7 July 2016

York Art Gallery have come runners up for the Art Fund Museum of the Year Award 2016.

The Victoria and Albert Museum won the £100,000 Art Fund Museum of the Year prize at an award ceremony last night (Wednesday July 6 2016) at the Natural History Museum, London. The Duchess of Cambridge presented the award to the V&A, who were one of five shortlisted for the biggest museum prize in the world.

The Gallery was shortlisted for the award in April 2016 following its £8 million transformation, reopening on 1 August 2015. The other nominees, and fellow runners up, were the Arnolfini in Bristol, the Bethlem Museum of the Mind, London, Jupiter Artland near Edinburgh, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

The Art Fund Museum of the Year prize is presented annually to one outstanding museum, which, in the opinion of the judges, has shown exceptional imagination, innovation and achievement, in the preceding 12 months.

This year’s judges were: Gus Casely-Hayford, curator and art historian; Will Gompertz, BBC Arts Editor; Ludmilla Jordanova, Professor of History and Visual Culture, Durham University; Cornelia Parker, artist; Stephen Deuchar (chair of the judging panel), Director, Art Fund.