Notes to editors:
- Details of the 10 shortlisted projects, with contact details, follow.
- Photographs of all the museums and galleries are available from Colman Getty. Sir Richard Sykes and the judges may be available for interview. Please contact Colman Getty.
- Over sixty applications were received from museums and galleries all over the UK.
- 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 supported by The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) , the national development agency working for and on behalf of museums, libraries and archives and advising government on policy and priorities for the sector. MLA supports the Gulbenkian Prize for Museum of the Year under Renaissance, its ground-breaking programme to transform England’s regional museums. For the first time ever, investment from central government is enabling regional museums across the country to raise their standards and deliver real results in support of education, community development and economic regeneration. For more information, visit www.mla.gov.uk
- Both The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and the Museum of Great Yarmouth Life, through Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service, belong to the East of England Regional Museum Hub, one of nine that have been established by MLA across England to become centres of excellence, promoting best practice and high quality services for a wide range of audiences. The Renaissance funding has contributed to The Fitzwilliam’s new educational programmes and to the post of Maritime Development Officer at Time and Tide in Great Yarmouth.
The Gulbenkian Prize is also supported 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 2005 Prize are
- Blackwall Green (Jewellery and Fine Art) - Specialist insurance brokers to museums and galleries both in the United Kingdom and Europe.
- National Heritage: the Museums Action Movement is a charity founded to support and promote museums and galleries in the UK, and to represent the interests of their visitors and other users. It launched the original Museum of the Year Awards in 1973.
- Gulbenkian Prize Patrons: Sir Martyn Arbib and Consensus Business Group
- The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) enables communities to celebrate, look after and learn more about our diverse heritage. From our great museums and historic buildings to local parks and beauty spots or recording and celebrating traditions, customs and history, HLF grants open up our nation’s heritage for everyone to enjoy. It has supported more than 15,000 projects, allocating over £3billion across the UK. Over the last 10 years it has awarded £29.1million to this year's Gulbenkian Prize shortlisted museums and galleries, and out of that total, £23.6million has gone specifically to the element of these projects that have been nominated for this prestigious arts prize.
For further information and press enquiries please contact:
Ruth Cairns, Anna Mayall or Liz Sich at Colman Getty PR
Telephone: 020 7631 2666 Fax: 020 7631 2699
Email: ruth@colmangettypr.co.uk
The Gulbenkian Prize for Museum of the Year Shortlist
Museum of Barnstaple & North Devon for Shapland & Petter of Barnstaple: 150 years
With a full time staff of five, supported by 21 volunteers, the Museum of Barnstaple & North Devon decided to create a research and community project based on local Arts and Crafts furniture manufacturer (and the town's largest employer), Shapland & Petter, which celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2004. The move was prompted by the acquisition of the company's design archive from successor company Leaderflush Shapland.
The exhibition, which is bringing together oral history, digitisation and design research, has gained an unstoppable momentum in the region, says Development Manager, Alison Mills. The museum has received a steady stream of people wanting to get involved in the project, with many contributing their own artefacts and memories. Members of the local community - secondary school children, retired employees, unemployed people, present workers and their families - have joined together to explore, record and create in their own ways the story of Shapland & Petter. First-hand experiences of Shapland & Petter's past and current employees and their families have been captured in sound, video and text and fifteen new volunteers have joined the Museum to work specifically on the project.
The project will culminate in a major exhibition in May and June 2005, when visitors will have the opportunity to see for themselves the Barnstaple company's importance to the Arts and Crafts design movement. And there will be a permanent digitised archive to demonstrate the range and quality of the company's work, and the production values which still inform the present-day workforce.
The Museum attracted around 60,000 visitors last year; the Shapland & Petter project which was funded mainly by the Heritage Lottery Fund, cost £100.000.
