The Gulbenkian Prize for museums and galleries 2007 call for entries for UK’s largest arts prize
30/8/06

Submissions for The Gulbenkian Prize for museums and galleries 2007 – the UK’s single biggest arts prize - are invited from Friday 1 September 2006.

Now in its fifth year, the £100,000 prize is awarded annually to one museum or gallery in the UK, regardless of its size or budget, for the best new development of the previous calendar year. Excellence, imagination and innovation should be demonstrated along with an ability to challenge traditional public perceptions. Candidates should highlight particular projects or initiatives – exhibition programmes, community projects or a new building, for example – that have won the support of visitors and helped promote the museum or gallery to a wider audience.

The chair of this year’s judging panel is the writer and broadcaster, Francine Stock. Francine has worked for the BBC as reporter and presenter for a range of television and radio programmes across current affairs and arts including Newsnight and BBC Radio 4's award-winning Front Row. She has written two novels, the first of which, A Foreign Country, was short listed for the Whitbread First Novel Award. Her fellow judges will be announced later this year.

The Gulbenkian Prize for museums and galleries is open to all museums and galleries in the UK. Last year’s short list – Brunel’s ss Great Britain, Bristol, The Collection: Art & Archaeology in Lincolnshire, The Hunterian Museum, London, and The Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield - highlighted the diversity of applications that the Gulbenkian Prize Trustees want to encourage.

Applicants must have opened, redeveloped or launched a new project or programme of activity that has come to fruition in the calendar year to 31 December 2006.

The closing date for entries is 3 November 2006. More information can be found at www.thegulbenkianprize.org.uk and applications forms will be available from 1 September 2006. The long list of ten will be announced early in 2007, followed by the announcement of the short list of four in April 2007. The winner will be announced during Museums and Galleries Month on May 24th 2007 at an awards ceremony at the Royal Institution of British Architects, London.

Last year’s winner was Brunel’s ss Great Britain, Bristol, the world’s first great iron ocean liner, which recorded a 130% increase in visitor figures following the prize.  In 2005, Big Pit: National Mining Museum of Wales, a preserved coal mine, was awarded the prize. 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 holds for one year the Gulbenkian Prize bowl in enamelled silver, commissioned from the artist Vladimir Böhm.

Notes to editors:

• The Gulbenkian Prize for museums and galleries is administered by The Museum Prize, a charitable company created in 2001 by the Campaign for Museums, the Museums Association, The Art Fund and National Heritage. 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 Penelope, Viscountess Cobham. The Trustees include representatives of all four founding organisations.
  
  
• The UK Branch of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, whose headquarters are in Lisbon, is responsible for grant aid in the UK and Republic of Ireland and runs funding programmes in arts, social change, education and Anglo-Portuguese cultural relations. The Foundation celebrated its 50th anniversary with a season of special events throughout 2006 highlighting the work of the Foundation in the UK, including the publication of a new book on the history of the UK Branch and the 2006 Atlantic Waves festival featuring world-class Portuguese musicians.
  
  Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian was a distinguished private collector. His collections are housed in the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, which is recognised as one of the world’s best small museums. The Foundation’s Modern Art Centre, also in Lisbon, has one of the largest collections of contemporary British art outside the UK. A selection of these works are currently on display at Tate Britain.
  
  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 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 museums and galleries under Renaissance, its ground-breaking programme to transform England’s regional museums.

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