In February, Grantham Museum manager Jayne Robb was suspended for "erroneously" claiming the museum been offered a white marblestatue of Margaret Thatcher, which was unveiled by the former prime minister in 2002.
By the time he died, blind and afflicted by various ailments, he had become so much of a national institution that his wish to be buried in Westminster Abbey was instantly granted, with a large marblestatue topping his grave.
Dominating the north gallery as the Mozia Charioteer dominates the south is a life-size limestone marblestatue of the woodland diety Priapos, as powerfully hulking and oversexed as the Charioteer is suave and teasingly erotic.
In the marble-lined lobby, a magnificent 19th-century statue of the then Duke of Norfolk in garter robes suggests that Sheffield's taste for expensive monuments has a long history.