Canterbury Museum gifted ‘one of the world’s most significant’ Antarctic treasures

Wednesday, 21 August 2024

Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Polar Medal was bought by a trust and gifted to the museum.

Canterbury Museum won’t say how much was paid for Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Polar Medal, but it was reportedly worth £1.7 million (about NZ$3.6 million).

The famous explorer’s medal is now in New Zealand and will be housed in Christchurch after it was bought by a trust for the museum.

Shackleton was given the medal for “outstanding achievement and service to the UK in the field of polar research, often over prolonged periods of time and in harsh conditions”, according to the UK Gazette.

He was awarded it three times, the first in 1905 for participating in Sir Robert Falcon Scott’s Discovery Expedition (1902-04).

He received it again - awarded a second bar - in 1909 for leading the Nimrod Expedition (1907-09) and a third time in 1917 for his Endurance Expedition (1914-17).

The first was bestowed on Shackleton by Edward VII, possibly at Buckingham Palace, museum registrar Scott Reeves said.

Canterbury Museum trust board chairperson David Ayers, left, and Public Trust chief executive officer Glenys Talivai look at the medal.

The museum called it “one of the world’s most significant treasures from the heroic age of Antarctic exploration”.

Canterbury Museum claims to have the “largest collection of heroic age artefacts in the southern hemisphere and one of the most significant in the world”.

A range of objects were left with the museum by Antarctic explorers and scientists on their way home.

Shackleton had a long association with New Zealand, staying in Lyttelton during his first polar expedition and setting off from the port town on January 1, 1908 on his Nimrod Expedition.

The medal’s seller and its purchase price were kept confidential, and museum trust board chairperson David Ayers said he did not know how much was paid.

The medal was bought by the Adson Trust, which was set up with a posthumous $10m bequest to the museum by Arthur Henry Harrison, a retired company secretary from Blenheim.

Shackleton, a noted explorer and writer, is shown as he arrives in New York in 1921.

Under the terms of Harrison’s bequest, funds can only be used to acquire objects for the museum’s collection.

The Public Trust administers the Adson Trust and it gifted the medal to the museum, chief executive officer Glenys Talivai said.

All the museum’s current funds are committed to the museum redevelopment and it could not have bought the medal without the trust, Ayers said.

The seller was in the United Kingdom, and the medal had to be offered to UK institutions before an export licence could be granted.

Campaigns there and in Ireland to keep the medal apparently could not raise the needed money. Shackleton was Irish and there is a Shackleton Museum in County Kildare.

Some people in Britain might see the acquisition as “controversial”, Ayers said. “But we wanted it, and the Adson Trust also wanted it to come to us. And now it’s here. And here to stay.”

The Heroic Age generally refers to hardy explorations from the late 19th century until the late 1920s, which were carried out without mechanical assistance .

The medal will go on public display when the museum reopens in late 2028. The redevelopment was on budget and almost on time, project manager Sam Davis from Rubix said.