LONDON (AP) — The British Museum, the nation’s hottest vacationer attraction, was partially closed to the general public on Saturday after an worker who had been fired broke in and shut down pc methods, museum administration stated.
The museum in central London, which attracts nearly 6 million guests a 12 months, closed its momentary exhibitions and a part of its everlasting assortment after the alleged assault on Thursday.
“An IT contractor who was dismissed last week trespassed into the museum and shut down several of our systems,” the museum stated in an announcement on Friday. “Police attended and he was arrested on the scene.
“We are working hard to get the museum back to being fully operational but with regret our temporary exhibitions have been closed today and will remain so over the weekend — ticket holders have been alerted and refunds offered.”
The Metropolitan Police drive stated officers have been known as on Thursday night “to reports that a man had entered the British Museum and caused damage to the museum’s security and IT systems.” It stated a person in his 50s was arrested on suspicion of housebreaking and prison injury. He has been launched on bail whereas inquiries proceed.
The 266-year-old museum has had a rocky few years. It’s nonetheless making an attempt to trace down a few of greater than 1,800 objects believed to have been stolen by a former curator and supplied on the market on-line. Peter Higgs, who labored within the museum’s Greece and Rome division for 30 years, was fired in July 2023 and is being sued by the museum. He denies the allegations.
Museum director Hartwig Fischer resigned in August 2023, acknowledging the establishment’s administration didn’t heed warnings that artifacts together with gold jewellery, semi-precious gems and antiquities relationship to the fifteenth century B.C. have been being stolen from its assortment and offered on eBay.
The museum, stuffed with treasures from all over the world, can be going through rising strain to return artifacts taken from different nations through the interval of the British Empire – notably the Parthenon Marbles, 2,500-year-old sculptures that have been faraway from Athens within the early nineteenth century by British diplomat Lord Elgin.
Greece has campaigned for many years for the marbles to be returned. The British Museum is banned by regulation from giving the sculptures again to Greece, however its leaders have held talks with Greek officers a couple of compromise, comparable to a long-term mortgage.
