as little as $51.

The thefts took place over 30 years, and many of the 2,000 missing items were among millions in the museum’s collection that had not been catalogued or photographed. That last point wasn’t new: a scathing investigation about the British Museum identifying several of its security weaknesses had been published in 2002.

As a result of the extent of the thefts, director Hartwig Fischer immediately stepped down instead of departing early next year as previously announced. Deputy director Jonathan Williams also left following the recent conclusion of an independent review, which had 36 recommendations for the museum’s security, governance, and record-keeping operations. There are plans for a complete documentation of the museum’s collection in five years at a cost of $12.1 million. There were also renewed calls for the repatriation of items such as the Benin Bronzes and the Parthenon Marbles from Nigerian and Greek officials.

During a UK parliamentary committee meeting on October 18, interim director Mark Jones asserted the cataloguing and documentation of the museum’s collection would be done expediently (but not thoroughly), and board chairman George Osborne said the project would be used as a response to future inquiries for the repatriation of items.

“For example, we have a collection of about 1 million lithics or stone fragments from north Africa, and we do not intend to photograph and describe every one of those,” Jones said. “Some big archaeological assemblages will always be treated as assemblages, which means that of the 8 million, we think it is sensible to try to deal with only about 6 million as fully documented objects.”

“Part of our response can be: ‘They are available to you. Even if you cannot visit the museum, you are able to access them digitally.’ That is already available—we have a pretty good website—but we can use this as a moment to make that a lot better and a lot more accessible,” Osborne said.

Taking shortcuts to document a massive archive is the kind of policy choice that explains why poetry translator Yilin Wang found her work was used by the British Museum in an exhibition on Chinese history earlier this year without permission, credit, or compensation. (After Wang raised enough money through crowdfunding to hire legal representation and file a claim in Intellectual Property Enterprise Court, the museum issued a settlement, including acknowledgement that it did not have a policy regarding translations.) But it is also patronizing and insulting for Osborne to assert that access to high-resolution digital images of historic artifacts on a website will enough to satisfy the ongoing cultural loss experienced by many countries.

Modern technologies like 3D printing make it possible to produce extremely accurate, detailed copies of many historical artifacts, and the distinct experience of viewing works in person is why museums continually work so hard to acquire new works, arrange loans for major exhibitions, and stage rehangs.

But the British Museum’s continued stance against repatriation, despite this scandal as well as all the provenance research and growing shifts in museum policies, reflects the conservative nature of its current leadership and the hard-line stance of current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. (Osborne’s Conservative past in politics and media includes six years as Chancellor of the Exchequer and a year as First Secretary of State for Prime Minister David Cameron, as well as a stint as editor of the Evening Standard newspaper from 2017 to 2020.)

To be clear, thefts occur and have occurred at many museums. But for them to happen over such a long period, at such a volume, at one of the world’s most famous, well-funded and prestigious institutions, highlights a long-term, deep-seated level of disorganization and hubris that will take years to repair and recover from.

The odds the institution can repair its reputation will heavily depend on who it chooses for its next leaders, whether its stance on repatriation ever evolves beyond a 60-year-old law, as well as the extent of its investments and policy changes for security, documentation, and governance procedures.

For now, the British Museum can no longer assert it is the safest, best place for millions of artifacts from around the world. Hundreds of items are still missing and its primary suspect is not cooperating with the police investigation.

The British Museum could turn this moment into an opportunity to rebuild relationships with other countries and institutions it has long alienated and antagonized. But based on its history and the statements of its current leadership, it would require a significant shift in foresight and humility to make this happen.

When recommendations from the review were published on Tuesday, there was no mention of deputy director Jonathan Williams. This prompted Ittai Gradel, the antiquities dealer who alerted senior museum officials to the thefts in 2021, to tell the BBC, “He should have gone long ago.”

On August 25, Williams “voluntarily stepped back” from his position until the conclusion of the museum’s external investigation. That announcement was made three hours after Hartwig Fischer resigned as director. Fischer had previously announced in July that he would be stepping away from the position in 2024.

Gradel further commented that “this whole charade of stepping back from duties was pointless from the outset. It was immediately obvious to any observer that [Williams] had displayed incompetence in handling this on a level where the only appropriate response should be that he should lose his position.”

