The Art Fund’s Museum of the Year shortlist was announced today (29 April) with Bristol’s Arnolfini; the Bethlem Museum of the Mind in south London; Jupiter Artland near Edinburgh; London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and the York Art Gallery in the north of England being nominated for the £100,000 prize.
“Each one of these five museums is outstanding—not just for the collections they display, but for the people who work there, and the visitors whose lives they can change,” says the director of the Art Fund, Stephen Deuchar.
The winner is due to be announced on 6 July at the Natural History Museum in London. The prize is awarded to a museum that “has shown exceptional imagination, innovation and achievement in the preceding year”, says a press statement. The judging panel this year includes the artist Cornelia Parker.
The V&A, the biggest institution on the shortlist, unveiled its Europe 1600-1815 galleries last year and organised the blockbuster show Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.
The York Art Gallery reopened in August 2015 after an £8m expansion, which included revealing the Victorian-era building’s vaulted roof and creating a new space in the top-lit space for its collection of British studio ceramics.
A sculpture park in Scotland, Jupiter Artland, features site-specific commissions placed in 100-acres of woodland and meadow. In 2015 the institution opened the Ballroom Gallery and launched a programme to support emerging artists to produce temporary outdoor works. Artland will be hoping to follow the success of another mainly open-air venue, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, which won the Museum of the Year prize in 2014.
Bristol's Arnolfini celebrated 40 years at its harbour-side location last year. During its anniversary year the centre for contemporary art organised a major show by the Bristol-based artist Richard Long.
Probably the least well-known nominee is the Bethlem Museum of the Mind in Bromley, south London. It houses art and historic objects relating to the history of mental health care and treatment. The museum moved to a newly refurbished art deco building at the Bethlem Royal Hospital, which is the UK’s oldest psychiatric institution. The museum's collection includes works by the Victorian artist Richard Dadd, who was detained at the hospital for two decades.