The Northampton Museum and Art Gallery is forging ahead with its planned expansion despite its blacklisting by professional organisations after the controversial sale of the prized Egyptian sculpture of Sekhemka. The museum, in the East Midlands, will close next February and is due to reopen after the first phase of the extension is complete in September 2018.
Northampton Borough Council’s decision to sell Sekhemka provoked protest and, later, sanctions. The 2,400-2,300BC painted limestone sculpture, donated by the Marquess of Northampton around 1880, was the museum’s greatest treasure. In July 2014, the local council sold the sculpture at Christie’s to raise funds for the museum’s expansion. It fetched £15.8m, a record for an Egyptian antiquity. The present Lord Northampton received 45% of the proceeds. This, plus the auction house’s commission, left the council with £7.7m, which it ringfenced for its museums.
The deaccession of Sekhemka violated the policy of Arts Council England, which runs a national accreditation scheme for museums. The organisation believes that it is unethical to sell objects to raise funds except under exceptional circumstances and only after the items have been offered to other museums.
The Arts Council withdrew accreditation from Northampton Museums Service a month after the sale. As a result, the city’s main museum lost its eligibility for grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The Museums Association withdrew Northampton’s membership, and the Art Fund is no longer considering it for acquisition grants.
Despite the museum’s outcast status, the council is to build the much-needed extension to Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, originally planned as a single £14m project. In the wake of the Sekhemka sanctions, it has decided to divide the work into two phases.
Challenging schedule The first £6.7m phase will be funded by the Sekhemka proceeds alone. The second £8m phase, due to begin in 2020, will be funded through “sponsorship, fundraising and … grant-giving bodies”, according to Councillor Anna King of Northampton Borough Council.
But this plan is optimistic. The withdrawal of Arts Council accreditation lasts at least five years, so Northampton will not be able to apply for grants until late 2019. Even if the museum is reaccredited right away—which is far from certain—the local council would only have one year to raise the money needed to begin work on the second phase.
Meanwhile, Sekhemka, considered the finest non-royal Old Kingdom sculpture, was exported from the UK to an anonymous foreign buyer last April.
Sell-off sanctions Three other UK museums have lost Arts Council accreditation over deaccessioning in recent years
1. The Riesco collection: Croydon council, in south London, sold 17 key works from the Riesco collection of Chinese ceramics for £8.2m in 2013. The proceeds were earmarked for the refurbishment of the Fairfield Halls, a concert hall and theatre. The Arts Council withdrew Croydon’s museum accreditation a month after the sale.
2. The Bressingham Steam Museum: the Norfolk museum sold the Royal Scot locomotive to deal with a budget deficit, leading to the loss of its accreditation in 2013.
3. The Bury Art Museum: in 2006, accreditation was withdrawn from the museum, in northern England, after the local council sold a painting by L.S. Lowry for £1.4m.