Museum of the Year: 2015 shortlist
By William Cook | 24 April 2015
For British curators, the Art Fund’s Museum of the Year is the equivalent of the Oscars. OK, so it may not be quite as glamorous, but look at it this way: Oscar winners just get a titchy statuette. The Museum of the Year gets to bank a cheque for £100,000.
Last year’s lucky recipient Yorkshire Sculpture Park was a particularly worthy prizewinner – a stunning pastoral arena which unites fine art with the great outdoors. This year’s shortlist is just as thrilling – a diverse array of some of the most innovative museums in the country. The winner will be announced on the 1st July at London’s Tate Modern. In the meantime why not choose your own favourite from these six nominees?
Films produced for the Art Fund by Northern Town
The MAC, Belfast
A purpose built new arts centre staging art, music, dance and theatre, MAC encapsulates the recent renaissance of this lively city.
In the heart of Belfast’s bustling Cathedral Quarter, last year’s highlights included a solo show by the acclaimed American artist Kara Walker, and the first ever MAC International Exhibition, which attracted more than a thousand entries from artists across the world. The £20,000 first prize is the most lucrative art award in Ireland.
Imperial War Museum, London
Since its foundation in 1917, London’s Imperial War Museum has amassed one of the world’s greatest First World War collections. Last year these rare exhibits were reassembled in a dramatic new display.
Alongside these new galleries, the IWM mounted a retrospective of paintings from the period – Truth & Memory: British Art of the First World War. The museum’s historic atrium was redesigned by Norman Foster, creating an exciting and uplifting central space, flooded with sunlight.
Oxford University Museum of Natural History
Closed for fourteen months to enable the restoration of its iron and glass roof, this grand neo-gothic building reopened in 2014 after a £4 million refit. New LED lighting supplements the natural light.
As well as its unique architecture, the suspended whale skeletons also got a spring clean. The museum is open to everyone, not just boffins from the university. Seven hundred thousand visitors came here last year, from academics to schoolchildren
Visit the Oxford University Museum of Natural History website
Tower of London
In 2014 the Tower of London staged the First World War commemoration that captured the imagination of the nation, when it filled its ancient moat with 888,246 ceramic poppies (the number of British and Commonwealth soldiers who were killed during the Great War). ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’ attracted more than five million visitors.
The Tower is more than just a posh storeroom for the Crown Jewels. A working castle, not a theme park, with temporary and permanent exhibitions spanning 1000 years of British history, it’s a museum of national importance, as well as a great day out.
Dunham Massey, Altrincham
This Georgian Country House has been a family home for over 300 years, but during the First World War it was a hospital for wounded soldiers, and last year the National Trust mounted an exhibition that recreated this chapter of its rich history.
Many of Dunham Massey’s usual exhibits went into storage, and visitor numbers trebled as actors from Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre came in to re-enact the authentic stories of some of the soldiers who were treated here, and some of the people who treated them.
Whitworth, Manchester
From William Blake to Francis Bacon, from Pissarro to Picasso, the Whitworth’s splendid collection doubles as an encyclopaedia of British and European modern art.
Last year’s £15 million redevelopment doubled the size of the gallery, bestowing a bold new annexe that reconnects it with the leafy parkland that surrounds it. When it reopened this year, 18,000 people came in the first weekend – more than they used to get in a whole month.
Images © Martin Parr, except the Whitworth © Alan Williams.
