Dulwich Picture Gallery in running for £100,000 Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year 2013
Dulwich Picture Gallery is delighted that it is one of the ten finalists for the prestigious Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year 2013. Celebrating the very best UK museums and galleries, it is the largest arts prize in the UK. The prize aims to reward and highlight innovation and creativity in bringing objects and collections to life.
As well as the £100,000 for Museum of the Year, Dulwich Picture Gallery is also in the running for the Clore Award for Learning, an additional award of £10,000 which recognises achievements in learning programmes in UK museums. Both winners will be drawn from the ten finalists.
On reaching the top ten, Ian Dejardin, Sackler Director of Dulwich Picture Gallery, said: “’For me, Dulwich Picture Gallery is perennially my own personal Museum of the Year. My staff and I work incredibly hard to make it as interesting, as unique, as accessible, and as effective in delivering the whole package of engagement with art as we possibly can – something we know can change lives. Being nominated for the Art Fund Museum of the Year, with all that that implies in terms of recognition by our peers, means a great deal.”
The Gallery entered its third century in 2012 with a re-focused sense of its founders’ desire to display art for the ‘inspection of the public’ striving to reach out to new audiences well–beyond those considered typical of an Old Master Gallery.
The finalists were chosen by an independent panel of judges chaired by Art Fund Director, Stephen Deuchar and including the Daily Telegraph’s Arts Editor Sarah Crompton, writer and broadcaster Bettany Hughes, historian Tristram Hunt MP and the artist Bob and Roberta Smith.
The ten finalists (in alphabetical order) are:
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead
The Beaney, Canterbury
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield
Horniman Museum & Gardens, London
Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow
Museum of Archeology & Anthropology, Cambridge
Narberth Museum, Wales
Preston Park Museum, Stockton-on-Tees
William Morris Gallery, London
Stephen Deuchar, Director of the Art Fund, said: “The quality and diversity of the UK’s museums and galleries is truly exceptional and the job of this prize is to draw attention to that. As the national charity for art, we hope that by shining a light on the ten finalists we’ll encourage people to visit and celebrate these bright beacons of culture across the UK.”
The winner will be announced live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row from the award ceremony at the V&A in London on 4 June 2013.
-Ends
Full information about the Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year and the Clore Award for Learning can be found at artfund.org/prize
For further information about Dulwich Picture Gallery please contact:
Madeline Adeane, Press Officer, m.adeane@dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk, 020 8299 8710
For further information about the Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year and the Clore Award for Learning please contact:
Caroline Hunt, Press Relations Manager, chunt@artfund.org, 020 7225 4804
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Notes to Editors
Dulwich Picture Gallery
Dulwich Picture Gallery is England’s first purpose-built public art gallery, founded in 1811 and designed by Regency architect Sir John Soane. It houses one of the finest collections of Old Masters in the country, especially rich in French, Italian and Spanish Baroque paintings and in British portraits from the Tudor period to the 19th century. The Gallery’s permanent collection is complimented by its diverse and critically acclaimed year round temporary exhibitions.
For over a quarter of a century Dulwich Picture Gallery’s award-winning learning and community engagement programmes have reached beyond the Gallery’s exhibition programme to bring art to the South London community through outreach initiatives including ‘Youth Engagement Programme’, ‘Good Times: Art for Older People’ and ‘Prescription for Art’.
Dulwich Picture Gallery’s Directorship position is endowed as The Sackler Director of Dulwich Picture Gallery thanks to a generous grant given in recognition of the Gallery’s standing and achievements in both its exhibition and community engagement programmes. The grant from the Dr Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation endows in perpetuity this position and secures the excellence and sustainability of the Directorship for the Gallery’s future. The Gallery has been granted £2 million in Catalyst Endowment funding by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Catalyst Endowments scheme. This challenges the Gallery to raise an additional £4 million in matching donations by June 2016 in order to secure the grant and establish a £6 million visual arts learning endowment fund.
About the Art Fund
The Art Fund is a national fundraising charity helping museums to buy and show great art for everyone. Over the past five years we’ve given £24m to help over 200 museums and galleries acquire works of art for their collections, from ancient sculpture and treasure hoards to Old Master paintings and contemporary commissions. We also support a range of programmes which promote museums and their collections to wider audiences, including the national tour of the ARTIST ROOMS collection, the Art Fund Prize which rewards and celebrates Museum of the Year, and our Art Guide, a pioneering smartphone app offering the most comprehensive guide to seeing art across the UK. We are independently funded, the majority of our income coming from 95,000 members who, through the National Art Pass, enjoy free entry to over 200 museums, galleries and historic houses across the UK, as well as 50% off entry to major exhibitions. Find out more about the Art Fund and the National Art Pass at artfund.org.
The Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year 2013
Each year the Art Fund celebrates the very best UK museums and galleries, rewarding and highlighting their innovation and creativity in bringing objects and collections to life. An independent panel of judges comes together to put the spotlight on museums battling it out for the Prize, and crown the winner Museum of the Year at a prestigious ceremony in London.
The past winners are:
2012 Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter
2011 The British Museum, for A History of the World, London
2010 The Ulster Museum, Belfast
2009 Wedgwood Museum, Stoke-on-Trent
2008 The Lightbox gallery and museum, Woking
(formerly the Gulbenkian Prize for museums and galleries)
2007 Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, East Sussex
2006 Brunel’s SS Great Britain, Bristol
2005 Big Pit: the National Mining Museum of Wales
2004 Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
2003 National Centre for Citizenship and the Law, Galleries of Justice, Nottingham
The Clore Award
The Clore Award for Learning recognises and celebrates museums and galleries which put learning at the heart of what they do. Previous winners include Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery. More information on the Clore Award for Museum Learning can be found at artfund.org/prize
The Clore Duffield Foundation is chaired by Dame Vivien Duffield DBE and has a strong focus on supporting cultural learning, particularly within museums and galleries and at heritage sites. It is one of the founding partners of the Cultural Learning Alliance, a collective voice working to ensure that all children and young people have meaningful access to culture in this difficult economic climate.www.cloreduffield.org.uk. www.culturallearningalliance.org.uk