It must be an extremely tense time for the 10 museums and galleries on the longlist for this year’s Art Fund Prize, particularly when the chairman of the judges’ panel is one of those people who finds mistakes on captions.
“I was going round one museum recently and I spotted that one of the captions on an exhibit was wrong and I went and told the director,” says broadcaster and former Conservative party cabinet minister Michael Portillo.
“I’ll keep the identity of the museum under my hat, but it was a subject in which I had a certain specialist knowledge and I knew it was wrong.”
Portillo follows television and radio presenter Kirsty Young, who chaired last year’s Art Fund Prize, which was won by Belfast’s Ulster Museum.
The longlist for this year’s £100,000 prize, which will be cut down to a four-strong shortlist on 19 May, has thrown up the usual mix of museums and locations, ranging from the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Ayrshire to the Mostyn gallery in north Wales.
There are three London venues: Leighton House; the Victoria and Albert Museum’s (V&A) Ceramics Gallery; and the British Museum. The other five are Hertford Museum; the People’s History Museum, Manchester; the Polar Museum, University of Cambridge; the Roman Baths Museum, Bath; and the Yorkshire Museum in York.
“At one point we said we were judging apples and pears and someone said, ‘No, it’s apples and aardvarks’,” says Portillo. “They are very, very different entities.”
But Portillo feels that it’s right for the prize to contain a wide range of museums and galleries: “We are not just awarding a prize, we are also drawing attention to what is going on in museums. So I think it is reasonable for us to have a range of size and sort of museum, including galleries, and to have a regional range as well.”
Portillo is aware that it’s not the easiest prize to judge because of this, and it was particularly difficult in the early stages when the 37 submissions had to be cut down to the longlist of 10. This was a paper exercise with each judge emailing their top 10 and then they all met up to discuss their choices and finalise the longlist.
“From the 10 emails that came in there was already a fair amount of consensus,” Portillo says. “And in discussion, it was quite interesting, as views changed quite a lot, so it was clear that people were willing to listen to each other and take into account different points of view.
“But I think we all feel on much securer ground now we are actually going around each place,” he adds.
So what are they actually judging? Portillo points to innovation, although he says this can come in many forms. He says they are also looking for how museums connect with audiences and make their collections accessible.
“Of course, we are all struck by new buildings but we have to remind ourselves we are absolutely not an architecture prize,” Portillo adds.
With such a wide range of museums and galleries on the longlist, it’s probably a good thing that Portillo’s fellow judges are a mixed bunch. They range from the scientist Jim Al-Khalili to Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller, through to museum consultant Kathy Gee, cultural studies professor Lola Young, curator and Antiques Roadshow presenter Lars Tharp and Guardian arts writer Charlotte Higgins.
“We have two judges, Kathy and Lars, who were on the judging panel last year,” says Portillo. “That is the policy, to have some experienced judges, and it’s also reassuring that people want to be judges for a second time – they don’t feel the experience was so grisly they won’t touch it again.”
Portillo says the judges have been travelling in groups of four or five to visit the museums and “quite a camaraderie is building up”, although some are visiting certain venues on their own.
Higgins says people have been falling into certain roles, with her and Deller playing the naughty ones sitting on the back row, while Tharp has been the group’s “wit and raconteur” and Portillo is the “headmaster”.
Perhaps a headmasterly tone is the right one for a chairman of judges, but what else does Portillo bring to the role? Well, he has experience of judging major book prizes: the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in 2003 and the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, when he was the chairman of the judges.
“The Man Booker is unbelievably time-consuming,” says Portillo. “You read more than 100 books in a six-month period. Then you read the longlist for a second time and the shortlist a third time. It’s pretty intense and solitary.”
The Art Fund Prize is very different, as Portillo is out with the other judges meeting staff and visitors. He also has a keen interest in how the past is interpreted, as he studied history at university and has continued this interest as a writer and broadcaster.
