Tower of London poppies shortlisted for museum of the year award

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/apr/24/tower-london-poppies-shortlisted-museum-year-award

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The sea of ceramic poppies installed at the Tower of London last year to commemorate the outbreak of the first world war has led to the castle being shortlisted for the 2015 museum of the year award.

The Tower, looked after by Historic Royal Palaces, is one of six organisations which will compete for the top prize of £100,000, the most lucrative in the UK museum sector.

Also up for the Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year 2015 will be the Whitworth gallery in Manchester, Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History, the MAC in Belfast, the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London, and Dunham Massey, a National Trust property in Altrincham, Cheshire.

Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red was the most visited and talked about public art installation for a generation. Created by the ceramic artist Paul Cummins and staged by theatre designer Tom Piper, it consisted of 888,246 ceramic red poppies – one for every British and Commonwealth soldier who died during the first world war – being planted in the castle’s moat over four months, with the last poppy placed on 11 November.

Judges for the museum prize said: “This exceptional public art project helped place HM Tower of London at the forefront of innovation in the museum sector.”

Each of the museums has a celebrity backer singing the praises of their favourite building in the Guardian’s Saturday Review.

For the Tower the TV historian Lucy Worsley writes: “The sight of the crowds, hushed, respectful and yet interested, observing the poppies, or listening to the nightly calling of the roll of the fallen, will stay with me forever.”

The first world war centenary played a part in three of the nominations for Museum of the Year.

IWM London was nominated for its new permanent first world war galleries as well as the redevelopment which transformed the museum’s atrium.

Dunham Massey, a Georgian country house which was home to the Booth and Grey families for 350 years, was shortlisted for its “extraordinary” Sanctuary from the Trenches exhibition which recreated the Stamford military hospital as it had been in 1917-19.

The Whitworth is on the list after a £15m redevelopment. Musician Johnny Marr writes: “The new galleries are as good as any I’ve seen on my travels.

“What strikes me now is that its building embraces all sorts of different people, those who know about art and those who are curious.”

The MAC (Metropolitan Arts Centre) in Belfast is nominated for a range of activities including the the inaugural MAC International exhibition and prize, the largest art prize in Ireland.

Completing the shortlist is the Museum of Natural History in Oxford which reopened last year after 14 months of closure for redevelopment. Supporter David Attenborough writes that the refurbishment “of the architecture, the collections and the experience of being in the museum ensures that the sense of excitement it generated in the middle 19th century remains palpable to visitors today”.

The judges this year are the artist Michael Landy, critic and author Alice Rawsthorn, journalist Fiammetta Rocco and Axel Rüger, the director of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Stephen Deuchar, the director of the Art Fund and chair of judges, said the shortlist was, by any measure, “exciting and diverse” and showed “great heights of creativity and ambition.

“Despite a difficult environment of funding cuts, UK museums continue to be inventive, surprising and exhilarating.”

The winner will be named at Tate Modern on 1 July and will join a list which includes Yorkshire Sculpture Park last year, the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, north London (2013) and the British Museum (2011).