Last week, Art Fund announced the nominees for its 2015 Museum of the Year award, the most prestigious arts award in the United Kingdom. British museums dominated the shortlist, nabbing five of the six slots, but only one could take home the coveted title and the £100,000 prize ($156,131 in U.S. dollars). And the winner is… The Whitworth.
The art gallery is part of the University of Manchester, and has been in operation since 1908. Boasting an internationally acclaimed collection of 55,000 works, the gallery is also at the forefront of research in the art world. Current exhibitions include a riveting look at 1960s fashion and art, Johnnie Shand Kydd's iconic black-and-white photography, and a Chinese art retrospective spanning the 1970s to present day.
After debuting a $23 million dollar renovation earlier this year that doubled the gallery's size, the Whitworth is better than ever. Art Fund director, and chair of this year's judges panel, remarked after the winner was announced, "The transformation of the Whitworth has been one of the great museum achievements of recent years. It has changed the landscape: it truly feels like a museum of the future."
This year's other nominees were London's Imperial War Museums, Great Manchester's Dunham Massey, the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, the MAC in Belfast, and the Tower of London.
