Bristol’s M Shed has attracted more than half a million visitors in the 10 months since it opened – including five Art Fund judges who were in Bristol yesterday to see for themselves why the museum should be short-listed for the £100,000 Museum of Year award.
“To be a contender amongst the UK’s best museums and galleries is another example of M Shed’s continuing success," said Julie Finch head of Bristol’s museum service.
“Amazing visitor numbers, being shortlisted for the 2012 European Museum of the Year Award, fantastic national and international coverage, accolades for our volunteers and one of our large exhibits – the Pyronaut boat – in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee river pageant are all reasons to be proud."
M Shed is one of 10 museums nationally to have made the longlist for the prestigious Art Fund prize. A shortlist of four museums will be announced on May 14 and the £100,000 cash prize will be awarded to the Museum of the Year at a ceremony at the British Museum on June 19.
The 10 longlisted museums are:
- Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes, Bucks.: The Life and Works of Alan
Turing
- M Shed, Bristol: A New Museum for Bristol
- National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh: National Museum of Scotland
Development
- Riverside Museum, Scotland's Museum of Transport and Travel, Glasgow:
Riverside Museum
Project
- Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery, Exeter, Devon: RAMM
Development Project
- The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, West Yorkshire: The Hepworth
Wakefield
- The Holburne Museum, Bath, Somerset: The Holburne Museum Development
Project
The National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh: Portrait of the Nation
- Turner Contemporary, Margate, Kent: Turner Contemporary
- Watts Gallery, Guildford, Surrey: The Watts Gallery Hope Project
