Art Prize fund: Scottish National Portrait Gallery vying to be UK’s best

The Queen Street attraction has fought off challenges from the National Museum of Scotland and Glasgow’s new Riverside Museum to make the final shortlist for the Art Fund Prize.

Its refurbishment, which saw the gallery closed for more than two years for a radical overhaul and complete restoration, will be up against a new Barbara Hepworth gallery in Yorkshire, the redevelopment of Exeter’s main museum and a new-look museum devoted to painter George Frederic Watts in Surrey.

A £100,000 prize has been put up for grabs by organisers the Art Fund charity for Britain’s “museum of the year” contest. It is awarded to an attraction that has completed a flagship project within the previous 12 months. The four contenders will now go through to the final at the British Museum, with the winner being announced on 19 June.

The 1898 building, and the project to create the world’s first purpose-built portrait gallery, was the brainchild of John Ritchie Findlay, then proprietor of The Scotsman, but its galleries were viewed as outdated in recent years, and it was even threatened with closure at one point.

The amount of gallery space has been by increased by 50 per cent, with the attraction now boasting 17 separate spaces in total to showcase a vast 30,000-strong collection, which includes the national photography collection.

James Holloway, the former director of the gallery, who retired shortly after the refurbishment was unveiled in December, admitted the building was being treated like a “complete joke” when he started work there. However, Lord Smith of Finsbury, chairman of the judging panel for the Art Fund Prize, said the first revamp in the 120-year-history of the portrait gallery had been a “resounding success”.

He said: “Not only has this extraordinary Gothic building been brought beautifully to life, but the exhibition displays reveal an intelligent and thoughtful account of both the genre of portraiture, and the nature of Scottish identity.

“It’s certainly an impressive achievement, but whether it can beat off stiff competition from the other three outstanding contenders remains to be seen.”

John Leighton, director-general of the National Galleries of Scotland, said: “We are thrilled to hear the Scottish National Portrait Gallery has been shortlisted for the Art Fund Prize this year.

“There have been some extra-ordinary developments in the museums and galleries across Scotland and the rest of the UK in the last year, and we are very pleased and honoured to make the shortlist in such a strong field.

“We tried to rethink what a portrait gallery could mean for people in the 21st century.

“It was important for us to refurbish the building and make it much more accessible and coherent for our visitors; but it was equally important for us to transform the way we present the collections, offering, we hope, a much more vivid and engaging portrait of Scotland past and present.”