Nearly three weeks after the British Museum was plunged into crisis by revelations of thefts from its warehouses, the London institution said it would be under new leadership.
On Saturday evening, the museum said in a statement that Mark Jones, a former director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London, would become its interim director, subject to the approval of the British government.
George Osborne, the chairman of the British Museum, said in the release that Jones is “one of the most experienced and respected museum leaders in the world, and he will offer the leadership and handle what the museum needs in now.”
“His priorities are to accelerate collection cataloging, improve security, and strengthen pride in the museum’s curatorial mission,” Osborne said.
Jones, 72, who did not comment on the news release, replaces Hartwig Fischer, a German art historian who resigned on Aug. 25 — nine days after the museum announced that a worker had stolen “semiprecious jewels stone and glass,” several thousand years old, from its stores.
Days after those thefts were announced, The New York Times and the BBC published emails showing Fischer dismissed warnings from an art dealer about a thief among museum staff. In 2021, the dealer contacted museum administrators with what he said was evidence that a senior curator had tried to sell items from the collection on eBay.
A few weeks before the scandal broke, Fischer announced that he was leaving the British Museum in 2024, and the museum began looking for a replacement. That search will continue under Jones’ interim leadership.
Jones will come to an overflowing tray. In recent weeks, several foreign governments including Greece and Nigeria have renewed claims for artifacts in the British Museum’s collection. The museum is also set to announce a major renovation project that will require Jones to oversee a fund-raising drive.
The new leader is no stranger to such challenges. During his leadership of the Victoria and Albert Museum, from 2001 to 2011, Jones reintroduced free admission and oversaw a major refurbishment of the galleries. He also dealt with the effects of several robberies. In three incidents in 2004, thieves stole eight Italian Renaissance bronze plaquettes from the museum; 15 Meissen porcelain figures valued at nearly $4,000 each; and $100,000 worth of Chinese jade. After those incidents, the museum tightened its security, including replacing old display cases and installing improved surveillance cameras and alarm systems.
Jones cut his teeth as a museum administrator at the British Museum, where he was curator of coins and medals from 1974 to 1992. Shortly before he left to run the National Museums of Scotland, he oversaw the acclaimed exhibition “Fake? The Art of Deception,” which includes fakes tricked out of the British Museum.
One of the most high-profile issues any director of the British Museum must face is the future of the Parthenon Marbles, sometimes known as the Elgin Marbles, a collection of sculptures and frieze fragments that once decorated the Parthenon, in Athens. In 2002, Jones supported a campaign to share the artefacts between Britain and Greece. “It can be good to show things in different places,” he told The Observer, a British newspaperat that time.
Since November 2021, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece and Osborne, the chairman of the British Museum, have been holding talks about a potential agreement that would see some of the sculptures travel from London to Athens in a long-term loan.
