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ARTS

Museum of the Year shortlist: are these really the best in the country?

Politics, protest and jet engines — Richard Morrison considers this year’s candidates

Horniman Museum in London. Image shot 12/2016. Exact date unknown.
The Horniman Museum in south London, opened in 1901 by the philanthropic tea trader Frederick John Horniman
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The Times

It is working with the coalition Together With Refugees to stir up opposition to the Nationality and Borders Bill, which it says represents “a major attack on people seeking safety”. It is also actively opposing the Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Bill, which it says is “likely to silence marginalised voices”.

That could be a description of many campaigning pressure groups, but this is something more radical. It’s a museum. What’s more, it’s a museum that has been recognised as one of Britain’s best. The Art Fund has announced the shortlist for the 2022 Museum of the Year (worth £100,000 to the winner, revealed on July 14, and £15,000 each to the other four shortlisted), and the boldest nomination is surely for the People’s History Museum (PHM) in Manchester.

The PHM, which describes itself as “the national museum of democracy”, has long been a repository of civil-rights artefacts. It has the world’s largest collection of political banners, and a focus on protest stretching from the 1819 Peterloo Massacre to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Black Lives Matter.

The People’s History Museum in Manchester
The People’s History Museum in Manchester
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Last year, however, it became even more embroiled in current events with an exhibition highlighting the murdered MP Jo Cox’s “life, work and values”, and a programme of activities devoted to “migration” that the museum itself describes as “challenging and uncomfortable”.

Should a publicly funded museum be so proactive in politics? “I think if you are a museum of democracy you are allowed to be passionate about democracy,” Jenny Waldman, the director of the Art Fund and chairwoman of the Museum of the Year judging panel, says. “The PHM has gone from being a museum about campaigns to becoming a campaigning museum. Our view is that this is perfectly appropriate. We have total belief in the independence of museums. They shouldn’t be interfered with by us or by politicians.”

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The PHM isn’t the only museum on the shortlist to have redefined itself as a campaigning organisation. The once rather sleepy Horniman Museum in south London, opened in 1901 by the philanthropic tea trader Frederick John Horniman, has adopted a radical “reset agenda” prompted, it says, by the pandemic, the climate emergency and the death of George Floyd in the US.

Its programmes include a “black-led interrogation of the power and responsibility public organisations have in supporting local music scenes”, which culminated in a black British music festival attended by 8,000 people; and a “climate and ecology manifesto” that includes creating a micro-forest in its extensive gardens. “The Horniman has been around a long time,” Waldman says, “but my goodness, Covid has spurred its curators to rethink how they work with their communities and support young people. I think their focus on sustainability and biodiversity will have a big impact on other museums.”

The Story Museum in Oxford
The Story Museum in Oxford
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The Story Museum in Oxford, also shortlisted, strives to transform young lives through the power of reading. Reopened a year ago after a £6 million redevelopment, it now has ten immersive, visually stunning galleries, each bringing stories to life.

Why in Oxford, though? Of all cities in the UK, surely this one least needs a museum to improve literacy. “Actually, 26 per cent of children in Oxford live below the poverty line,” Waldman says. “In every wealthy area you find pockets of deprivation just below the surface. It opens up the whole levelling-up question, doesn’t it?”

The Museum of Making in Derby
The Museum of Making in Derby
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Although small, the Story Museum has achieved 80,000 visitors in a year. Even that impressive figure is eclipsed, however, by the 90,000 people who have visited another shortlisted institution, the Museum of Making in Derby, since it opened last May. It’s an £18 million project on the site of the original Derby Silk Mill, built in 1721 and claimed as the world’s first modern factory. The new museum celebrates not just the history of manufacturing but its present-day marvels as well.

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That means it includes superb contemporary objects such as the Rolls-Royce turbofan engine designed for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, and also on-site workshops and a pioneering educational programme, supported by Rolls-Royce, called the Institute of Steam. In this case, steam stands for “science, technology, engineering, arts and maths”. The idea is to nurture the future workforce a great engineering city such as Derby needs: creative, multidisciplined, intellectually flexible young people.

Ty Pawb in Wrexham
Ty Pawb in Wrexham
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The final shortlisted museum, Ty Pawb in Wrexham, is also all about making things, Ty Pawb means “everybody’s house” in Welsh — apt for a museum sited within a former indoor market and multistorey car park in Wrexham town centre, with makers, market traders and galleries under one roof.

“Its curators are making the best of those connections,” Waldman says. “They are working with fantastic artists but also with local traders, and encouraging young people to be creative and to learn how to sell their work to people.”

What do these five museums have in common, and what does that tell us about the general direction of museums? Most strikingly, none is famous outside its own town or city (unlike, say, the British Museum, V&A, or Tate St Ives — all former museums of the year). Waldman denies that this emphasis on smaller museums is deliberate. Nevertheless, it perhaps indicates a subconscious desire by the judges to support them when, as she admits, so many have an “underlying fragility” after the pandemic, with their reserves used up and visitor levels not yet fully recovered to pre-Covid levels.

All five museums are also notable for programmes aimed at connecting with young people, something Waldman thinks is crucial. “With museum redundancies during the pandemic hitting learning and engagement staff particularly heavily, and with many schools saying it’s ‘back to basics’ and downgrading museum trips, we have a lot of catching up to do. The Art Fund mounted a fundraising campaign called Energise Young Minds, and I’m pleased to say it raised £1 million that will go directly into museum activities for young people. It’s much needed.”

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And the other shared quality? One way or another, all five museums are focused on stimulating participation. “They are all on a mission,” Waldman says. “At their heart they all have a passion to engage.”

Which will win? The transformation of the Horniman, which I know well, has been dramatic and highly successful. On the other hand, it’s impossible to resist the beauty of the Story Museum’s new galleries. Yet the way that the whole of Derby, including 1,000 volunteers and the city’s leading employer, has got behind the Museum of Making — using a 300-year industrial heritage to inspire tomorrow’s creative minds — is exemplary on so many levels that I would give it top spot.

Spoiler alert, though. I have a near-unblemished record of being spectacularly wrong when I make these predictions.
artfund.org/museum-of-the-year

Museum of the Year shortlist

● Museum of Making in Derby
● Horniman Museum in London
● People’s History Museum in Manchester
● The Story Museum in Oxford
● Ty Pawb in Wrexham

Did the right museums make the shortlist? Have your say in the comments below

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