Art Fund prize shortlist announced - Museums Association

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Art Fund prize shortlist announced

One new gallery and three redevelopments up for prize
The shortlist for the 10th Art Fund prize has been revealed, with four museums in the running to win the £100,000 prize.

They include one new gallery, the £35m Hepworth Wakefield in West Yorkshire, which opened last May.

The other museums are all redevelopments. The Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh reopened in December following a £17.6m refurbishment.

The Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery in Exeter, Devon, also reopened in December after its £24m make-over.

Finally, the Watts Gallery near Guildford, Surrey, has been shortlisted for its £10m restoration.

The winner will be announced on 19 June at the British Museum and live on BBC Radio 4's Front Row.

Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund, said: “With the Olympics and the Cultural Olympiad almost upon us, Britain has an unrivalled opportunity to show to the world the very best its culture has to offer.

"Taken together, these four terrific institutions offer the perfect snapshot of the best of our museums and galleries – dynamic, forward-thinking, inclusive and diverse.”

The four venues have been selected from a longlist of 10, which included M Shed in Bristol, Turner Contemporary in Margate, Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes and the Holburne Museum in Bath.

Two other Scottish museums also made the longlist – the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, and Riverside Museum, Glasgow.

CLORE AWARD

Five museums have also been shortlisted for the £10,000 Clore Award for museum learning. The award, now in its second year, champions quality museum and gallery learning with children and young people in or out of school, and is run in parallel with the Art Fund prize.

The shortlisted museum projects are:

  • Camden Arts Centre for Get The Message – artists working with teachers to develop new approaches to working with young people with profound and multiple learning difficulties.
  • Florence Nightingale Museum for Our Generation's Re-interpretation – local young people developing the museum's audioguide by creating and voicing their own interpretation of the collections.
  • Leicestershire County Council Heritage and Arts Service for Held in the Hand and Touch Tables – artists from across the UK creating a series of imaginative sculptural pieces designed to engage, captivate and stimulate young minds.
  • The Whitworth Art Gallery for the Manchester Early Years Partnership – a collaborative enterprise between the Whitworth, Manchester City Galleries and Manchester Museum to develop social, imaginative and playful ways to engage early years children, practitioners and parents.
  • Yorkshire Museum for Celebrating Severus – young people and adults respond in film, fashion, poetry and theatre to the 1800th anniversary of the death of African Roman Emperor Septimius Severus in York.


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