Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
UK Branch
Press Releases
The Gulbenkian Prize 2006: Long List Announced
Date: 10 February 2006
What makes a museum and gallery great in Britain today? The long list for The Gulbenkian Prize for Museum and Galleries, announced today, Friday 10 February, aims to answer this question. As Britain’s biggest single arts prize, it is a £100,000 award given annually to one museum or gallery anywhere in the UK, and encompasses a panoply of projects both large and small.
Ranging from a new £33m national museum charting the industrial heritage of Wales to a new gallery run solely by volunteers at a medieval abbey in Oxfordshire, the Gulbenkian Prize long list reveals a desire for both cutting-edge technology and innovation in our museums, along with a keen nostalgia for our heritage.
The long list is as follows:
Cambridge & County Folk Museum, Cambridge – redevelopment of a local folk museum that achieves an imaginative marriage of old and new
Churchill Museum & Cabinet War Rooms, London – A new museum dedicated to the life and times of Winston Churchill
Dorchester Abbey Museum, Dorchester-upon-Thames, Oxon – This superb collection of worked medieval stones tells the 1400 year old story of the Abbey
Hunterian Museum, London – New permanent galleries displaying the oldest and most important medical collections in the world
The Concorde Experience, Museum of Flight, Near Edinburgh – This £2 million museum redevelopment offers visitors the chance to see the world's most iconic aircraft up close
National Waterfront Museum, Swansea – The new national museum that celebrates, through human stories, Welsh industry and innovation
Roald Dahl Museum & Story Centre, Great Missenden, Bucks – Brand new museum using Roald Dahl’s archive and work to inspire a love of stories
The Collection: Art & Archaeology in Lincolnshire, Lincoln – New museum displaying fine art and artefacts from Roman, Viking and Medieval eras
Brunel's ss Great Britain, Bristol – Brunel’s great ship superbly preserved for future generations
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, Yorkshire – The creation of The Underground Gallery, a new state-of-the-art gallery space
Professor Lord Winston, chair of the 2006 judges, says:
‘This year's long list shows how museums and galleries, large and small, throughout the country are continuing to innovate and explore the boundaries. We, the judges, face a thrilling if difficult task ahead of us as we visit them over the coming months.’
The 2006 judging panel represents a wide range of artistic, scientific and academic interests and museum experience.
With Robert Winston as chair, it comprises:
Michael Day, Chief Executive, Historic Royal Palaces;
Ekow Eshun, writer, journalist and broadcaster and artistic director of the ICA;
Diane Lees, director of the V&A Museum of Childhood;
Dr Elizabeth Mackenzie, Vice-Chair, British Association of Friends of Museums;
Joanna Moorhead, journalist and author;
Dan Snow, historian and broadcaster.
The four short-listed museums for the 2006 prize will be announced in April. The winner will be announced on Thursday 25th May at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London during Museum and Galleries Month 2006.
Six out of the 10 projects have been funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), demonstrating how lottery funding is central to transforming the UK’s 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. The 2004 winner was the 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.
For further information, images and interviews, 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
Out of hours: 07960 870867
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 National Art Collections 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 Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a season of special events throughout 2006 highlighting the work of the Foundation in the UK. The programme includes sole support for the Tate Triennial 2006: New British Art exhibition, an association that marks a long history of collaboration between the Foundation and Tate and draws attention to the UK Branch’s continued support of new and original art-making. There will also be a display at Tate Britain of British works from the Foundation’s Modern Art Centre in Lisbon (one of the largest collections of modern British art outside the UK); the publication of a new book on the history of the Foundation’s UK Branch; and the 2006 Atlantic Waves Festival featuring world-class Portuguese musicians.
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. Public funding support has also been provided by The Welsh Assembly Government.
Additional funding provided by sponsors Blackwall Green (Jewellery and Fine Art) and Consensus Business Group, and by the Gulbenkian Prize Patrons 2006:
Antenna Audio
Hanwell Instruments Ltd
The Arbib Foundation
Wragge & CoSupport in kind provided by:
24 Hour Museum
DFJ Vinhos Lda – ‘The New Portugal’ UK Office – D & F Wines
Farrer & Co
Inn SuppliesThe Heritage Lottery Fund has funded six out of the 10 Gulbenkian Award nominees this year with £26.9 million going specifically to the element of these projects that have been nominated for this prestigious arts prize. The 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. Over the last 11 years, it has supported more than 18,000 projects, allocating over £3.3 billion across the UK, £1 billion of which has been awarded to museums and galleries.
