Five British museums in Belfast, Cardiff, Perth, Warwickshire and Durham compete in Belfast, Cardiff, Perth, Warwickshire to win the largest prizes of museums in the world.
The Art Fund Museum of the Year award offers a £120,000 game award for winners, with each other finalist having £15,000.
The 2025 finalist announced Tuesday has museums from all four UK countries in all UK countries. They are Beamish in County Durham, Compton Verney in Warwickshire, Golden Line Gallery in Belfast and Scotland's Stone House.
Arts Foundation Director Jenny Waldman said the five are “inspiring examples of the best museums – deeply connected to the local community, sensitive to the world around them, full of vitality and thought.”
The popular open-air museum in the north, Beamish, tells the story of the immersive social and industrial history of the 1820s, 1900s, 1940s and 1950s in northeast England.
Visitors travel through different environments of old trams and buses and experience stories of ordinary life, both in mines and in shops, telling employees and volunteers in their period clothing.
Over the past year, the museum has completed a project called Remate Beamish which includes entertainment from the 1950s, including cinemas, toys, electrical and record shops and milk bars.
The Perth Museum opened in March 2024 and has been closed since 2005 after a £27 million building. It tells the story of "10,000 years of Scotland, Britain and the world's history" through local lenses.
Its star attractions are the Stone of Destiny, which returned to Perthshire for the first time in 700 years. This stone is an ancient symbol of Scottish monarchy and has been used at Westminster's coronation since the troops of King Edward I of England were regarded as trophy in 1296.
Since the opening of the new museum, it has attracted more than 250,000 visitors, including 100,000 people in less than 100 days. "This is a local museum that reshapes local museums," the Guardian's Jonathan Jones wrote.
Golden Thread Gallery is Belfast's leading contemporary art gallery, which reopened in August 2024 after closing in August 2024.
The new site includes two large gallery spaces, a projection room, and a library for visual arts research and archives, the first of its kind in Northern Ireland. Artists on display include Charlotte Bosanquet, Rob Hilken, Graham Fagen, Susan Hiller and Claire Morgan.
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Compton Verney is a large country art gallery in rural Georgia, home to six world-class artworks and is located on 120 acres of Brown Park.
Last year, it launched its new sculpture park, which includes Louise Bourgeois Spider, and is composed by Sarah Lucas, Perminder Kaur, Larry Achiampong and Helen Chadwick.
Cardiff's Chapter is a multi-art space that includes galleries, theaters, cinemas, artists' studios and community gardens. It says it is committed to fair art programming and recently launched an artist living program that offers free studio space.
The winner will be announced at the Liverpool Museum on June 26. The jury was artist Rana Begum, comedian Phil Wang, Tate Research and Interpretation Director David Dibosa and Wales Museum CEO Jane Richardson.
Prize winners in the range of prizes, such as huge awards as V&A, to William Morris Gallery in Walthamsto, East London. Last year's champion was Bethnal Green's young V&A in East London.