A Scottish town bought this bust for £5. Can its museum find £3.1m by 1 December?

What happened

Invergordon Naval Museum and Heritage Centre wants to buy the artwork, but a new report said if it did not have funds needed by 1 December the council could proceed with a sale to an overseas buyer.

Highland Council may sell a 1728 marble bust to a buyer abroad. A council report for a committee meeting on 9 November says Invergordon Naval Museum and Heritage Centre has until 1 December to raise the money to buy it. If the museum cannot, the sale goes to an overseas private buyer. The meeting will only note the report, with no vote on the sale.

The bust shows Sir John Gordon, whose family founded Invergordon. The French sculptor Edmé Bouchardon made it in Rome. The town council bought it for £5 in 1930. Councillors approved the sale in 2024, and the money will go to a fund kept for the people of the town.

In January the UK government stopped the bust from leaving the country for a time. This gave a UK museum the chance to buy it at £3,135,090, a price that includes the cost of making a copy of the bust. On 1 July the museum signed an agreement with the council that gave it five more months, to 1 December, to match the price.

The two big heritage funds have said no. In August the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the National Lottery Heritage Fund said their public money cannot be used to help a public body sell something it owns. The museum is run by volunteers, and it says “Private donations alone cannot close the gap before 1 December”.

The Scottish government has not stepped in. In August it said it was “engaging with the relevant parties to get the full information to determine the appropriate next steps”. The BBC report of 3 November repeats the same words, with no new step.

Should the UK institution be unsuccessful in raising the required funds within the specified timeframe, the sale will proceed in accordance with the terms of the export licence to the prospective overseas private buyer.

Highland Council, report to the Black Isle and Easter Ross Area Committee, 9 November 2026

Sources: BBC (2), Highland Council (2), GOV.UK, Invergordon Museum

The Pattern

We looked for cases where a UK museum or gallery, other than the national and university museums, said it would raise the money to buy an artwork worth £1m or more that the UK had stopped from leaving, and so got extra months to do it. We found 14 such times since 2006 and kept the ten most recent, from 2012 to 2024, and checked whether the buyer paid before time ran out.

The Read

All four purchases had money from the big heritage funds. The Ferens Art Gallery in 2013, The Bowes Museum in 2016, Norfolk Museums Service in 2019 and The Hepworth Wakefield in 2025 each had grants from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, once called the Heritage Lottery Fund, and from the Art Fund. The Hepworth Wakefield had more than 2,800 gifts from the public, but £1.89m came from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and £750,000 from the Art Fund. Both big funds have now told the Invergordon museum they cannot consider its application.

There are reasons for doubt. In five of the ten times the reports do not name the UK buyer, and none of those five bought the work, so it is not known how big they were. National and university museums did better: by the open reports, they bought the work 13 times in 14 since 2006. Each time the same panel advised and a UK minister decided, but this sale is in Scotland, under Scottish law on town property. One of the ten sellers is known to be a council: Northampton Borough Council sold the Egyptian statue Sekhemka in 2014, and no UK buyer came.

Sources: Arts Council England (2, 3), BBC (2), Invergordon Museum, The Guardian, The Independent