Polar Museum short listed for £100000 Art Fund Prize

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Willow Silvani documentations assistant of the Scott Polar Research Institute with the Shackleton letters

Friday, May 20, 2011
11:10 AM

The Polar Museum in Cambridge has been short listed for a ‘Museum of the Year’ award – and a £100,000 prize.

The University of Cambridge museum was among four museums across the UK chosen from a list of 10 by The Art Fund Prize 2011.

The winning museum will be presented the £100,000 prize on 15 June at Tate Britain.

The Polar Museum, was selected for Promoting Britain’s Polar Heritage – a major £1.7 million renovation of galleries and stores at the UK’s only museum dedicated to the Polar Regions, their exploration and science.

The museum, which was established to preserve the collections relating to Polar exploration and – later – scientific research in the Polar Regions, hold 10,000 objects, 100,000 images and the world’s largest polar archive of one million documents.

Key items include Captain Oates’s sleeping bag and the last letters from Captain Scott’s Polar party to their families and friends.

Heather Lane, Keeper of Collections at the Polar Museum, said: “This is a real tribute to the efforts of the very small team here, who have worked so hard to make the collections truly accessible. We hope that everyone will support us again in the next round of the public vote.”

Michael Portillo, Chair of the Judges, said: “We hope that the process of touring the long listed museums has illustrated the fine work being done across the UK, and that is in itself, I believe, a useful outcome of the Art Fund Prize.”

Stephen Deuchar, Director of the Art Fund said: “Taking the short list as a snapshot of UK museums and galleries, the sheer variety of scale, subject matter and locality goes to show just how diverse and idiosyncratic this country’s cultural institutions are.”

The other other short listed museums are: The British Museum, London, for A History of the World; The new Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway, Scotland; and The Roman Baths Museum, Bath.

* To vote for the Polar museum log on to www.artfundprize.org.uk/vote and register your view by 5pm 7 June.


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