Staff intend to use the project as a model for future activities based on other local industries.
www.devonmuseums.net
Press contact: Rowena Richardson, 01271 388278;
Rowena.richardson@northdevon.gov.uk
Big Pit: National Mining Museum of Wales, Blaenafon
Guided by former miners, visitors descend 300 feet to the very depths of a real coal mine at Big Pit, one of only three preserved deep coal mines in Europe, and experience for themselves the hidden world of the miner. Above ground all of the colliery buildings, including the pithead baths, the winding engine house and blacksmiths workshop have been sensitively restored and brought back to life with the sounds of the miners at work echoing from the past. Wales was the birthplace of the modern industrial world, and it's here on the surface of the museum that exciting new exhibitions and displays tell the incredible story. You can catch a glimpse of this in the Mining Galleries, where you get a chance to experience the sights and sounds of a modern coalface with the help of a 'virtual' miner guide.
Big Pit, one of six museums operated by the National Museums & Galleries of Wales, reopened in February 2004 following a £7.1 million redevelopment, funded principally by the Heritage Lottery Fund, with additional money from the Wales Tourist Board and Local Regeneration Fund, the Coalfield Regeneration Trust and a number of private trusts and funds. Thirteen new jobs were created, bringing full time staff levels to 63. The National Museums & Galleries of Wales offer free entry to all visitors thanks to the generous support of the Welsh Assembly Government. The redevelopment of Big Pit forms part of NMGW's industrial strategy, an ongoing project to better interpret Wales' foremost industries: coal, slate, wool and culminates in the National Waterfront Museum Swansea, to be opened during 2005.
Following its official reopening, Big Pit celebrated its best season ever, with visitor figures increased by 25% to over 141,000.
www.nmgw.ac.uk/bigpit
Press contact: Kathryn Stowers on 01495 790311 mob: 07778 445936;
kathryn.stowers@nmgw.ac.uk
Back to Backs, Birmingham: National Trust (West Midlands)
Birmingham’s last surviving courtyard of Back to Back houses opened to the public in July 2004. The Grade II listed Court 15, built between 1802 and 1831, comprises eleven small houses, with one room on each floor, built around a central paved courtyard with shared wash house and lavatories.
Working with former residents and the local community, the National Trust used evidence found in the houses during their restoration and discovered many of the original features, including fireplaces and doors, intact. Many of the houses’ contents were donated by former residents and Birmingham people or sourced from local fairs.
Visitors to the Back to Backs will start their tour in the sweet shop, which has been restored to reflect the shop owned by Mr Bingham in the 1930s and is run by traditional local sweet maker, Sellars of West Bromwich. The tour then leads into the courtyard, where washing hangs on the line and children's games from the last century can be played. The courtyard, the last in the West Midlands to survive, was the heart of communal life, with a shared wash house and lavatories. The tour of the houses reflects four time periods. The first is the 1840s house, the home of the Levys, a family of Jewish watch and clock hand-makers. The next house belongs to the 1870s, the home of Mr Oldfield, a glass-eye maker who worked in the burgeoning taxidermy and toy industry, living with six children, a lodger and his girlfriend. Visitors then move on to the 1930s house, where retired bachelor, George Mitchell, lived alone (the Mitchell family were associated with Court 15 for nearly 100 years). The tour continues to the 1970s house of George Saunders, a tailor whose workshop was based at Court 15 until 2001.
The National Trust and the Birmingham Conservation Trust worked together to raise the £1.89m needed to buy the site and restore the houses. Half the funding came from the Heritage Lottery Fund; the project was also supported by the ERDF and private donations.
www.nationaltrust.org.uk
Press contact: Kristy Jones on 01793 462797 or 07815 122051 (mobile);
kristy.jones@nationaltrust.org.uk
The Courtyard Development at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge
The £12 million Courtyard Development at the Fitzwilliam Museum, the art museum of the University of Cambridge, has given the museum new life and energy.
After five years of planning, in 2001 the Heritage Lottery Fund granted £5.6 million and the Museum raised £6 million towards reclaiming a previously redundant courtyard formed by twentieth-century additions to the original nineteenth-century Museum building.
