Prize criteria and timetable

The entry period for the 2009 Art Fund Prize has now closed. We are grateful to all the museums and galleries that submitted entries. The long list will be announced in February 2009.

What are we looking for?

The single award of £100,000 will be presented in June 2009 to the museum or gallery whose entry, in the opinion of the judges:

• demonstrates originality, imagination and excellence;
• extends public access and understanding of works of art and artefacts of aesthetic interest from any era and culture;
• has the capacity to promote wider public appreciation of museums and galleries and their collections;
• shows imaginative development, display and interpretation of museum and gallery collections including the creative use of artists and designers to interpret non-art collections;
• demonstrates excellence of design, whether in exhibitions or buildings;
• has clearly won the support and enthusiasm of its visitors and users;
• is likely to provide a lasting legacy.

Check whether your project is eligible

An entry for the 2009 Prize may be submitted for any kind of museum and gallery project, so long as it was completed, or mainly undertaken, during the calendar year 2008. If your project will not open to the public until after the closing date of 31 October 2008, you may still enter it as long as it opens before 31 December 2008.

Although your entry should be for a defined project, the Judges will wish to understand how it has contributed to the museum or gallery’s work as a whole.

Experience has shown that it is difficult for the Judges to assess temporary exhibitions that are no longer running at the time of assessment. The Museum Prize Trustees have therefore agreed that to be eligible for consideration, temporary exhibitions should still be running during the judging period, at the time of the award in June 2009 and, ideally, for a reasonable period after that.

We recognise that some kinds of projects such as education and other activity programmes, cannot be ‘seen’ in the same way, so it is important to think about how you would present such a project to the Judges if long-listed.

The Prize Administrator can give further guidance on these points.

Check whether your organisation is eligible

The Prize is open to all museums and galleries in the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. We normally expect applicants to be participants in the Museum Registration/Accreditation Scheme operated by The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA).

Exceptions may be considered where organisations are in the public sector, or have charitable status, and whose activities are based on the care and interpretation of collections of historical, artistic or scientific interest. The Trustees’ decision on eligibility is final.

Only one entry may be submitted per individual museum or gallery. Where an organisation operates several museums and galleries, an entry may be submitted for each, but in drawing up the long list not more than one entry will be selected from the same multi-site service.

Entries may be submitted on behalf of collaborative projects between one or more organisations, but the entrant will be taken to be the lead museum or gallery ‘in association with’ its partners.

The Prize Administrator can give further guidance on eligibility.

Conditions

Before you submit an entry, please consider whether you will be able to meet our conditions if you are long-listed. We will ask long-listed organisations:

• that make an admission charge, to offer free entry to Art Fund members for the duration of the competition, i.e. from the date of the long list announcement at the end of February to the end of June 2009.
• that make a charge for temporary exhibitions, to offer Art Fund members free entry to charging temporary exhibitions during the same period, or at least give them as generous a reduction as they offer to other supporters, such as their Friends.
• to display an Art Fund leaflet stand and posters at least for the duration of the competition;
• to provide us with feedback at the end of the competition to help us assess the impact of the Prize and to improve our processes where necessary.

The Art Fund may contact long-listed organisations directly to explore opportunities for arranging an event for Art Fund members, or other offers, during the course of the competition.

How to apply

For each entry you should send us:

• a completed application form;
• a supporting statement of not more than 2,000 words;
• a minimum of four, high-quality photographs.

You may also send us supporting material relevant to the project.

The more information that you can send us electronically the better – whether submitted online, by e-mail or on disc. This makes sharing information with the Judges much easier. But we accept that some information will always have to be sent as hard copy. Please do not send application files or boxes in larger than A4 format.

Application form

You have three options for completing the application form:

• Submit the online application form covering both your project details and supporting statement. You will be able to print a copy of this;
• Download the application form PDF and fill it out on screen. You can then save the PDF and send it to us via email or on disc. You will need to provide your supporting statement as a separate text document;
• Download the application form PDF, print it out and use as a paper form. You will need to provide your supporting statement seperately.

You may need to download Adobe Reader in order to view the PDF.

Supporting statement

Your statement of not more than 2,000 words should provide more detailed information about the project and why you believe it meets the criteria for the Art Fund Prize. You can submit your statement:

• online at the end of the online application form;
• as a text document e-mailed to info@artfundprize.org.uk
• as hard copy by post.

Photographs

Please supply all photographs electronically (JPGs or TIFFs) – either by
e-mail or on CD by post. You give us the right to use the photographs you send us, so you should ensure you have permission to use the photographs before you send them to us.

Supporting material

When selecting additional material for submission please bear in mind that this will have to be copied for circulation to the judges, and that the more material you send, the greater the likelihood that some items will have to be omitted during this process. If you wish the judges to see originals of print such as leaflets, please supply eight copies.

We regret that we are unable to return copies of application materials.

What happens next?

All applications received are assessed by the Museum Prize Trustees, The Art Fund Director and the Prize Administrator, who recommend a list of around twenty-five entries for consideration by the panel of seven independent judges. From these the judges select a long list of ten.

The public announcement of the long list will be made towards the end of February 2009. At the same time we will let other applicants know that they were not successful on this occasion.

Following announcement of the long list, each of the candidates will be visited by at least four judges. The Prize Administrator will liaise with each organisations to agree a convenient date. There will be one official visit to each museum on the long list, but additional visits may be made by judges privately and without notice.

If you are long-listed

This will be a great opportunity to increase awareness of your organisation and your work on a local and national level. We will provide a PR briefing pack and individual support from our PR consultants, Colman Getty Ltd, to help you to make the most of this.

If you haven’t supplied these already, we will ask you for at least 4 good captioned photographs illustrating aspects of your project. High-quality photographic images are essential in promoting the long list to the media, so we urge you to consider using professional photographers where possible.

We will be encouraging long-listed museums to promote their nominations and The Art Fund Prize in a joint initiative over the weekend of 4-5 April 2009. It will be up to each organisation to decide how they wish to use this opportunity, but we will stand ready to provide advice and press and marketing support as required. Further information will be provided in the briefing pack.

We strongly recommend that long-listed museums identify a ‘champion’ – someone well-known to local or national media – who will publicly support and endorse your project and generate media interest.

Short list

When the long list visits are complete the judges will choose a short list of four museums or galleries to go forward as finalists. The short list will be announced towards the end of April. A final round of judges’ visits will take place so that by the end of the process, all judges will have visited all four finalists.

Winner

The winner will be announced at a reception in London during June 2009. They will receive £100,000 and will be the holder for one year of the Prize trophy.

The decision of the judging panel is final.

For further information and guidance contact info@artfundprize.org.uk

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