The British Museum privately hosted the Donald Trump-supporting tech billionaire Peter Thiel in the exhibition space of the Bayeux tapestry earlier this month, the Guardian understands. The museum’s director of development, Charlotte Appleyard, hosted the PayPal founder at a VIP viewing of the tapestry, which is yet to open to the public, on 18 August. In response to queries from the Guardian, a source at the museum confirmed that the visit took place.
It is understood the museum chair, George Osborne, was aware of the viewing but did not attend with Thiel. It is understood that senior museum leaders were warned about the possible public perception of special treatment for someone with connections to Jeffrey Epstein, and whose public software company, Palantir, plays a controversial role in the British state. There were concerns among some staff that scarce “lux hours” for the tapestry – a combined measure of light intensity and exposure time used to track and limit cumulative light damage to sensitive artefacts – were given up to someone with no known interest in the museum.
The exhibition gallery is still under construction, and only limited viewings of the tapestry have been possible across a range of stakeholders. Among those receiving special access are Osborne and his podcasting partner, Ed Balls, who will record the next episode of their Political Currency show from the gallery, the notes on the most recent episode suggest. The British Museum has a careful plan for light-hour allocation, agreed in partnership with colleagues in France.
It is understood that no light hours have been taken from the allocation for public visitors. Thiel is not a donor to the museum and no money has been received via him or his businesses. Members of the public keen to see the Bayeux tapestry faced online queues of up to nine hours when tickets went on sale for the first time earlier this summer.
There were reports of 40,000 people queueing by mid-morning, with that figure ballooning to almost 80,000 by mid-afternoon. On Friday, the museum announced that the next wave of public tickets for the tapestry will go on sale on 21 October at 10am. Guests at One Aldwych hotel, where rooms cost more than £1,000 a night, are also able to get tickets without joining the online queues.
Thiel is the founder of Palantir, a public software company that builds data integration, analytics and artificial intelligence platforms for government agencies and large corporations. Palantir has a swathe of British public contracts, including, most controversially, a £330m deal with the NHS, which it has held since 2023. The company also works for the US, Israeli and UK militaries.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