At the heart of the project is a new and inviting public space spread over four floors. The Courtyard Development, designed by John Miller + Partners, has added 3,000 sq metres of new and improved accommodation, to ensure the collections are made as accessible as possible to the Museum's 300,000+ annual visitors.
New galleries for temporary exhibitions, medieval and renaissance and 20 th and 21 st century art have been developed. Improved visitor facilities include a new entrance, a lift to all floors, and a larger café and shop in the Courtyard. A major Impressionist exhibition, with works by Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Renoir, Gauguin, Seurat and Cézanne, launched the redevelopment last summer.
Improved education facilities including a seminar room, schoolsroom and studio have enabled the Museum to extend the range of activities on offer which include life drawing classes and object-based courses. The Museum offers a full range of programmes for schools and adult learners and works with groups with special needs, such as Basic Skills, sufferers of Alzheimer's disease and their carers, and homeless people.
New IT resources were also launched. Pharos - a rich web resource - offers a multi-layered approach to the Museum's collections. An innovative eGuide - on handheld computers donated by Toshiba - provides audio-visual information about the objects in the collections to visitors as they move around the galleries.
www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk
Press contact: Fiona Brown on 01223 332941;
fjmb2@cam.ac.uk
Compton Verney, Warwickshire
Compton Verney has been transformed from a derelict 18 th century Robert Adam mansion into a new gallery of international standing. The £64 million project, which is funded by the Peter Moores Foundation, took ten years to complete and is the realisation of a life-long aim held by Sir Peter Moores.
Over twenty gallery spaces have been created inside the mansion. The three floors of galleries lead progressively to more abstract and flexible spaces on the upper floors. The new learning centre is housed in the 19 th century coach house and links to the 18 th century brewhouse and butler’s cottage. Compton Verney is unusual in that it fuses art, architecture, landscape and learning; the Gallery is currently working in partnership with DEFRA to manage the historic 120 acres of parkland landscaped by Capability Brown and restore wildlife habitats and recreate an 18 th century landscape of trees and grassland.
The Gallery opened in March 2004, the first time that the complete building was fully accessible to the public. More than 800 works of art are held in the Gallery’s permanent collections including paintings, sculpture, bronzes, pottery and folk art. Its six art collections feature works from southern Italy; German paintings and sculpture; bronzes and pottery from China, dating as far back as the Neolithic period; British portraits and furniture from 1550-1750; British folk art including whirligigs, trade signs and models; and The Marx-Lambert collection representing the work of graphic artist and textile designer, Enid Marx.
Compton Verney also has an ambitious programme of contemporary art exhibitions and thematic shows. In April 2004, it exhibited Luper at Compton Verney, an installation by filmmaker Peter Greenaway and Only Make Believe, curated by writer and critic, Marina Warner, will be on show from March to June 2005.
www.comptonverney.org.uk
Press contact: Ina Cole on 01926 645540;
ina.cole@comptonverney.org.uk
Coventry Transport Museum
Coventry has been at the vanguard of Britain’s transport industry for almost two hundred years and its road transport museum, established in 1980, portrayed the massive contribution the city had made to these industries. However, despite its pre-eminent collections, its location in a quiet back street of Coventry meant that it remained one of Britain’s best kept secrets.
Free admission, introduced in 1998, doubled attendances overnight and now a £7.5 million redevelopment, opened in March 2004, and funded by Coventry City Council, ERDF and the Heritage Lottery Fund, has completed the job of revitalisation to widespread visitor acclaim.
The most dramatic change has been the creation of a brand new frontage for the Museum, facing out on to the City’s new Millennium Place.
