The British Museum privately hosted the Donald Trump-supporting tech billionaire Peter Thiel in the exhibition house of the Bayeux tapestry earlier this month, the Guardian understands.
The museum’s director of growth, Charlotte Appleyard, hosted the PayPal founder at a VIP viewing of the tapestry, which is but to open to the general public, on 18 August.
In response to queries from the Guardian, a supply on the museum confirmed that the go to happened. It is known the museum chair, George Osborne, was conscious of the viewing however didn’t attend with Thiel.
It is known that senior museum leaders have been warned concerning the doable public notion of particular remedy for somebody with connections to Jeffrey Epstein, and whose public software program firm, Palantir, plays a controversial role in the British state.
There have been considerations amongst some employees that scarce “lux hours” for the tapestry – a mixed measure of gentle depth and publicity time used to trace and restrict cumulative gentle injury to delicate artefacts – got as much as somebody with no identified curiosity in the museum.
The exhibition gallery continues to be below building, and solely restricted viewings of the tapestry have been doable throughout a spread of stakeholders. Among these receiving particular entry are Osborne and his podcasting accomplice, Ed Balls, who will report the subsequent episode of their Political Currency present from the gallery, the notes on the newest episode recommend.
The British Museum has a cautious plan for light-hour allocation, agreed in partnership with colleagues in France. It is known that no gentle hours have been taken from the allocation for public guests. Thiel is just not a donor to the museum and no cash has been acquired through him or his companies.
Members of the general public eager to see the Bayeux tapestry confronted on-line queues of as much as 9 hours when tickets went on sale for the primary time earlier this summer time. There have been studies of 40,000 individuals queueing by mid-morning, with that determine ballooning to nearly 80,000 by mid-afternoon.
On Friday, the museum introduced that the subsequent wave of public tickets for the tapestry will go on sale on 21 October at 10am.
Guests at One Aldwych lodge, the place rooms value greater than £1,000 an evening, are additionally capable of get tickets without joining the online queues.
Thiel is the founder of Palantir, a public software program firm that builds knowledge integration, analytics and synthetic intelligence platforms for presidency businesses and huge firms. Palantir has a swathe of British public contracts, together with, most controversially, a £330m deal with the NHS, which it has held since 2023.
The firm additionally works for the US, Israeli and UK militaries. Its use of its AI-powered software program to help army strikes in Gaza and Iran, US ICE immigration raids and entry to NHS knowledge has stoked concern.
Last month, a second parliamentary committee urged Labour to scrap Palantir’s NHS contract. The cross-party group of MPs cited “serious mistrust” among the many public and the medical occupation of its NHS system, contested proof of its advantages, and cited the supply of different instruments that might ship related outcomes.
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In May, Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, blocked the Metropolitan police from awarding a £50m contract to Palantir after saying Londoners wished to see public cash being paid to corporations that “share the values of our city”. Palantir is difficult the choice in the excessive courtroom.
Thiel not too long ago hit the headlines for hosting a series of lectures philosophising about who the antichrist might be and warning that Armageddon was coming. He has additionally not too long ago grow to be highly effective in US conservative politics, with shut ties to Donald Trump and JD Vance, and has helped bankroll Republicans’ 2026 midterm campaigns.
The Epstein information confirmed that Thiel remained in contact with the financier for years after his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, with a number of references to lunches and conferences between the pair from about 2014 onwards.
Epstein’s Southern Trust Company additionally invested about $40m (£29.5m) in a enterprise fund co-founded by Thiel, whereas correspondence from 2018 reveals Epstein inviting Thiel to go to him in the Caribbean. Thiel has mentioned he by no means visited Epstein’s island and there’s no suggestion that he was concerned in Epstein’s sexual abuse or trafficking.
Thiel and Palantir have been approached for remark.