Art Fund Museum of the Year 2025 – United Kingdom

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Deadline: 27 January 2025

The Art Fund Museum of the Year is the world’s biggest museum prize to encourage more people to visit, and gets to the heart of what makes a great museum.

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The prize recognizes and celebrates outstanding work and projects across UK museums and provides a platform to encourage audiences to engage with museums far and wide.

All shortlisted museums also receive the support of Art Fund throughout the campaign, which includes national press coverage opportunities, bespoke marketing support and other exciting collaborations and partnerships to help them reach more audiences.

Why apply?

Previous applicants have told them how useful they found the process of applying for the prize. It helped them to reflect on their successes and articulate what makes their organisation special.
If you are successful and are shortlisted for Art Fund Museum of the Year your organisation will enjoy many benefits, in addition to the prize money.
Finalists and winners have noted a marked increase in visitor attendance and engagement, a strengthened profile and a boost in support from stakeholders. They also know that taking part in the prize has helped many organisations to develop fundraising and advocacy opportunities.

What are they looking for?

For the 2025 prize, in addition to looking at the overall achievements of your organisation, they are keen to hear about the wide range of people that make your achievements possible and bring your museum or gallery to life. How are you and your teams engaging and working alongside communities, families and younger visitors, artists and creatives, or those harder-to-reach visitors? What makes your approach impactful, inclusive and innovative?
They want to hear how you are doing this through the stories you and your teams tell across your exhibitions or displays, how you make your programme and buildings welcoming, and the role that your teams play in making great things happen.

Prize Information

Every year an independent judging panel will shortlist five exceptional organisations and decide one outstanding winner to take home the £120,000 prize. The remaining four finalists will each receive £15,000.

Eligibility Criteria

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Before starting your application, please check that you meet the following criteria to be eligible to apply for Art Fund Museum of the Year:
- Your activity must have taken place from autumn 2023 through to winter 2024/25.
- You must be able to demonstrate the positive impact of the activity.
- You must be based in the UK and be either a public museum, gallery, historic house, library or archive which has spaces for the public to visit and experience the visual arts or other object-based collections.
- You must be able to demonstrate that you usually operate to best practice standards or have a good track record in delivering high-quality public activity.
If you are an organisation that is a visual arts agency or festival, they’d be happy to hear from you providing you can meet the criteria and have a strong visual arts focus.

Ineligibility Criteria

They cannot accept applications from individuals, artists’ groups, commercial organisations, hospitals, places of worship, schools or higher education institutions, or organisations with a focus on music, drama, dance or art forms outside the visual arts.

For more information, visit Art Fund.