Professor Lord Robert Winston says he is proud to chair the Gulbenkian Prize judging panel.

The judges who will choose the winner of the Gulbenkian Prize for Museums and Galleries 2006 have been announced.

The judging panel for the largest single arts prize in the UK will be chaired by scientist and broadcaster Professor Lord Robert Winston, and includes representatives from museums, the media and the art world.

“I feel really privileged to chair the judging panel of the Gulbenkian Prize for Museums and Galleries this year,” said Lord Winston. “The prize celebrates the stunning innovations that are happening in our museums and galleries, really imaginative work which is respected internationally and which adds so much to British cultural life.”

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

Other judges on the panel are: Michael Day (Chief Executive, Historic Royal Palaces), Ekow Eshun (writer, journalist and broadcaster; artistic director of the ICA), Diane Lees (director of the V&A Museum of Childhood) Dr Elizabeth MacKenzie (Chair, British Association of Friend of Museums), Joanna Moorhead (journalist and author) and Dan Snow (historian and broadcaster).

The annual prize – now in its fourth year – is worth £100,000, and recognises the hard work that goes into realising new projects, as well as gaining the institution some useful prestige.

“It’s not about the money," said Kathryn Stowers of 2005 prizewinner Big Pit: the National Mining Museum of Wales, "it’s about the accolade of the Gulbenkian Prize.”

The prize is awarded to a museum or gallery, large or small, that demonstrates original thinking in a new development. The innovation should encourage more people to visit the museum or gallery – the prize aims to stimulate excellence and raise the public profile of museums and galleries.

The National Mining Museum of Wales found that winning the prize in 2005 brought a lot of recognition. © 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 judging panel has certainly got some well-known names on board. Lord Winston is professor of Fertility Studies at Imperial College, London, and director of NHS Research and Development for Hammersmith Hospital. The British public, however, best knows him for presenting such award-winning biology television series as The Human Body and Child of Our Time.

His fellow judge Ekow Eshun is another high achiever; aged 28, he was the youngest ever editor of Arena. He and newsreader Jon Snow were awarded the Christian Aid Lifestyle Award in 2000 for the Channel 4 documentary Living on the Line. Dan Snow (yes, they are related) is another judge with television presenting credentials, having brought the BBC’s Battlefield Britain to the nation.

The enamelled silver prize bowl designed by award-winning metalwork artist, Vladimir Böhm - the winning institution will hold on to it for a year. Courtesy The Gulbenkian Prize.

The judges will whittle down the entries to a longlist of ten museums and galleries (to be revealed February 9, 2006), which they will visit in person. The four with which they are most impressed will go on to be finalists before the overall winner is announced on May 25, 2006 – May is Museums and Galleries Month. The announcement will take place at an awards ceremony at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London.

Previous winners who received £100,000 and the Gulbenkian Prize Bowl include Charles Jencks’ Landform at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (2004) and The National Centre for Citizenship and the Law in Nottingham (2003).

The Gulbenkian Prize is funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, and is supported by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council Renaissance in the Regions programme. See www.thegulbenkianprize.org.uk for more details.