The Gulbenkian Prize for Museums and Galleries 2006
Call for Entry for UK’s largest arts prize
11/8/05

Submissions are invited for the UK’s single biggest arts prize, The Gulbenkian Prize for Museums and Galleries which will open on Thursday 1 September 2005.

Now in its fourth year, the £100,000 prize is awarded to a museum or gallery in the UK, large or small, for the best new development of the previous calendar year. The prize aims to recognise and stimulate originality, imagination and excellence in museums and galleries in the UK, and increase public appreciation and enjoyment for museums and galleries.

Last year’s winner was Big Pit: National Mining Museum of Wales in Blaenafon, a preserved coal mine where visitors can descend 300 feet underground to experience the working conditions that generations of miners endured daily. Peter Walker, Keeper and Mine Manager at Big Pit, says: “Winning the prize has boosted both our museum and our town of Blaenafon, generating many more visitors and raising our profile locally, nationally and internationally.”

The winners from the previous three years show the diversity of museums and galleries that the prize aims to commend. This year’s winner, the community-centric Big Pit, follows last year’s winning landscape sculpture Landform by Charles Jencks at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. The inaugural prize was awarded to the National Centre for Citizenship and the Law at Nottingham’s Galleries of Justice in 2003 for the education programme it ran with schools, young offenders and the local community.

Entries are invited for all kinds of museum and gallery projects, including imaginative building or display design, creative use of new technology, unusual approaches to curation or work with new audiences.

The closing date for entries is 1 November 2005.
See www.thegulbenkianprize.org.uk for more information.

Notes to editors:

• The Gulbenkian Prize for Museum and Galleries 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. The Museum Prize is chaired by Lady Cobham. Trustees of The Museum Prize include representatives of all four founding organisations.

• The Gulbenkian Prize for Museums and Galleries is funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation whose headquarters are based in Lisbon – where the Gulbenkian Museum is recognised as one of the world's best small museums. The UK Branch of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation has been a pioneering funder and promoter of the arts, social welfare and education in the UK for the past 50 years, playing an active role in encouraging artists and arts organisations, including museums, to find original and inventive ways of developing their practice. The UK Branch 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 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 Prize is also supported by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council under Renaissance, the ground-breaking programme to transform England’s museums.

• In addition to a cheque for £100,000, the winning museum holds for one year the Gulbenkian Prize bowl in enamelled silver, commissioned by the artist Vladimir Böhm.

• Any entries which involve temporary exhibitions or programmes must be able to demonstrate that these have been part of a significant development for the museum or gallery.

• Applicants are invited to submit a project that has been launched, redeveloped or completed during the calendar year to 31 December 2005.

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