THE Ashmolean Museum is planning to construct a new wing as part of an ambitious £25m building scheme.

Museum director Dr Christopher Brown said he had already been promised £10m from an anonymous benefactor to extend the 300-year-old Oxford museum.

The development would also create a new Classics centre for Oxford University, with the new building stretching from the Ashmolean to the Blackfriars Dominican friary and from Pusey Lane to St Giles.

The news would help lift the gloom surrounding the museum following the theft a £3m Cezanne painting in January.

Dr Brown said: "Our collections are fantastically rich. This project gives us the opportunity to reveal these resources to a wider audience."

Story date: Friday 18 February

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