Four new galleries have been added to existing displays and include an introduction to Coventry’s unique role in transport history which pays tribute to the people who worked in the industry. Other galleries guide visitors through time from the 1860s to the 1940s and, in the Icons Gallery, give visitors an opportunity to design their own car. Two particularly popular exhibits are the World Land Speed Record Cars, Thrust SSC and Thrust2; there is also a special exhibition that explores the enormous growth and then decline of Coventry’s road transport industries between the 1950s and 1970s. A Futures Gallery enables visitors to consider issues around the use of fossil fuels, road safety and the impact of the motor car in the 21 st century through low-tech and highly interactive features.
The redevelopment has resulted in a much more integrated and cohesive experience for visitors. Residents, the museum says, who hadn’t set foot in the museum have been drawn in by its stronger outward presence; in the first six months since the relaunch, the Museum received over 180,000 visitors, beating all targets.
www.transport-museum.com
Press contact: Lucy Rumble on 024 7683 2425; out-of-hours 01327 264831;
lucy.rumble@coventry.gov.uk
Time and Tide, Museum of Great Yarmouth Life, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk
This new museum, which opened in July 2004, is located in a Victorian herring curing factory. The result of over ten years’ work, it tells the story of Great Yarmouth and celebrates its maritime and fishing heritage, bringing to life its herring curing industry and the lives of the people who worked there. Located in an area of significant deprivation, the £4.7 million project, funded by Great Yarmouth Borough Council, the Heritage Lottery Fund, East of England Development Agency and ERDF, aims to provide a dislocated and divided community with a sense of place in history, communal identity and self esteem. Funding for the post of Maritime Development Officer at Time and Tide will be contributed to by the MLA through Renaissance and the Regions.
Every stage of the museum’s development – its name, its display themes, its design – evolved from extensive community consultation. This extended to the spectacular recreation of a typical 1913 Row, one of 144 narrow alley ways which ran East to West from the Town Wall to the river and formed the medieval town, and the 1950s Fish Wharf.
The museum’s challenge was to combine Great Yarmouth’s role as a hugely popular seaside holiday destination with the problems brought by high levels of unemployment in the winter months. It tells Great Yarmouth’s story from prehistoric times until the present day; its themes are wreck and rescue, seaside holiday, port and trade, the World Wars and the historic built environment. The Museum’s extensive collections include historic boats, archaeology, costume and textiles, ethnography, fishing and maritime, fine art, natural history and social history brought to life using interactive and AV technology.
The conversion of the building is of the highest quality. The contemporary industrial approach complements the carefully retained historical architectural details and the industrial character of the building. The spectacular courtyard canopy provides protection for historic boats and visitors. Supported by a 20 metre mast installed at a 5% angle and reminiscent of a tall ship, the canopy has created a distinctive new visual landmark for Great Yarmouth.
www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk
Press contact: Alison Smith on 01603 495895
Carn Chearsabhagn, Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum & Art Gallery, Lochmaddy, North Uist
Carn Chearsabhagh, a project based on the concept that Museums contain something for everyone, was developed by the North Uist Historical Society. For conservation reasons their main museum collection is stored 23 miles away on the neighbouring island of Benbecula and therefore this resulted in the need to create a community museum for the 21 st century on the Society's home island of North Uist.
Taigh Chearsabhagh is an historic building given a new lease of life, which contains a museum, two galleries, arts workshop, shop and café. Taigh Chearsabhagh comes together as a focus for life in North Uist giving experience of the arts, culture and heritage of the Outer Hebrides. It succeeds in combining community involvement with innovation in the arts and heritage, underpinned by a strong education programme.
The Carn Chearsabhagh exhibition, the most visible creation of the Project, was freshly curated by fourteen local groups – including youth and athletics clubs, a women’s group and local businesses - who each researched the history of a particular artefact from the museum collection store and how it related to their own community story.
Alongside the Carn Chearsabhagh exhibition, a programme of ten other temporary exhibitions, encouraging community ownership of local heritage, have been created in the last two years through the Project. An exciting education programme for both schools and adults is run alongside this to encourage more understanding and interest in the islands heritage and culture. There is involvement from the community at all levels with volunteers encouraged to participate in museum activities.
