Art Student Pulls Off an Unusual Museum Theft

Ile Sartuzi steals coin at British Museum, redeposits in donation box as part of thesis
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 27, 2024 8:00 AM CDT
Art Student Pulls Off an Unusual Museum Theft
Visitors walk outside the British Museum in London.   (AP Photo/Tim Ireland, File)

It's one of the more unusual museum heists you'll read about—the thief kept his bounty for only a few minutes before returning it, publicly documenting the entire thing. As the Art Newspaper reports, the strangeness unfolded at the British Museum on June 18. That's the day Ile Sartuzi, a Brazilian student at the University of London's Goldsmiths College, stole a 1645 silver coin from a table where museum visitors are allowed to handle them and replaced it with a replica, per the New York Times. Then Sartuzi, 28, dropped the real coin into a donation box in the museum's lobby on his way out.

We know all this because Sartuzi had friends record the entire escapade—which he spent more than a year planning—and he has used the footage in his master's thesis. In his view, the museum itself has stolen many of its objects, making the stunt especially fitting. "The gesture of stealing as a central part of the project brings back the heated discussion about the role of looting in the museum's foundation," says Sartuzi, per the Times. A museum spokesperson, however, called that a "tired argument," adding, "We're quite open about what is looted and what is a contested object."

The museum says it plans to inform the police, but it wasn't immediately clear whether it would press charges. Sartuzi and his lawyer point out that the coin was taken from the museum's "handling collection," isn't registered in the museum's database, and was never taken off the premises, per the Guardian. And where is it now? The museum spokesman tells the Times he believes it was recovered from the donation box and has been properly secured. (Earlier this year, a British Museum curator was accused of stealing nearly 2,000 items.)

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