To run the British Museum you get $275,000 and a lot of problems

Wanted: Someone to restore confidence in one of the world’s most visited museums after an embarrassing scandal, settle restitution claims and raise $1.27 billion for a major renovation.

Salary: $275,000 per year.

The British Museum in London this week the search began for a new director. Four months ago, Hartwig Fischer resigned from that position after the museum announced that one of its curators had looted about 1,500 objects from its storage spaces and sold some on eBay.

In September, Mark Jones, a former leader of the Victoria and Albert Museum, was appointed to lead the British Museum, but only on an interim basis.

Candidates for the permanent job must have a “vision for the future of the British Museum and its purpose as a national and global museum in the 21st century,” according to the job posting. But they must also be able to deal with a host of problems faced by the august institution that is the European Union the third most visited museum in the world.

In addition to dealing with the fallout from the theft scandal, which has damaged morale among the museum’s nearly 1,000-strong staff, the chosen candidate will also have to manage calls for the return of disputed objects in the museum’s collection, including hundreds of Benin bronzes and the Parthenon. Sculptures, also known as the Elgin Marbles. The new director will also have to lead fundraising for a renovation project that includes a reorganization of the museum’s galleries and improvements to the museum’s plumbing, heating and leaky roof. The Financial Times reports this it will cost 1 billion pounds, approximately $1.27 billion.

Last October, George Osborne, chairman of the museum, told British lawmakers that finding the right candidate to lead the institution was “a very, very complicated job.” Because it is also a research organization, Osborne added, the successful candidate should “command the respect of the academic community” and have experience in “managing large, complex organizations.”

The director will receive £215,841 a year, about $275,000, according to the listing. That amount is paltry compared to the salaries paid to the directors of equivalent American institutions. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York pays Max Hollein, its director, a base salary of $1 million, according to tax returns. In the United States, some museum directors receive luxury housing in addition to their salary.

Observers regularly mention a handful of serious contenders for the British Museum job. These include Ian Blatchford, the director of the Science Museum in London; Nicholas Cullinan, head of Britain’s National Portrait Gallery and who recently oversaw a multimillion-pound renovation of that institution; and Taco Dibbits, the director general of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, who has overseen some of Europe’s most high-profile recent exhibitions, including a blockbuster 2023 Vermeer retrospective.

Representatives for Cullinan, Dibbits and Blatchford all declined to comment.

In keeping with recent high-profile appointments in American museums, the job posting suggests that the British Museum administrators are open to unexpected, or even external, applicants. “We are agnostic about the type of candidate we are looking for, whether that is someone from within or outside the museum sector,” the listing said. Last year, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation named Mariët Westermann, the vice chancellor of NYU Abu Dhabi, as its new leader.

Potential applicants have just a few weeks to apply for the position: the closing date is January 26.