You know the rest, but in the case at hand, the cows have already gone to the knackers, made into mince and the leftovers, hides and tallow, doubtless someone’s shoes or a lady’s handbag, and a bar or two of soap.
I am in crude metaphor referring to the British Museum’s current exhibition in Room 3 of gems that have been returned- 10 out of a count into the several hundreds. But no one really knows because, as the tombstone plaques on the wall tell us, the engraved gems had never been catalogued.
Oh, yes, of course, pressure of work and all that, but the fact is, many of these, again information the museum admits to within the exhibition, were part of the collection put together by the antiquary Charles Townsend and acquired by the British Museum in, wait for it,1814. Well, it’s been a nightmare of work for the BM, and perhaps the curators had planned to prepare some accession information in the upcoming 210 years.
That the museum has prepared this exhibit is something, caught with their pants down, they had to do. Ostensibly, it also serves the purpose of alerting the public to be vigilant, letting the museum know when and if someone sees something that might have been stolen from its study collections and acquired innocently on eBay. Fat chance. Were there any images of anything on view that one might look out for? No, of course not, because such images do not exist. Let me remind you, none of these items were catalogued. It was only the result of a sharp eyed academic who had seen first hand some of the items who recognized them when they turned up offered by an online seller.
‘On the advice of recovery specialists, we are not sharing full details of the lost and damaged items at this time.’
British Museum
‘Not sharing…’ because there is nothing to share. The museum has a group of experts in the policing services and the field of art loss recovery assisting in their efforts to locate the missing items.
As if, fat chance- whatever efforts are being made cannot be considered as any more than window dressing. Close the barn door, at long last- the cows are gone for good.