Kent County Council has sold Antony Gormley’s Two Stones back to the artist in a private transaction, the Reform UK-run authority said in a statement. The eight-tonne work, which stood outside the Kent History and Library Centre in Maidstone, was removed at the end of March without prior public announcement, according to The Art Newspaper. Council officials stated that the decision was taken carefully given the sculpture’s cultural significance and Gormley’s connection to Maidstone as they manage significant financial pressures facing Kent.
The sculpture, created between 1979 and 1981, was Gormley’s first public commission while he taught at Maidstone College of Art, Kent Current reported. It was moved to the library centre in 2013 after vandalism at its original site in Ashford, multiple accounts show. The council’s 2024-25 accounts listed the work at a value of 859,000 pounds, according to Kent Current.
Green Party councillor Stuart Jeffery, leader of Maidstone Borough Council, told Byline Times the removal occurred without notice. “It disappeared sometime last week and then we found it missing,” Jeffery said. The council has agreed a confidentiality clause on the sale price with the artist, The Times reported.
The Gormley sale is separate from a larger disposal in which the council sold 418 other artworks between May 2025 and April 2026, the BBC reported via freedom of information requests. Those pieces, drawn from a discontinued visual arts lending scheme and kept in storage, raised about 40,000 pounds at a public auction in July 2025, according to the broadcaster. Kent County Council was the only local authority in the county to sell art during that period, the BBC data shows.
Antony Gormley remains one of the UK’s foremost sculptors, with works such as the Angel of the North defining his reputation for public installations, a description in The Art Newspaper noted. The artist has maintained links to the region through his early teaching role in Maidstone. No public comment from Gormley on the return of Two Stones has appeared in available reports.
The council said the private sale to the creator preserves the possibility of future public display while addressing budget deficits without further burden on residents, according to its statement. Freedom of information responses indicate the authority owns 1,231 artworks but displayed none as of late April 2026, the BBC found. Such reviews of cultural assets have become more common among local governments facing storage issues and fiscal shortfalls, LocalGov reported.
