The Whitworth in Manchester has won the Art Fund's Museum of the Year prize after the university art gallery's £15m expansion and modernisation, which was unveiled in February. The gallery's director, Maria Balshaw, accepted the prestigious award at a ceremony held last night, 1 July, at London's Tate Modern.
Founded in 1889, the Whitworth, like its home city, has international ambitions. The Manchester International Festival, in which the gallery takes part, kicks off today (2 July). For the festival the artist Gerhard Richter and composer Arvo Pärt have collaborated, resulting in a group of four new works by the German artist, which will be presented along with a performance of Pärt's Drei Hirtenkinder aus Fátima in the galleries. The Whitworth is also showing part of the founding collection of Hong Kong's museum of visual culture, M+, and the British artist Cornelia Parker created new works for her solo show for the reopening, which includes loans from the Tate.
The expansion of the gallery by Muma (McInnes Usher McKnight Architects) was supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund among others. The judges of the Art Fund's Museum of the Year were: Stephen Deuchar, the fund's director; the artist Michael Landy; Alice Rawsthorn, a design critic and author; Fiammetta Rocco, the books and arts editor of The Economist magazine, and Axel Rüger, director of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
