The Hepworth Wakefield art gallery in West Yorkshire has announced it will use the £100,000 it was awarded for being named as the Art Fund museum of the year for 2017 on acquiring a Helen Marten sculpture and developing a new public garden in its grounds.
Half the prize money will go towards a newly commissioned piece by Marten – who won the Turner prize in 2016 – for the Wakefield Permanent Art Collection. The Macclesfield-born artist was also the recipient of the inaugural Hepworth prize for sculpture.
Marten’s piece will join ranks with more than 5,000 artworks in a collection including works by Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, David Bomberg, Frank Auerbach Hans Coper and Marten’s fellow Turner prize nominee Anthea Hamilton.
The other half of the Art Fund prize money will be used to turn a patch of land adjacent to the Hepworth Wakefield building into a new public garden – one of the largest in the UK – designed by the landscape architect and garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith. Simon Wallis, the gallery’s director, said that the funds had to address both “the long-term benefit of Wakefield and our local communities”.
The Art Fund’s choice for 2018 museum of the year will be announced on Thursday night. The nominees are Brooklands Museum in Weybridge, Surrey, Ferens Art Gallery in Hull, Glasgow Women’s Library, the Postal Museum in London and Tate St Ives.
