Museum of the Year: Natural History Museum among nominees for £120,000 prize

The Natural History Museum in London and Orkney's former Royal Navy base at Scapa Flow are in the running to be named the UK's Museum of the Year.

They are joined on the shortlist for the £120,000 award by Glasgow's Burrell Collection and the MAC in Belfast.

Leighton House, located in London's Holland Park, completes the five-strong shortlist.

The winner will be announced at the British Museum on 12 July, with the four runners-up receiving £15,000 each.

The 2023 prize marks the 10th year of Art Fund's Museum of the Year, which aims to champion the UK's 2,500 museums, galleries and heritage sites.

Find out more about the nominees:

The Burrell Collection in Glasgow's Pollok Country Park houses the 9,000-object collection of Sir William and Constance Burrell.

Managed by the charity Glasgow Life, it was officially reopened by King Charles last year, following a major refurbishment.

The collection includes one of the UK's most significant holdings of Chinese art and some of the world's finest medieval stained glass and tapestries, as well as paintings by artists including Rembrandt and Degas.

It also contains 100 pieces of digital interpretation, from immersive experiences to interactive games.

London's Leighton House is the former studio-home of leading Victorian artist Frederic, Lord Leighton.

A public museum since 1900, it reopened in 2022 following its redevelopment.

As part of the restoration project, the museum undertook research to continue to bring Leighton's collection back together.

It also worked closely with contemporary artists, on works including furniture made by displaced Syrian artisans, and a striking mural entitled Oneness.

The MAC is Northern Ireland's leading arts institution and a key driver in Belfast's social, physical and economic regeneration, organisers of the prize said.

For the past decade it has enabled people to participate in and enjoy art.

Its galleries bring major international artists to Ireland, whilst also positioning local artists within an international context.

The centre places an equal emphasis on its civic and cultural responsibility, as demonstrated through its MACtivate programme which helps some of the most marginalised people in society.

Raising awareness of the housing crisis in Northern Ireland, the MAC commissioned artists to create works that campaign for the well-being of LGBT people and advocated on behalf of reproductive rights organisations in the country.

The Natural History Museum in London is a leading science research centre and the most-visited indoor attraction in the UK.

It is considered to be one of world's most important scientific collections, comprising over 80 million specimens.

A recent exhibition, titled Our Broken Planet: How We Got Here and Ways to Fix It, welcomed more than 1.2 million visitors - with 77% of those asked saying their visit had made them more likely to take action to protect the natural world.

The museum took part in COP27 and hosts industry experts, policymakers and young activists, including Greta Thunberg who worked with it to produce an event for schools around biodiversity loss.

The Scapa Flow Museum tells the story of Orkney and its people during World War One and World War Two, including the construction of a huge Royal Navy base at Lyness on the island of Hoy, where it stands today.

The museum reopened its £4.4m redevelopment to the public last year, with funders including the National Lottery Heritage Fund and NatureScot.

Incorporating part of the historic infrastructure, it tells individual tales of those who came to Orkney in wartime, as well as key narratives about the base and significant wartime tragedies.

Primary school pupils helped design the layout of the spaces through a junior curators programme.

Speaking on behalf of the judges, Art Fund director Jenny Waldman said that each of the finalists were "at the top of their game, offering inspirational collections and programmes for their communities, for visitors from across the UK and around the world".

She added: "From transformational redevelopment to community involvement to addressing the major issues of today, the shortlisted museums may operate at very different scales, but all show astonishing ambition and boundless creativity."

She went on to describe them all as "a blueprint for future innovation in museums".