It’s been a difficult few years for Britain’s museums. Forced to close their doors because of Covid-19, they then had to adjust to a new landscape, all while the arts and culture budget was slashed at like a piñata by the government. It makes the Art Fund Museum of the Year prize feel like a chance to take a breather and reflect.
This year’s winner will take home £120,000 and be announced in a ceremony at the British Museum on 12 July, with the four runners-up each receiving £15,000. The nominees are: Scapa Flow, a remote body of water in Orkney, Scotland, which once housed Vikings and, during both world wars, the British naval fleet, and which has been transformed into a museum to document the human stories that unfurled there; Glasgow’s Burrell Collection, which reopened this spring after a six-year, £68.25m refurbishment; the Natural History Museum, filled with precious wonders of the natural world, and a rite of passage for schoolchildren on trips; Belfast’s Mac, a theatre and exhibition venue that has given space for a new generation of Northern Irish artists to find their voice; and Leighton House in London, once the opulent abode of legendary painter Frederic Leighton.