According to a report in the Telegraph, Gradel sent Williams a 1,600-word email in February 2021. The detailed communication identified the seller of ancient artifacts listed on eBay—a senior curator at the museum—and contended that the items were very likely from the museum archives.

On July 12, 2021, Willams replied to Gradel that an investigation had found “the objects concerned are all accounted for,” and the results of a security review found “procedures are robust and that the collection is protected.” Later the same month, Williams also claimed Gradel’s allegations were “wholly unfounded.”

Gradel eventually took his concerns to board chairman George Osborne, who later said the museum’s decision to dismiss those claims was a mistake.

The British Museum admitted this past August that 2,000 items had been lost, stolen, or damaged over the course of three decades, prompting an investigation by the Metropolitan Police and the firing of an unnamed staff member.

The items were small pieces of Greco-Roman “gold jewelry and gems of semi-precious stones and glass dating from the 15th century BC to the 19th century” that had not been on display.

The museum did not disclose to the BBC the date of Williams’s departure, nor whether it was voluntary or the decision of management.

When asked on December 12 about whether Williams would step down, Osborne told the BBC that he would not “come to instant judgements on those sorts of things.”

“It’s absolutely clear that when the museum was warned by Dr. Gradel in 2021, the museum did not respond adequately to that warning,” Osborne told the British public broadcaster. “If we had, we would have got on top of this a couple of years before we did. There are clearly very serious consequences for it.”

Among the 36 recommendations in the report were “more frequent and more extensive inventory checks of the Collection,” including unregistered items, as well as management reviewing “their approach to suspension of employees to give due weight to the protection of the collection, the integrity of its records and the wellbeing of staff.”

Other recommendations concerned audit and risk, governance, and security. The review was led by former corporate lawyer Sir Nigel Boardman, Chief Constable Lucy D’Orsi, and Deputy High Court Judge Ian Karet.

The museum’s board of trustees “unanimously accepted” all the recommendations. However, only four pages from the 30-page report were publicly released owing to redaction of the security measures, as well as the ongoing investigation with the Metropolitan Police’s Economic Crime Command.

A press statement from the British Museum said that “over a third of the published recommendations are already underway or completed” under the leadership of interim director Mark Jones, including a five-year plan to fully document and digitize the institution’s entire collection. “This will eliminate any pockets of unregistered objects and ensure that the British Museum’s collection is the most viewed, studied and used in the world.”

The estimated cost of the museum’s documentation and digitization project is £10 million ($12.1 million). The figure was disclosed during oral evidence given by Jones and board chairman George Osborne to the UK Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee in October.

“We are not asking the taxpayer or the Government for the money; we hope to raise it privately,” Osborne said.

Notably, the museum plans to utilize the increased digital access to the collection in response to requests for items to be returned or repatriated. “Part of our response can be: “They are available to you. Even if you cannot visit the museum, you are able to access them digitally.” That is already available—we have a pretty good website—but we can use this as a moment to make that a lot better and a lot more accessible,” Osborne said.

The British Museum’s independent review was completed November 30, and the museum publicly announced the results on Tuesday.

Dr. Ittai Gradel is a Dutch antiquities dealer who tried to alert senior museum officials in 2021 about stolen items appearing in eBay listings for as little as $51. His attempts to alert former director Hartwig Fischer and deputy director Jonathan Williams were dismissed.

Fischer publicly stated on August 23 that he took Gradel’s allegations seriously, but then stepped down two days later, instead of in early 2024 as had been previously announced. “I also misjudged the remarks I made earlier this week about Dr Gradel,” Fischer said. “I wish to express my sincere regret and withdraw those remarks.”

Gradel said the museum’s recently published independent review was “ridiculous.”

“They do not have a single word about anyone within the British Museum doing anything whatsoever wrong at any point in time here,” he told the BBC. “There is absolutely zero accountability for anything that has gone wrong here.”

Williams agreed to “step back from his duties” as a result of the thefts, but had remained in the museum’s employ. A report from the BBC this afternoon stated that “the deputy director who oversaw a botched investigation into thefts at the British Museum is leaving the institution.”

Osborne also said that the staff member believed to have stolen or damaged approximately 2,000 objects over 30 years was not cooperating with the institution’s inquiry.