Also, his maternal grandfather was an art collector and part of his collection was housed in the Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery in Fife.
Since leaving the House of Commons in 2005, Portillo has spent much of his time making television programmes. These have included a documentary on the unburied bodies from the Spanish civil war (Portillo’s father, Luis, came to Britain as a refugee at the end of the war) and, more recently, the Great British Railway Journeys series.
He does see parallels between television and museums: “I think they are very much part of the same thing in as much as what museums try to do is make knowledge accessible and that is what television is trying to do.
“I think the danger that is faced by museums and by television is the same, and that is dumbing down,” he continues. “And I don’t believe that the fact that you are trying to reach a wide audience is an excuse for dumbing down.”
But Portillo says he and his fellow judges have been impressed by the level of curatorial expertise they have seen on their visits: “We are dealing with people who really know their subject, love the objects they have and want to bring them to a wider public.”
Have any of the curatorial experts he has met bent his ear about the damage that government cuts are doing to the sector? “Nobody has whined to us at all, everything has been pretty upbeat,” he says.
“We have been pretty struck by the realism of museums, the determination, even their cheerfulness. I think by now they have had quite a lot of time to get used to the idea that the funding picture is going to be different. I think some of them think they have had seven years of plenty, and there are seven different years ahead, to use the biblical analogy.”
So, are there any hints as to which museums and galleries will make it on the shortlist of four? While Portillo makes it clear that, “for the purpose of the prize, I am not attached to any of them”, he has links with some of the museums.
Leighton House and the V&A were in his constituency when he was the MP for Kensington and Chelsea from 1999 to 2005. The People’s History Museum might also appeal, considering his career in politics.
And is Portillo getting any hints from the other judges about who they might go for? “They are being quite restrained. We go round and ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ because we are impressed by what we see, but I have not heard a single judge say to another: ‘This one will definitely be on my shortlist.’ They are playing their cards fairly close.”
The winner of the Art Fund Prize 2011 will be announced on 15 June.
www.artfundprize.org.uk
Michael Portillo was born in 1953. He joined the Conservative Research Department in 1976. He was responsible for briefing Margaret Thatcher before her press conferences at the 1979 general election.
After working in the oil industry, in 1984 he won a by-election in Enfield Southgate and represented the seat for 13 years until defeat in 1997. He held various government roles, including defence secretary.
After 1997, he returned to the oil industry as an adviser and also worked as a broadcaster and writer.
He was re-elected to parliament in 1999 and unsuccessfully contested the leadership of the party in 2001. He left the House of Commons in 2005 and has since continued to work as broadcaster and writer.
Jim Al-Khalili is a scientist, author and broadcaster. He is an academic nuclear physicist based at the University of Surrey. He is vice president and trustee of the British Science Association. He has written a number of popular science books and also presented on radio and TV.
Jeremy Deller is a British artist whose work combines performance, video, sound, ephemera and photographs. Born in 1966 in London, Deller studied art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art. He won the Turner Prize in 2004 and was appointed a Tate trustee in 2007.
Kathy Gee is a museum consultant and director of Volition Associates, which works in the cultural sector to enable strategic development. She became CEO of the West Midlands Regional Museums Council in 1990 and then MLA West Midlands until 2006. She was a judge in 2010.
Charlotte Higgins is the chief arts writer for the Guardian newspaper. A classicist by education, she is the author of two books on the ancient world: Latin Love Lessons and It’s All Greek To Me. Higgins is working on a book about Roman Britain, to be published by Jonathan Cape
Lola Young is a former academic and a writer, public speaker and broadcaster. She has sat on the boards of several national cultural organisations, including the Southbank Centre and the Royal National Theatre. She is an Independent Crossbench peer.
Ceramics historian Lars Tharp is a lecturer, writer, curator and art consultant. He is the Hogarth curator and ambassador of London’s Foundling Museum. He has been a member of the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow team since 1986 and was a judge of the 2010 Art Fund Prize.
