Toppled? Museum curator who sparked outrage after tweeting a guide about vandalising 'racist' statues using household items has left her job

Madeline Odent posted messages to her 5,000 followers in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement outlining how household items could permanently damage monuments

A museum curator who sparked outrage after tweeting a guide about vandalising ‘racist’ statues has left her job.

Madeline Odent posted messages to her 5,000 followers in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement outlining how household items could permanently damage monuments.

Her comments led to calls for her to be sacked from her taxpayer-funded job at Royston and District Museum in Hertfordshire. Royston Town Council discussed the row earlier this month.

It has now emerged that Mrs Odent is no longer employed but the council has refused to say if she has been sacked or quit – despite previously saying it ‘condemns all criminal acts including damage to statues and monuments and incitement to commit unlawful acts’.

American-born Mrs Odent was appointed to the job in 2018. She also refused to clarify what had happened. 

She added: ‘They are not commenting because they can’t and neither can I.

‘Anyways, I don’t work for them anymore.’

Mrs Odent appears to have stopped working for the council at the end of August. She revealed she had a new job but declined to comment further.

The furore began in June when the Oxford-educated curator, who comes from a wealthy family in Georgia and is married to banker Pascal Odent, tweeted her comments days after protesters in Bristol toppled a statue of slave trader Edward Colston. 

She wrote: ‘From an art perspective, it’s honestly fine to throw paint on memorials of genocidal racists! Paint is pretty easy to clean off.

‘What would be an absolute shame is if people threw certain household items that cause irreversible bronze disease. Of course then the artefact can’t really be on display... Because, like, if somebody were to throw a ton of tomatoes at a bust of a genocidal racist, nobody would probably notice the chemical reaction until it was too late to save the artefact.’

The thread ended with an image of graffiti referring to Winston Churchill as a racist.

Critics messaged the council, with one saying: ‘Your museum manager appears to be very clearly inciting the criminal damage of monuments.’

A petition calling for Mrs Odent’s removal was also signed by more than 800 people. 

Hertfordshire Police later revealed they had given ‘strong words of advice’ following the tweets but no further action was taken her.

It has now emerged that Mrs Odent is no longer employed but the council has refused to say if she has been sacked or quit – despite previously saying it ‘condemns all criminal acts including damage to statues and monuments and incitement to commit unlawful acts. The museum is pictured above