Edinburgh’s National Gallery of Modern Art wins UK’s largest arts prize
11/5/04

The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art tonight won the second Gulbenkian Prize for Museum of the Year, at £100,000 the UK’s richest single arts prize, for its dramatic and radical landscaping project, Landform.

The Gulbenkian judges were captivated by Landform, describing it as a transforming experience, a magnet that attracts people into the museums and a unique intervention in the museum and gallery landscape.

Landform, a serpentine, stepped mound, with three crescent shaped pools covering three acres, was commissioned by the Gallery in 1999 when it decided to redevelop its front lawn, a former school playing field. It turned to American-born architectural historian Charles Jencks, whose design for Landform reflects the Edinburgh landscape and was inspired by chaos theory and weather systems. Landform took two years to build at a cost of £380,000.

Since its completion, it has become one of Edinburgh’s most visited attractions drawing record numbers into the Galleries. “I pictured,” says Charles Jencks, “a contemporary equivalent of Seurat’s La Grande Jatte – everything going on at once, amidst sun, water and city life. You could eat lunch, perhaps have a drink, chase kites …”. The transformation of the grounds has proved to be so popular that one area of turf has recently been replaced because it had been worn out by so many people walking on it.

Loyd Grossman, Chairman of the Gulbenkian judges, who made the winning announcement at a ceremony at the Royal Academy at Burlington Gardens, comments,

“Landform is an inspirational, beautiful project which will completely transform the experience visitors have at an already outstanding gallery. Landform has the potential to actually change people's ideas about what a museum does and can do.”

The three other finalists were the Museum of Antiquities, University of Newcastle upon Tyne for its Reticulum project; Pembrokeshire Museums Service for Varda, a travelling exhibition of Romany history and culture, and Norton Priory Museum and Gardens, Runcorn, Cheshire, for its Positive Partnerships programme.

The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art receives a cheque for £100,000 and an enamelled silver bowl designed by award-winning metalwork artist, Vladimir Böhm.

The Gulbenkian Prize celebrates some of the most inspiring and innovative initiatives that have had a genuine and demonstrable effect on the public perception of museums and galleries. It is open to any registered museum, large or small, in the UK; its prize money of £100,000 makes it the largest single arts prize in the country.

The first winner of the Gulbenkian Prize for museum of the year was The National Centre for Citizenship and the Law housed in the Galleries of Justice in Nottingham.

Notes to editors:
• Charles Jencks
Charles Jencks was born in Baltimore in 1939 and now designs landscape, sculpture and writes on cosmogenic art. In addition to Landform, recent commissions include DNA sculptures for James Watson at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, Long Island, Matt Ridley, Centre for Life, Newcastle upon Tyne and DNA sculpture for the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. His links with Scotland are extensive – his home, Portrack House in Dumfriesshire, backs onto one of the most spectacular gardens anywhere in the world – the garden of Cosmic Speculation, which he devised with his wife, Maggie Keswick.

Charles Jencks is currently designing a landform sculpture for in
front of a new Maggie's Centre (of which he is a Trustee) which is due to open at Raigmore Hospital, Inverness.

• The Gulbenkian Prize 2004 judges are:
Loyd Grossman OBE, chair
Joan Bakewell CBE, broadcaster and writer
Mark Bolland, PR professional and former Deputy Private Secretary to HRH the Prince of Wales
Sokari Douglas Camp, sculptor
Peter Jenkinson OBE, founding Director of Creative Partnerships
Mark Lythgoe, neurophysiologist and lecturer
Rosie Millard, columnist and former arts correspondent for the BBC

• The Gulbenkian Prize for Museum of the Year is administered by The Museum Prize, a charitable company created in 2001 by representatives of National Heritage, the Museums Association, the National Art Collections Fund and the Campaign for Museums. These organisations agreed to put aside award schemes they formerly ran (including the National Heritage Museum of the Year) and lend their support to the prize.

The Museum Prize is chaired by Lady Cobham. Trustees of The Museum Prize include representatives of all four founding organisations.

• The Gulbenkian Prize for Museum of the Year is funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. The UK Branch of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation is responsible for grant aid in the UK and Republic of Ireland and runs funding programmes in arts, social welfare, education and Anglo-Portuguese cultural relations.

The Foundation’s founder, Calouste Gulbenkian, was one of the most distinguished private collectors in the world. The Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon is well-known and loaned several major pieces of Lalique jewellery to the V & A’s highly acclaimed Art Nouveau exhibition in 2000 and simultaneously mounted a major exhibition of its treasures at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation is supporting The Gulbenkian Prize by guaranteeing prize money of £100,000 a year over five years; it is also providing some of the funding for administration.

The Gulbenkian Prize is also supported by Museums, Archives and Libraries Council and by Sir Christopher Ondaatje CBE, who is passionately interested in raising awareness of the range and quality of museums and galleries in Britain.

Additional sponsors of the 2004 Prize are Blackwall Green, specialists in insurance for museums and galleries, Lloyds TSB Private Banking, D& F Wine Shippers, Ernst and Young, and Keeley & Lowe Ltd, printers.

For further information and press enquiries please contact:
Ruth Cairns, Nicola Dodd or Liz Sich at Colman Getty PR
Telephone: 020 7631 2666 Fax: 020 7631 2699
Email: ruth@colmangettypr.co.uk
Out of hours: 07956 612380

or Emma Henderson at Colman Getty Scotland
Tel: 0131 477 7950
Out of hours: 07977 134614

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