The Gulbenkian Prize for Museum of the Year Shortlist
Cambridge & County Folk Museum
The former White Horse Inn, a 300 year old, timber-framed building, became the Folk Museum in 1936. The museum aims to communicate the history and way of life of the people of Cambridge and its neighbourhood. Most of its collections are from 1750–1960 and almost every item in the museum was donated by local people. The displays have gradually and organically expanded.
Before the redevelopment the museum had begun to suffer from shortage of space for its growing displays as well as poor educational facilities and poor access for visitors. The museum Trust raised £1 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund and other sources for the redevelopment, which saw the construction of a strikingly-designed new building built from brick, slate and timber, merging the traditional with the contemporary. The challenge of the redevelopment was to keep the time-honoured feel of the displays and the intimacy of the building whilst making the museums more accessible to a 21st century public.
The ground floor of the museum retains many features of the inn and evokes the themes of eating, drinking and merriment, cooking, housework and laundry. Elsewhere, visitors see another side to the area with glimpses of college life over three centuries and take a look at the ‘town and gown’ divide.
The museum is run as an independent charity by five staff and twenty volunteers.
'Fabulous to revisit the museum in all its new splendour' From a local visitor
Press contact: Cameron Hawke-Smith, Curator
Tel: 01223 355159
Mobile: 07763 915423
E-mail: cameron@folkmuseum.org.uk
Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms
The Cabinet War Rooms is the preserved historic underground bunker HQ used by Winston Churchill as Prime Minister during the Second World War. It is operated as a branch of the Imperial War Museum. Further parts of the wartime estate have recently been restored and opened to the public, and a museum of the life of Sir Winston Churchill has been opened, privately funded at a cost of £6 million.
The Rooms are an appropriate location for such a museum, since it was there that Churchill met with his War Cabinet during the enemy bombing raids of 1940–41 and 1944–45, and it is there that his wartime underground bedroom and hotline link to the US President are preserved. The lack of a proper museum in Churchill’s name seemed a lamentable gap in British heritage, and so the IWM decided to create a museum that would illustrate and document the life, achievements and legacy of the man voted by a BBC poll in 2002 as The Greatest Briton ever, but avoiding the twin perils of iconoclasm and hagiography
The Museum opened to great acclaim in February 2005 and it has 32 staff and 8 volunteers. It tracks Churchill's life in five chapters, the central focus of which is a computer generated projection of a ‘timeline’ of his life running across the museum. The aim of this is to provide as comprehensive a picture of Churchill’s life within the space as possible, employing a mixture of simple, sophisticated and even playful forms of technology. The story therefore is presented in an engaging, but comprehensive fashion, which appeals to all, regardless of gender, age, nationality or ability. The iconic objects, images and sounds with which his name is automatically connected are there – including the 'siren suit', the cigars, the writings, the paintings, even the original wooden door to No10 Downing Street.
It is, undoubtedly, a fine model for personality museums of the future.
‘A most enthralling and insightful experience. Just a few hours here were more valuable than a year of history lessons. Long live the Museum!’ From an Australian visitor
Press contact: Ms Lucy Murphy
Direct tel: 020 7766 0155
Mobile: 07899 025491
E-mail: lmurphy@iwm.org.uk
Dorchester Abbey Museum, Oxfordshire
Situated in the small, picturesque village of Dorchester-on-Thames, where the River Thame joins the River Thames, Dorchester Abbey, home of this unique museum, is one of the largest churches in Oxfordshire.
The Abbey is the parish church of the village and has been a site of worship for over 1300 years. Its recent refurbishment included the construction of a traditional oak-framed pentice (a cloister-like annex) on the site of the original cloister walk. This houses part of the Abbey Museum known as the Cloister Gallery where the Abbey’s collection of worked medieval stones has been conserved, stored and displayed.
The Cloister Gallery display ‘If stones could speak…’ tells the 1400-year story of the Abbey, illustrates the craft of the medieval stonemasons, and is an educational resource for young and old. The display uses a novel means of mounting medieval stone artefacts, plus beautifully written and presented interpretation and subtle lighting, to provide visitors with an unforgettable impression of the Abbey’s past.
