For press enquiries, please contact:

Press release

Call for entries for UK’s largest arts prize –
The Art Fund Prize for museums and galleries 2008

3/9/07

• First year of The Art Fund Prize for museums and galleries
• £100,000 for the best UK museum or gallery project of 2007
• Judging panel chaired by eminent broadcaster and writer Sue MacGregor
  

Submissions for The Art Fund Prize for museums and galleries 2008 – the UK’s largest single arts prize – are invited from Monday 3 September 2007.

The Art Fund Prize for museums and galleries (formerly The Gulbenkian Prize) is intended to recognise and stimulate originality and excellence in museums and galleries and increase public appreciation and enjoyment of all they have to offer. The coveted annual award of £100,000 is open to all accredited museums and galleries in the UK. This is the first year that The Art Fund – the UK’s leading independent art charity - has sponsored this major arts prize. It has taken over sponsorship from The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, who launched the prize in 2003 and whose five-year development support came to an end earlier this year.

The Prize criteria remain broadly-drawn, enabling the judges to consider a wide range of types and sizes of project. The winner will be the entry that, in the opinion of the judges:

• demonstrates originality, imagination and excellence;
• extends public access and understanding of works of art and artefacts of aesthetic interest from any era and culture;
• has the capacity to promote wider public appreciation of museums and galleries and their collections;
• shows imaginative development, display and interpretation of museum and gallery collections including the creative use of artists and designers to interpret non-art collections;
• demonstrates excellence of design, whether in exhibitions or buildings;
• has clearly won the support and enthusiasm of its visitors and users.

The closing date for entries is Friday 2 November 2007.

The winner and nominees will be chosen by an independent panel of judges comprising a mix of museum and gallery experts, artists, academics, journalists and well-known public faces.  This year’s panel will be chaired by writer and broadcaster Sue MacGregor.  For 15 years she presented Women’s Hour on BBC Radio 4 before moving to The Today Programme.  She was their longest serving presenter until she left in 2002.  Ms MacGregor continues to work for Radio 4, presenting many other programmes including A Good Read and The Reunion, and has received many broadcasting awards and the CBE for services to broadcasting.

The Art Fund Prize long list of ten will be announced early in 2008, followed by the announcement of the short list of four in April 2008. The winner will be announced during Museums and Galleries Month on 22 May 2008 at an awards ceremony at the Royal Institution of British Architects, London.

Previous winners (as the Gulbenkian Prize) were, in 2007, Pallant House Gallery in Chichester for its £8.6 million modern gallery extension, designed by Long and Kentish in association with the late Professor Sir Colin St John Wilson. In 2006, Brunel’s ss Great Britain, Bristol, the world’s first great iron ocean liner, was awarded the Prize.  In 2005, Big Pit: National Mining Museum of Wales, a preserved coal mine, won, while the 2004 winner was the landscape sculpture Landform by Charles Jencks at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.  The inaugural Prize was awarded in 2003 to the National Centre for Citizenship and the Law at Nottingham’s Galleries of Justice for the education programme it ran with schools, young offenders and the local community. In addition to a cheque for £100,000, the winning museum or gallery holds, for one year, the enamelled silver Prize bowl, commissioned from the artist Vladimir Böhm.

More information can be found at www.artfundprize.org.uk

Notes to editors:

The Art Fund Prize for museums and galleries is administered by the Museum Prize, a charitable company created in 2002 by The Art Fund, the Campaign for Museums, the Museums Association and National Heritage. Its trustees are Penelope, Viscountess Cobham (Chair), James Bishop (National Heritage), Ylva French (Campaign for Museums), Mark Taylor (Museums Association), James Naughtie and Eleanor Updale.

The Museum Prize is registered as a company in England and Wales No. 421870 and a charity No. 1093174. Registered Office: 24 Calvin Street, London E1 6NW.

The Art Fund is the UK’s leading independent art charity. It offers grants to help UK museums and galleries enrich their collections and campaigns widely on behalf of museums and their visitors. It is entirely funded from public donations and has 80,000 members

Since 1903 the charity has helped museums and galleries all over the UK secure 860,000 works of art for their collections. In 2006 it offered over £5 million to museums and galleries

In January 2007 The Art Fund successfully led the public appeal to save JMW Turner’s Blue Rigi for Tate. In April 2007 The Art Fund launched a new £5 million scheme – ‘Art Fund International’ – aimed at developing the collections of international contemporary art in UK regional museums and galleries. In July 2007 The Art Fund was instrumental in putting together a unique funding package to ensure Dumfries House in Ayrshire was secured for the nation

Independent of government, The Art Fund is uniquely placed to campaign on behalf of public collections across the UK. It was at the forefront of the campaign for free admission in 2001 and the campaign to save the Macclesfield Psalter in 2005

Visit the charity’s website at www.artfund.org

Top