THE WHITWORTH Art Gallery has been nominated for the most coveted award in UK museums - the Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year 2015, worth £100k.
With 130,000 visitors in two months we have exceeded all our hopes for our new building - Maria Balshaw
The lucrative nomination for the Oxford Road gallery - relaunched in March following a spectacular £15m extension and redevelopment - comes only a week after MUMA's redesign scooped RIBA's North West Building of the Year.
Read here - Does The New Whitworth Art Gallery Work?
The Whitworth has some serious competition for that hundred thousand, mind.
Also nominated this year are: the Tower of London in recognition of the superb WWI commemoration, Blood Swept the Lands, which saw an estimated five million people visit 888,246 ceramic poppies; the Imperial War Museum London; The MAC in Belfast; Oxford University's Museum of Natural History; and another North West nomination for Altrincham's Georgian mansion, Dunham Massey, recognized for its recreation of a 1917-19 military hospital on site.
The winner will be announced on Wednesday 1 July at the Tate Modern.
Whitworth Director Maria Balshaw (left) with artist Cornelia ParkerMaria Balshaw, Director of the Whitworth, said: “When we reopened the Whitworth on 14 February we asked visitors to ‘Fall in Love Again’ with the Whitworth. With 130,000 visitors in two months we have exceeded all our hopes for our new building.
"Architects MUMA have delivered a thoughtful and sensitive expansion of our gallery that connects us to our park and to new and more diverse audiences. Our period of closure allowed us to develop programmes and partnerships that have taken the gallery to people we would have never reached: from locals at Moss Side Asda, to the crowds at Manchester’s best pubs, to city centre shoppers at Selfridges.
"Being shortlisted for Museum of the Year is a huge honour and a thank you to all visitors, old and new, who have come with us on this journey of transformation.”
The Whitworth - gallery of images
Art Fund Director, Stephen Deuchar, said: “This is by any measure an exciting and diverse shortlist showing great heights of creativity and ambition. Despite a difficult environment of funding cuts, UK museums continue to be inventive, surprising and exhilarating.”
The Art Fund Prize for Museum of The Year was established in 2003 to recognize the finest museums in the UK. The 2014 award went to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield.