The Museum is run wholly by volunteers and its collections comprise artefacts and documentary material relating to the village of Dorchester on Thames. The museum welcomes over 5,000 visitors annually and is run on an annual budget of just £3,000. It is anticipated that the new Cloister Gallery display, which cost £111,000, will attract a huge increase in visitors particularly from schoolchildren and students.
‘…the most innovative, bold and exciting ecclesiastical display to have been undertaken in this country in recent years’ Dr Richard Riddell, University of Oxford
Press contact: Revd Sue Booys
Tel: 01865 341192
Mobile: 0781 5609602
E-mail: dorchesterabbey@enterprise.net
Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, London
Renewing any venerable museum is a task to be tackled with trepidation, especially if it contains Britain’s only publicly-accessible collection of anatomical and pathological preparations. Yet the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, one of the oldest and most important medical collections in the world, has done so brilliantly. With collections that span medicine, natural history and the arts over 200 years, it has become far more than just a specialist surgical museum.
At its centre the museum displays over 3000 anatomical and biological specimens collected by the surgeon and naturalist John Hunter (1728–1793). Through Hunter’s work the displays explore the interaction of science, art and medicine in the 18th century. Other new galleries reveal the evolution of modern surgery, drawing together the perspectives of patients and surgeons, and promote the use of the museum’s collections for teaching and research. In short, the £3.1 million project has completely renewed the existing displays.
Since reopening in February 2005 over 23,000 people have visited the museum, a 100% increase on pre-project figures. It actively promotes public interest in and understanding of a collection previously considered suitable only for medical professionals, and as such, it offers a model to other institutions looking to find new uses and audiences for specialist collections.
The new Hunterian Museum is no longer an archaic private resource for surgeons maintained out of a sense of duty, but a ‘shop window’ on to their work. By hosting public lectures on current issues in surgery and supporting workshops to encourage students from more diverse backgrounds to consider medicine as a career, the museum is playing an active role in shaping the surgical profession for the future.
‘…to walk into this room filled with light and monochrome colours, and the silveriness you get from clear liquid and glass. And SO many fascinating things to look at. I was really entranced by it.’ From a visitor
Press contact: Sheila Thompson
Direct tel: 020 7591 9610
E-mail: sheilat@blj.co.uk
Museum of Flight, The Concorde Experience, East Fortune, Near Edinburgh
The £2 million acquisition and museum redevelopment at the Museum of Flight offers visitors the chance to see the world’s most iconic aircraft up close. It tells the story of its race to break the sound barrier to the retirement of the fleet through the experiences of the people who worked and travelled on board.
This exciting new exhibition tells the story of Concorde through the lives of those privileged enough to have worked and travelled on board. Visitors can experience the lives of celebrities and step on board to see where rock stars and royalty would have sipped champagne, whilst flying faster than the speed of sound. An audio handset enables a former Concorde pilot to guide people through the cabin to inspect the original cockpit and décor. They can also learn about the epic journey which Scotland’s Concorde undertook by road and sea to reach her final home at the Museum of Flight.
The Museum of Flight is one of six branches of the National Museums of Scotland. The Museum is based at East Fortune, a historic airfield which was used in both World Wars. The museum opened in 1975 and now displays the most wide-ranging aviation collection in the UK, including civil and military aircraft, engines and instruments, flying clothing, a reference library and photographic and other archives.
The Museum of Flight is staffed by 21 full-time staff and a pool of 50 volunteers who assist with conservation, guided tours and visitors services. The Concorde Experience opened to the public in March 2005 and since its opening visitor numbers to the museum have trebled. Over £2 million was sourced to pay for this major museum acquisition secured from the Scottish Executive and British Airways.
‘It’s supersonic and I will be back.’ From a visitor
Press contact: Susan Gray
Tel: 0131 247 4088
Mobile: 07795 391 893
E-mail: s.gray@nms.ac.uk
National Waterfront Museum, Swansea
Located in the heart of Swansea’s regenerated Maritime Quarter, the new National Waterfront Museum opened on 17th October 2005. Created from a re-furbished late-Victorian warehouse and adjoining new galleries, the museum provides a unique insight into the effects of industrialisation and maritime trading on the people of Wales and beyond.