“One of the things that we’ve got to get to the bottom of is exactly the motivation of the individual who we believe is responsible,” Osborne told the BBC on Tuesday. “But he has not been talking or co-operating.”

News reports identified the fired staff member as Peter Higgs, a senior curator who even served as an expert in the case of a 2,000-year-old marble statue that was repatriated to Libya in 2021.

It’s also worth noting how much Gradel has contributed to the museum’s recovery of the stolen items so far. According to the BBC, the museum has identified 651 items, 351 of which have been handed back—all but one of them coming from Gradel.

Gradel told the BBC he bought many of the items in batches, “maybe £50 per gem,” and most were returned based on circumstantial evidence due to lack of catalog information. Damage to the objects included the destruction of approximately 350 gold mountings, “possibly melted down for their scrap value,” as well as tool marks on 140 other items.

The project will require 2.4 million records to upload or upgrade and is estimated to take five years to complete. The museum’s announcement on October 18 came after the news 2,000 items had been stolen from the institution by a former staff member, identified in news reports as former curator Peter Higgs. About 350 have been recovered so far, and last month the museum launched a public appeal for assistance.

“Following the discovery that objects have been stolen from the collection, we have taken steps to improve security and are now confident that a theft of this kind can never happen again,” interim director Mark Jones said in a press statement. “It is my belief that the single most important response to the thefts is to increase access, because the better a collection is known – and the more it is used – the sooner any absences are noticed.”

The museum also announced plans for “enhanced access” to its study rooms, where members of the public and researchers can see items from its collection by appointment. As a result of the thefts, the British Museum has changed its rules regarding access to its “strongrooms”, with nobody allowed to go into one on their own any more.

On the same day the British Museum announced its digitization initiative, Jones and board chairman George Osborne gave oral evidence to the UK Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Their comments included an explanation of how the thefts occurred, policy changes made as a result, and how the museum will handle whistleblower complaints going forward.

They also gave more details about the British Museum’s strategy for digitizing its collection, estimated at a cost of £10 million ($12.1 million). “We are not asking the taxpayer or the Government for the money; we hope to raise it privately,” Osborne said.

The increased digital access to the collection would also be part of the museum’s response to requests for items to be returned or repatriated. “Part of our response can be: “They are available to you. Even if you cannot visit the museum, you are able to access them digitally.” That is already available—we have a pretty good website—but we can use this as a moment to make that a lot better and a lot more accessible,” Osborne said.

After being pressed by committee chair Caroline Dinenage, Osborne said he was “not so surprised” items from the collection went missing, but that trust given to a member of staff was “completely abused” with records altered and “quite a lot of steps taken to conceal” what happened as a result of the “inside job”. He also emphasized that the staff member had been fired.

Osborne also said that the thefts may have taken place over a 20 to 25-year period, and the museum didn’t adequately respond after Dutch art dealer Ittai Gradel sent detailed emails to senior officials in 2021 of stolen items being listed on eBay for as little as $51.

Osborned called the decision to dismiss Dr. Gradel’s claims as a mistake, but said he wasn’t the museum’s chair of trustees at the time.

The chairman confirmed to the parliamentary committee that Fischer decided to retire earlier this summer after the board of trustees had questions about the director’s management, but that Fischer’s public comments about Dr. Gradel’s whistleblower complaint prompted his resignation in August.

The museum’s interim director said many of the stolen objects came the collection of Charles Townley, which was purchased by the museum in 1814. “The objects that we are talking about were thought very lowly of—were despised—in the early 19th century because people realised that many of them were in fact recent and not antique,” Jones said. “It is a real failure that the initial decision not to register them was never rectified.”

The news of the thefts prompted Greek culture minister Lina Mendoni to write in an op-ed for Ta-Nea that “the ‘hospitality’ provided to the Parthenon marbles at the British Museum has always been flawed, incomplete, and problematic”. When asked about this description, Osborne told the committee he had been in direct conversation with the Greek government about the desire to create a “proper partnership”. “That would mean objects from Greece coming here—objects that have potentially never left Greece before and certainly have never been seen in this country—and it would mean objects from the Parthenon collection potentially travelling to Greece,” he said.

Osborne also told the committee that the museum is hiring a search firm to find Fischer’s replacement, and it will advertise “in the next couple of weeks” for the position.