It’s a Steal
The ongoing problems with Museum Theft
The British Museum has been making news recently after it was discovered over 2,000 artifacts had been stolen over the last couple of decades, some dating back to 15th Century BCE
In total, this is only a tiny fraction of the 8 million artifacts that are in the British Museum’s collection
The controversy is more because of a number of items claimed by foreign countries in the British Museum’s collection, with the main argument for not returning them being that they’re kept safe
So far today, we’re taking a look at Britain’s museums and how common thefts are at these institutions
How many museums are there in Britain?
There are officially 1,722 museums in the UK, including 14 National Museums which are fully owned and operated by the government, plus another 8 museums that are sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)
Of these:
- London has more sites than any other (102 locations)
- The most common type of museum in the UK are Natural History museums, with 149 of these types of institutions across the country. Art galleries are the next most common with 113 locations
However, this only includes accredited museums. Including all forms of museum, the total number in the UK could be as high as 2,500
Over 50% of people in the country go to at least one of these museums each year, a steady increase from the 42% that visited in 2005. It’s likely that there are now over 100 million museum visits in the UK every year
However, different demographics visit museums more than others (based on 2019–20 data):
- 48% of people with Asian ethnicity attended a museum
- 28% for black people visited at least once in a year
- the oldest demographics were the least likely to visit museums, with only 36% of over 75s visiting at least once in the year
That’s still a lot of people who, therefore, are not visiting museums and galleries. Of those who didn’t visit at least one in the last year, most responded that they were either not interested in museums (41%) or didn’t have the time to visit (38%)
How does this compare internationally?
While Britain has a lot of museums, there are other countries that have more, both in absolute terms and relative to the size of the country
The United States has the most museums with over 33,000 across their nation. This is followed by Germany (6,741), Japan (5,738), China (5,535) and Russia (5,415)¹
While Sweden doesn’t have quite this many, it has more museums than any other country (1,600) relative to the size of their population (estimated to be 10 million in 2023)
But having a lot of museums doesn’t count for a lot if no one visits them
Britain, and more specifically London, has a lot of popular museums, although they’re not the most popular in the world. At top of the list is:
- Louvre, Paris (9.6 million visitors in 2019)
- National Museum of China, Beijing (7.4 million)
- Vatican Museums (6.9 million)
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (6.8 million)
After these, four London-based museums and galleries (the British Museum, Tate Modern, National Gallery and National History Museum) are the next most visited, each having c. 6 million visitors in 2019
How common are museum or art theft?
There isn’t a lot of data on the theft of artifacts and art, but it’s known that both are worryingly common
Some estimates suggest that up to 50,000 pieces of artwork are stolen every year, worth $6–8 billion annually
And this is not always small, piecemeal robberies. One of the biggest in history was the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist in 1990. 13 pieces of art, worth over $500 million, were stolen with no arrests being made
And sadly, very few of these pieces will go on to be recovered. Roughly 5-10% of these are normally returned to their rightful owners, but the rest remain missing
Countries are recognising the challenges with art crime and are started to investigate more thefts. The UK and US have each put in place an “Art Crime Team” to focus on art theft investigations. However, the US is only employing 16 people and the UK only has 2 investigators, meaning any progress is likely to continue to be slow
Note¹: the data on the number of museums by country was compiled in 2021 by UNESCO and comes from a number of different primary sources. On this basis, the number of museums worldwide is over 100,000. However, the UK data from UNESCO doesn’t perfectly match other UK museum data sources
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Source: Economist; Guardian; BBC; Museums.co.uk; Wikipedia; Statista; Worldometers; Statista; Gov.uk; Gov.uk; Sadvin; Wide Walls; The Culture Trip; Museum Association;