The story it tells begins in the eighteenth century and continues to the present in order to give visitors an understanding of where Wales is today and what the future might hold. It aims to explain industrial history in human rather than technical terms and has already attracted huge numbers of both traditional visitors and those who don’t ‘do’ museums.
Within the four main gallery spaces of the museum are fifteen themed areas, each telling its own story of Wales’ industrial past and present. Alongside the big headline items – the large green-and-brass-cogged brick pressing machine and the replica of the world's first steam locomotive – and hundreds of beautifully-displayed objects, are the human stories. Using the museum’s ‘Sit and Point’ features, the visitor can ‘call up’ images of the past, such as the reminiscences of elderly ladies recounting what it was like trying to find a job, a husband or a place to live in the 1930s and 40s. With a simple click, they can, for example, visit the home of Dr George Bird, his wife, two children and four servants, and discover the kind of remedies he would have prescribed.
The National Waterfront Museum cost a total of £33 million and was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (£11 million), the Welsh European Funding Office (£3.7 million), the Welsh Development Agency (£2.5 million), Wales Tourist Board (£1.6 million), the National Museum of Wales (£4.5 million), the City & County of Swansea (£3.7 million), the Welsh Assembly Government (£5.7 million) and through fundraising (£0.75 million). In its first two weeks, 26,000 people passed through its doors; its target for its first six months is 100,000 visitors.
‘Remarkable. A credit to everyone concerned and surely an inspiration to our coming generation.’ From a Swansea resident
Press contact: Fay Harris
Tel: 01792 638970
Mobile: 07970 016761
E-mail: fay.harris@museumwales.ac.uk
Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre, Great Missenden
This new museum, opened in June 2005, aims to inspire a love of stories in everyone by using the Roald Dahl archive, his life and work.
On entering through the chocolate doors, visitors can follow Roald Dahl’s writing process and discover the stories behind the stories on touch-screen monitors and through the biographical galleries. In addition to visiting a replica of Dahl’s famous writing hut in the Story Centre, adults and children alike can be creative with words, characters and images with the help of their own Story Ideas Book and the interactive displays. Tours, story-telling sessions, craft activities, author events, illustrators and a writer-in-residence complete the story-centered experience.
At the heart of the project is the Roald Dahl archive, which contains almost everything that he ever wrote, from ideas books and first drafts to finished typescripts and proofs.
The museum is housed in a series of buildings set around a courtyard, some of which are Grade II listed, including a 16th century timber framed building and a 19th century brick and flint function hall. The aim was to build a museum which was both beautiful and functional.
The capital budget was £4.3 million, half of which came from the Dahl family. The rest came from private sources, charitable trusts, the Heritage Lottery Fund, SEMLAC and the Arts Council.
The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre is an independent charity with twenty-two staff and three volunteers.
‘The museum may be small but it has a big attitude.’ From a visitor
Press contact: Isabelle Reynolds, PR and marketing coordinator
Tel: 01494 892197
E-mail: isabelle@roalddahlmuseum.org
The Collection: Art and Archaeology in Lincolnshire
The Collection is Lincoln’s new state-of-the-art £12.5m museum, an amalgamation of the former City and County Museum and Usher Gallery. Opened on 4th October 2005 by HRH The Duke of Gloucester, the museum attracted over 40,000 visitors in its first three months of operation.
The opening was the result of years of planning, starting in 1993 when the City and County Museum was closed and relocated temporarily while a new permanent site was sought. When no progress had been made by 1999, groups from the community joined forces to create the Museum Action Group who ran a media campaign and lobbied councillors to develop a new museum which would house the two million objects in the archaeological collections.
The result is The Collection, a new building that houses internationally significant historic treasures covering over 250,000 years of history in Lincolnshire. One of the most important exhibits is a 3x3m Roman mosaic which was discovered at the bottom of the museum’s goods lift shaft – the largest mosaic discovered in Lincolnshire for over a century. The building is exciting, modern and functional in form, utilising traditional, high quality materials including bronze and local Lincolnshire limestone, and incorporates over £125,000 worth of new public art.
The Collection employs 25 staff; it was partly funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the East Midlands Development Agency and the European Regional development Funding.
