The Museum of the Year shortlist has just been announced. We look at the five finalists, from the Essex gallery feeding deprived children to the wee museum with big plans up near John O’Groats
‘Albert Hirst’s pies were legendary,” recalls Ian McMillan, the poet known as the Bard of Barnsley. He’s talking about his favourite exhibit at Experience Barnsley: a carrier bag for the long defunct butchers. “Personally, I prefer Potters of Wombwell. But that’s heresy for many. People sniff the Albert Hirst bag like it’s a holy relic, which in a sense it is. And then they argue about who made the best pies and go into reveries about their aromas.”
Experience Barnsley is one of the five museums that have made the shortlist for the Art Fund Museum of the Year prize. The winner, announced in September, will get £100,000 and the other four £15,000 apiece. Deeply rooted in their communities, each one is keen to revolutionise what a museum can be in the 21st century.