“I was going round one museum recently and I spotted that one of the captions on an exhibit was wrong and I went and told the director,” says broadcaster and former Conservative party cabinet minister Michael Portillo.
“I’ll keep the identity of the museum under my hat, but it was a subject in which I had a certain specialist knowledge and I knew it was wrong.”
Portillo follows television and radio presenter Kirsty Young, who chaired last year’s Art Fund Prize, which was won by Belfast’s Ulster Museum.
The longlist for this year’s £100,000 prize, which will be cut down to a four-strong shortlist on 19 May, has thrown up the usual mix of museums and locations, ranging from the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Ayrshire to the Mostyn gallery in north Wales.
There are three London venues: Leighton House; the Victoria and Albert Museum’s (V&A) Ceramics Gallery; and the British Museum. The other five are Hertford Museum; the People’s History Museum, Manchester; the Polar Museum, University of Cambridge; the Roman Baths Museum, Bath; and the Yorkshire Museum in York.
“At one point we said we were judging apples and pears and someone said, ‘No, it’s apples and aardvarks’,” says Portillo. “They are very, very different entities.”
But Portillo feels that it’s right for the prize to contain a wide range of museums and galleries: “We are not just awarding a prize, we are also drawing attention to what is going on in museums. So I think it is reasonable for us to have a range of size and sort of museum, including galleries, and to have a regional range as well.”
Portillo is aware that it’s not the easiest prize to judge because of this, and it was particularly difficult in the early stages when the 37 submissions had to be cut down to the longlist of 10. This was a paper exercise with each judge emailing their top 10 and then they all met up to discuss their choices and finalise the longlist.
“From the 10 emails that came in there was already a fair amount of consensus,” Portillo says. “And in discussion, it was quite interesting, as views changed quite a lot, so it was clear that people were willing to listen to each other and take into account different points of view.
“But I think we all feel on much securer ground now we are actually going around each place,” he adds.
So what are they actually judging? Portillo points to innovation, although he says this can come in many forms. He says they are also looking for how museums connect with audiences and make their collections accessible.
“Of course, we are all struck by new buildings but we have to remind ourselves we are absolutely not an architecture prize,” Portillo adds.
With such a wide range of museums and galleries on the longlist, it’s probably a good thing that Portillo’s fellow judges are a mixed bunch. They range from the scientist Jim Al-Khalili to Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller, through to museum consultant Kathy Gee, cultural studies professor Lola Young, curator and Antiques Roadshow presenter Lars Tharp and Guardian arts writer Charlotte Higgins.
“We have two judges, Kathy and Lars, who were on the judging panel last year,” says Portillo. “That is the policy, to have some experienced judges, and it’s also reassuring that people want to be judges for a second time – they don’t feel the experience was so grisly they won’t touch it again.”
Portillo says the judges have been travelling in groups of four or five to visit the museums and “quite a camaraderie is building up”, although some are visiting certain venues on their own.
Higgins says people have been falling into certain roles, with her and Deller playing the naughty ones sitting on the back row, while Tharp has been the group’s “wit and raconteur” and Portillo is the “headmaster”.
Perhaps a headmasterly tone is the right one for a chairman of judges, but what else does Portillo bring to the role? Well, he has experience of judging major book prizes: the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in 2003 and the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, when he was the chairman of the judges.
“The Man Booker is unbelievably time-consuming,” says Portillo. “You read more than 100 books in a six-month period. Then you read the longlist for a second time and the shortlist a third time. It’s pretty intense and solitary.”
The Art Fund Prize is very different, as Portillo is out with the other judges meeting staff and visitors. He also has a keen interest in how the past is interpreted, as he studied history at university and has continued this interest as a writer and broadcaster.
Also, his maternal grandfather was an art collector and part of his collection was housed in the Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery in Fife.
