Sky Arts goes behind the scenes to talk to the curators of museums and galleries who are competing for this year's The Art Fund Prize; the UK's largest single arts prize for museums and galleries.

 

  Video: Watch Sky Arts The Art Fund Prize 2010 >>

 

The £100,000 award goes to the museum or gallery with a project completed in the last year that demonstrates the most originality, imagination and excellence. This year’s judging panel is chaired by television presenter Kirsty Young and includes A.C Grayling and artist Jonathan Yeo. The judges will visit each of the eleven long-listed institutions across the UK, before deciding on a short list of four in mid May. The winner of the Art Fund Prize will be announced at a reception in London on 30 June 2010.

This year’s long list includes:

The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Blists Hill Victorian Town, Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust
Great North Museum: Hancock, Newcastle
Hampton Court Palace, Surrey, for Henry VIII: heads and hearts
The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry
The Leach Pottery, St Ives
The National Army Museum, London, for Conflicts of Interest
The Natural History Museum, London, for the Darwin Centre
The Royal Institution of Great Britain, for Science in the Making
Towner, Eastbourne
The Ulster Museum, Belfast
 
The Art Fund is the UK’s leading membership charity that helps museums and galleries buy works of art for everyone to enjoy. It does this through awarding grants, campaigning and fundraising. Recent highlights include: leading the £3.3 million campaign to save the Staffordshire Hoard, a fundraising initiative that was kick-started with a £300,000 Art Fund grant; helping secure Anthony d’Offay’s collection, ARTIST ROOMS, for the nation in February 2008 with a grant of £1million, and touring the collection throughout the UK in 2009 and 2010; and creating the ‘Buy a Brushstroke’ public appeal which raised over £550,000 to keep Turner’s Blue Rigi in the UK. The Fund is financed by the generosity of its 80,000 members and supporters who love art and the institutions that house great collections.

To find out more about the Art Fund and membership, visit www.artfund.org