Taigh Chearsabhagh, which has around 30,000 visitors a year, has a full time staff of four, with seven part time staff and over 30 volunteers. The Carn Chearsabhagh Project received support from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Scottish Museums Council and the local authority, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar.
www.taigh-chearsabhagh.org
Press contact: Caitriona MacCuish, 01876 500 295;
caitriona@taigh-chearsabhagh.org
The Foundling Museum, Brunswick Square, London
The Foundling Museum opened in June 2004 in Bloomsbury on the site of the Foundling Hospital, London’s first home for abandoned children. Thanks to the connections of its founder, Thomas Coram, and governors, the artist William Hogarth and composer George Frideric Handel, the Hospital also became the first public art gallery, with artists donating works to support London’s fashionable new children’s charity.
The nationally important collections were hidden for decades and under serious threat of dispersal. They went on public display for the first time last year after a seven-year appeal for funding. £7.4 million was raised through private donations, charitable trusts and foundations, the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the HLF and the Art Fund.
The Museum, which has a full and part time staff of 14 and 75 volunteers, has been described as three museums in one. The Coram Children’s gallery tells the story of the Foundling Hospital and tes tifies, for the first time, to the lives of the 27,000 children cared for during its 200-year history. The exhibition is full of objects, images and oral testimonies from these children, such as the poignant tokems left by impoverished mothers in the hope that they might, one day, reclaim their children.
The Hospital’s art collection is housed in rooms whose 18th-century interiors were rescued from the original Hospital and includes the magnificent Court Room, considered to be one of the finest examples of a Rococo interior in London. The works of art include Hogarth’s iconic portrait of Captain Thomas Coram, his infamous modern moral history The March of the Guards to Finchley as well as works by Reynolds, Gainsborough, Wilson, Hudson, Highmore, Highman, Rysbrack and Roubiliac.
The Gerald Coke Handel Collection on the second floor, an appropriate home in view of the composer’s long association with the Foundling Hospital, contains manuscripts, printed scores, art works, memorabilia and literature relating to the life, work and legacy of Handel. Visitors can listen to his music in specially designed “musical chairs” and there are study facilities for scholars and researchers using the collection.
www.foundlingmuseum.org.uk
Press contact: Alison Duke on 020 7841 3604;
alison@foundlingmuseum.org.uk
Locomotion: National Railway Museum at Shildon, Co Durham
Locomotion is a new £11 million museum which opened to the public in September 2004. It is the first national museum in the North East of England. Developed on the site of the pioneering Stockton & Darlington Railway and the popular Timothy Hackworth Museum, this national resource is part of a six-year regeneration programme for Shildon, the world's first railway town, and has welcomed over 75,000 visitors already, against an annual target of 60,000.
The museum, part of the National Museum of Science & Industry, is the creation of a groundbreaking partnership between the National Railway Museum and the local authority, Sedgefield Borough Council. Local MPs Tony Blair and Derek Foster, attended the official opening on 22 October. Locomotion had many sponsors and was supported by a £5 million HLF grant and £2 million of European funding.
The museum's extensive collection holds 70 vehicles from the national collections many of which were previously at risk through outdoor storage or totally inaccessible to the public. Highlights include the original Sans Pareil, built to compete in the famous Rainhill Trials, the ground-breaking Advanced Passenger Train Experimental, and a magnificent NER Snow Plough. Locomotion has been designed to allow regular movement of vehicles in and out, accommodating everything from visiting legends like Flying Scotsman and City of Truro, to trains arriving for conservation and leaving for loan to other museums.
Local consultation was of paramount importance and members of the public were invited to take part in the selection process for an innovative new public art project on a railway signalling theme, using text messaging. An HLF grant funded Time Tracks, a community archive project that engages local people with Locomotion by recording and sharing their personal reminiscences.
www.nrm.org.uk
Press contact: Keira Meheux on 01904 686271;
keira.meheux@nmsi.ac.uk
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