The Gulbenkian Prize bowl - a little added incentive. Courtesy Gulbenkian Prize.

The UK’s single largest arts prize is calling for entries from September 1 2005. The Gulbenkian Prize for Museums and Galleries, which weighs in at £100,000, is now in its fourth year.

The prize is awarded to the UK museum or gallery that can lay claim to the best new development of the previous calendar year. It is open to all shapes and sizes, aiming to recognise originality, imagination and excellence. From the all-singing, all-dancing state-of-the-art city museum, to the down-to-earth, innovative focus of the local community, all will be considered (if entered).

Landform by Charles Jencks, winner of the Gulbenkian 2004. Courtesy Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

The judges will be looking in particular for imaginative building or display design, creative use of new technology, unusual approaches to curation or work with new audiences.

The 2005 shortlist included an exhibition curated by locals on a Scottish Isle and a huge eco-building housing fun-packed interactives to encourage children to learn about railway heritage in the North East.

The winner was Big Pit: National Mining Museum of Wales at Blaenafon. Big Pit allows visitors to descend 300 feet underground, led by ex-miners, to experience the working conditions that generations endured daily.

Big Pit: National Mining Museum of Wales. © Big Pit

“Winning the prize has boosted both our museum and our town of Blaenafon,” said Peter Walker, Big Pit Keeper and Mine Manager, “generating many more visitors and raising our profile locally, nationally and internationally.”

The 2004 winner was rather different – a landscape sculpture by Charles Jencks. Landform is a sweeping, grassy piece of art in the grounds of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. The National Centre for Citizenship and the Law at Nottingham’s Galleries of Justice won the inaugural Gulbenkian Prize.

The winning venue will also be able to display the enamelled silver Gulbenkian Prize bowl, by artist Vladimir Böhm, for the duration of its year of glory.

See www.thegulbenkianprize.org.uk for more details.