British Museum [Ham]

WHAT to make of the curious incident at the British Museum which saw a student use age old sleight of hand to remove an ancient coin from its cabinet ­and replace it with a fake?

On his way out, Ilê Sartuz posted the real Civil War era coin in the donations box in the foyer.

Later, he explained it was a project ­– part of a master’s degree at Goldsmiths ­­– that aimed to open a debate over how much of the museum’s collection is, well… more foreign, than British.

The swipe came during a session in which volunteers let visitors get closer to the objects. Mr Sartuz created a diversion last month before completing the swap.

He filmed it all as part of his work.

The British Museum said it was contacting police and confirmed its low opinion of Mr Sartuz’s stunt in a statement which said: “This is a disappointing and derivative act that abuses a volunteer-led service aimed at giving visitors the opportunity to handle real items and engage with history.”

Maybe Mr Sartuz will start a debate, although it feels like we have had it before about some of the items locked away in the Bloomsbury institution.

We can get very high brow on one side of the argument or the other about whether this is intelligent performance art.

But Harrington suspects that what people will really take away from the episode is the mini-heist nature of the whole thing – that strangely romantic idea of taking protected, rare things from impossible places that has provided the platform for a million movies.

How many times have the thieves in films been seen as the clever guys, perfecting their robberies with impossible accuracy?

Audiences cheer on meticulous preparations and enjoy the almost balletic scenes as it all comes together in The Thomas Crown Affair, Ocean’s Eleven or The Italian Job and so on.

Mr Sartuz’s story has been around the world and reported in scores of publications, but are people talking about the museum returning items to the countries from where they were first found?

Or are they intrigued by the magician’s sleight of hand, the bravado and the showmanship of dropping it in the donations box at the end. Why? Cos he could!

If movie makers were telling the story, he’d probably break the fourth wall at that stage and wink at the camera as the penny drops.