This year’s £100,000 Art Fund prize for Museum of the Year has been awarded to the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow. The gallery, which reopened in August 2012 after a major £5million redevelopment, was one of ten UK museums shortlisted for the award.
The statement from the award’s five judges, which this year included the artist Bob and Roberta Smith and MP Tristram Hunt, said: “This truly is Museum of the Year. Its extraordinary collections, beautifully presented, draw the visitor engagingly through Morris’s life and work and through the building itself. Setting the highest standards of curatorship, and reaching out impressively to its local community.”
Featured on a-n News when it reopened, the William Morris Gallery’s first show in its new temporary exhibition space was Grayson Perry’s Walthamstow Tapestry. The gallery will host Jeremy Deller’s Venice Biennale show, English Magic, when it tours next year; Deller’s show features a mural of a giant-sized William Morris throwing Roman Abramovich’s luxury yacht into the Venice lagoon.
The other shortlisted venues for the award ranged from the BALTIC in Gateshead to the Narbeth Museum in Pembrokeshire. All were visited by the judges as part of the judging process.
The £10,000 Clore Award for museum learning went to The Hepworth, Wakefield, which was praised for its education programme. The judges said: “The integration of curatorial and learning programmes – which so many museums attempt – has rarely been achieved so completely and impressively as at The Hepworth Wakefield. It is educational, aspirational, and inspirational to the core.”
