I was shocked by your report (Thefts by staff a common problem in UK museums, say experts, 18 August). It is all too easy for an anonymous staff member in an unidentified organisation to smear the whole sector by making insinuating comments about it being “institutionally corrupt” and suggesting that selling or appropriating objects in museums is considered “fair game”.
My own experience is entirely different. For 23 years, I have worked as a volunteer in the department of western art at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Not once in all those years have I come across the sort of attitudes described by your informant. On the contrary, all staff members with responsibility for the collections work to the very highest standards, and seek to enhance and cherish the objects under their care.
Security is given high priority across all departments and at all levels of the organisation. The Ashmolean Museum, for one, is not institutionally corrupt.
If there are specific accusations to be made about the behaviour in specific organisations, let them be made and investigated. Non-specific insinuations of this sort are simply not good enough.
Harry Dickinson
Oxford
• I do not recognise the picture that your article paints of the UK’s museums and galleries. To claim, by implication, that all museums – are “institutionally corrupt” is disingenuous and ignores the fact that the vast majority of those who work in museums do so diligently and with the utmost professional integrity.
The “comprehensive cataloguing” that your article mentions as an additional security measure is in fact standard for museums large and small, but it is not a “fit and forget” solution. Effective collections management, particularly for large and busy institutions, requires significant staff time. Years of budget cuts and underfunding have left our institutions underresourced, and they are forced to make difficult decisions on how to spend public money. If the items missing from the British Museum are the “tip of the iceberg”, they are the symptom of an entirely different issue.
Daniel Smernicki
Montrose, Angus
• Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