Since leaving the House of Commons in 2005, Portillo has spent much of his time making television programmes. These have included a documentary on the unburied bodies from the Spanish civil war (Portillo’s father, Luis, came to Britain as a refugee at the end of the war) and, more recently, the Great British Railway Journeys series.
He does see parallels between television and museums: “I think they are very much part of the same thing in as much as what museums try to do is make knowledge accessible and that is what television is trying to do.
“I think the danger that is faced by museums and by television is the same, and that is dumbing down,” he continues. “And I don’t believe that the fact that you are trying to reach a wide audience is an excuse for dumbing down.”
But Portillo says he and his fellow judges have been impressed by the level of curatorial expertise they have seen on their visits: “We are dealing with people who really know their subject, love the objects they have and want to bring them to a wider public.”
Have any of the curatorial experts he has met bent his ear about the damage that government cuts are doing to the sector? “Nobody has whined to us at all, everything has been pretty upbeat,” he says.
“We have been pretty struck by the realism of museums, the determination, even their cheerfulness. I think by now they have had quite a lot of time to get used to the idea that the funding picture is going to be different. I think some of them think they have had seven years of plenty, and there are seven different years ahead, to use the biblical analogy.”
So, are there any hints as to which museums and galleries will make it on the shortlist of four? While Portillo makes it clear that, “for the purpose of the prize, I am not attached to any of them”, he has links with some of the museums.
Leighton House and the V&A were in his constituency when he was the MP for Kensington and Chelsea from 1999 to 2005. The People’s History Museum might also appeal, considering his career in politics.
And is Portillo getting any hints from the other judges about who they might go for? “They are being quite restrained. We go round and ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ because we are impressed by what we see, but I have not heard a single judge say to another: ‘This one will definitely be on my shortlist.’ They are playing their cards fairly close.”
The winner of the Art Fund Prize 2011 will be announced on 15 June.
www.artfundprize.org.uk
Michael Portillo at a glance
Michael Portillo was born in 1953. He joined the Conservative Research Department in 1976. He was responsible for briefing Margaret Thatcher before her press conferences at the 1979 general election.
After working in the oil industry, in 1984 he won a by-election in Enfield Southgate and represented the seat for 13 years until defeat in 1997. He held various government roles, including defence secretary.
After 1997, he returned to the oil industry as an adviser and also worked as a broadcaster and writer.
He was re-elected to parliament in 1999 and unsuccessfully contested the leadership of the party in 2001. He left the House of Commons in 2005 and has since continued to work as broadcaster and writer.
The other Art Fund Prize judges at a glance
Jim Al-Khalili is a scientist, author and broadcaster. He is an academic nuclear physicist based at the University of Surrey. He is vice president and trustee of the British Science Association. He has written a number of popular science books and also presented on radio and TV.
Jeremy Deller is a British artist whose work combines performance, video, sound, ephemera and photographs. Born in 1966 in London, Deller studied art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art. He won the Turner Prize in 2004 and was appointed a Tate trustee in 2007.
Kathy Gee is a museum consultant and director of Volition Associates, which works in the cultural sector to enable strategic development. She became CEO of the West Midlands Regional Museums Council in 1990 and then MLA West Midlands until 2006. She was a judge in 2010.
Charlotte Higgins is the chief arts writer for the Guardian newspaper. A classicist by education, she is the author of two books on the ancient world: Latin Love Lessons and It’s All Greek To Me. Higgins is working on a book about Roman Britain, to be published by Jonathan Cape
Lola Young is a former academic and a writer, public speaker and broadcaster. She has sat on the boards of several national cultural organisations, including the Southbank Centre and the Royal National Theatre. She is an Independent Crossbench peer.
Ceramics historian Lars Tharp is a lecturer, writer, curator and art consultant. He is the Hogarth curator and ambassador of London’s Foundling Museum. He has been a member of the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow team since 1986 and was a judge of the 2010 Art Fund Prize.