This gorgeous art gallery in Yorkshire just beat the Tate Modern to be named the UK's best museum

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July 6, 2017 12:51 PM

The Hepworth Wakefield gallery, which only opened in 2011, snatched the 2017 Art Fund Museum of the Year prize, and £100,000 prize money.

The Hepworth Wakefield art gallery won the 2017 Art Fund Museum of the Year Prize.

An art gallery in West Yorkshire has been named the best museum in the UK, beating an array of world-class attractions, including the Tate Modern.

The Hepworth Wakefield gallery, in the city of Wakefield, was a surprise winner of the 2017 Art Fund Museum of the Year prize.

It faced strong competition from two attractions in London — which traditionally dominates the UK cultural scene — but triumphed to win the £100,000 ($130,000) prize money.

London's V&A Museum won the gong last year, while in 2015 Manchester's Whitworth Art Gallery claimed the prize.

The Hepworth Wakefield opened in 2011. It is an architecturally ambitious collection of trapezoid blocks which sits directly on the banks of the River Calder.

It specialises in modern art, especially sculpture, and hosted a groundbreaking sculpture competition last year.

Its collections include work by sculptor Barbara Hepworth, after whom the museum is named, as well as a significant trove of modern British paintings.

The gallery has been a runaway success since it opened, and last year had more than 200,000 visitors, an increase of 20% in a single year.

The win is all the more remarkable considering its triumph over the Tate Modern, a global attraction which opened a major new wing this year.

It also beat Sir John Soane's Museum, a quixotic collection amassed by a Victorian architect and preserved in his London townhouse. Other shortlisted entrants were the Lapworth Museum of Geology in Birmingham, and the National Heritage Centre for Horseracing & Sporting Art in Newmarket, Cambridgeshire.

Other shortlisted entrants were the Lapworth Museum of Geology in Birmingham, and the National Heritage Centre for Horseracing & Sporting Art in Newmarket, Cambridgeshire.

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