'Fantastic - a real asset for Lincoln' From a local visitor
www.thecollection.lincoln.museum
Press contact: Karen Spencer, External Media Manager
Tel: 01522 552303
Mobile: 07979 986079
E-mail: karen.spencer@linconshire.gov.uk
SS Great Britain, Bristol
Brunel’s ss Great Britain is one of the UK’s most significant historic ships. Dubbed the great-grandmother of virtually every ship afloat today, she was the world’s first screw-propelled, iron-built passenger liner, and carried passengers to New York, emigrants to Australia, troops to India and the Crimea, and coal to San Francisco. She ended her working life as recently as 1934 in the Falkland Islands.
In 1970, she was salvaged and returned across the Atlantic to her birthplace, Bristol’s Great Western Dockyard. Historic ships are notoriously difficult to preserve and maintain. Too large to be housed indoors, soaked in salt and exposed to the elements, they are very biodegradable. By 1998, the ss Great Britain’s condition was extremely poor.
A project team was charged with preserving the great ship in a sustainable way for future generations to enjoy and to make the ss Great Britain a truly exciting and accessible museum. After eight years’ work, she was 're-launched' on 16th July 2005.
Now the ss Great Britain stands resplendent in her dockyard home. She is surrounded by a glass ‘sea’ which acts as the roof of a giant dehumidification system, the secret to the ship’s long-term survival in the open air, and a stunning visual effect.
The ship herself provides a wonderful emotional experience for the visiting public where cabins and decks are enlivened with sounds and smells, and by personal audio companion guides. Visitors choose how they travel – First Class, Steerage, with a Maritime Archaeologist, or, for children, with Sinbad, the ship’s cat. Alongside the ship, original dockyard buildings have become the new Victorian-style Dockyard Museum and Medlock Education Centre.
The restoration of the ss Great Britain cost £11.3 million and was met by an £8.8 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and £2.6 million from supporters and members. Just over £200,000 remains to be raised.
Visitor admissions (77,000 since opening last July) and venue hire will meet running costs and routine maintenance.
‘I was enormously impressed by what you have done for the Great Ship, and also at the fantastic new museum. The crowds gathered at the opening … were proof enough of the love that Bristolians have for her and you have done them proud.’ Adam Hart-Davis, broadcaster, writer and scientist
Press contact: Renny Jones
Tel: 0117 926 0680 ext 219
Mobile 07764 771 657
E-mail: rennyj@ss-great-britain.com
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, The Underground Gallery, near Wakefield
Founded in 1977, Yorkshire Sculpture Park has pioneered the practice of curating temporary exhibitions in the open air and is widely recognized as one of the best sites in the world to see contemporary sculpture in a landscape setting. Its important permanent collection includes works by Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Anthony Caro, Antony Gormley and Elisabeth Frink.
The Underground Gallery was commissioned in April 2003 and was completed in December 2004 at a cost of £2.75 million, with funding from the European Regional Development Fund and Yorkshire Forward. With over 600 square metres of space and three large galleries, it is one of the largest purpose-built galleries to have been constructed in Britain for a number of years. To fit sensitively with the historic landscape of the sculpture park, the Gallery was tucked under the sloping lawn of the 18th century Bothy Garden, a much-loved focus of the Sculpture Park with extensive views of the Bretton estate, extending what the gallery’s Executive Director Peter Murray calls ‘the pencil line in the landscape’.
Nestling into the landscape, the gallery is flooded with light from a 50 metre glazed concourse. Its environmental strategy is based on the principles of passive control, so that the building maintains a stable temperature without the need for air conditioning. The Underground Gallery shows how a contemporary building can successfully work within a historic setting. Artists and sculptors were consulted to gain a thorough understanding of what they wanted from the space, resulting in a gallery which can accommodate both large and small scale sculptures, as well as works using a variety of media such as paper, light and video.
The Underground Gallery has enabled YSP to build on its worldwide reputation and extend the scope and range of media it can show. Examples of this include the William Turnbull retrospective (May–Oct 2005) and the current James Turrell light installations (Nov 2005–Sept 2006).
‘The gallery is a wonderful piece of design and I particularly like the way the modern building sits within and adds to the historic landscape.’ From a local visitor
Press contact: Jane Kenworthy
Direct tel: 01924 832502
Mobile: 0787 9621 405
E-mail: jane.kenworthy@ysp.co.uk
