News | Published: Thu 31 Mar 2005

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Fitzwilliam Museum shortlisted for prestigious Gulbenkian Prize for Museum of the Year 2005

The Fitzwilliam Museum's Courtyard Development, which opened to the public last summer, was shortlisted for a prestigious museum award. The Gulbenkian Prize for Museum of the Year is the largest single arts prize in the UK and recognises and rewards the best new development of the previous calendar year in a museum or gallery, large or small, anywhere in the United Kingdom.

The project for which the Museum has been shortlisted has received wide public acclaim. A redundant courtyard formed by twentieth-century additions to the original nineteenth-century Museum building has been ingeniously transformed into new and inviting public spaces over four floors, to improve access to the collections for the Museum's 300,000+ annual visitors and to enhance the whole visitor experience. Designed by John Miller + Partners, the Courtyard Development includes a new gallery for temporary exhibitions, improved visitor facilities including a new entrance, a lift to all floors and a new caf