It was, frankly, a rusty old boat you'd hardly have crossed Bristol to see - a geeky bit of nautical history that might have excited a sea-loving grandad but would elicit cries of "can't we go somewhere else?" from the rest of the family, writes Gulbenkian prize judge Joanna Moorhead.
But last night Isambard Kingdom Brunel's SS Great Britain, the world's first great ocean liner, took the £100,000 Gulbenkian prize for museums and galleries, after an extraordinary restoration project that transformed it into one of the country's leading visitor attractions.
Robert Winston, who chaired the judging panel for this year's prize, made the announcement at a reception at RIBA last night, to whoops of joy and more than a few tears from the Bristol team who had made the turnaround happen. Matthew Tanner, who led the project, said the recognition the prize had put ship preservation properly on the map; Lord Winston called it "a truly groundbreaking piece of conservation".
Winston told the gathering that this year's shortlist was possibly the prize's strongest ever, and he wasn't exaggerating. I was another of the six-strong judging team, and like the rest of my colleagues I felt that any one of the four could have been a worthy winner.
We were all thrilled by the underground gallery at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park near Wakefield, which is currently exhibiting a wonderful series of light installations by James Turrell. We were wowed by the stunning architecture of The Collection, Lincoln's art and archaeology museum, which is clearly setting a new standard of excellence for local museums across the UK. And we were intrigued by the Hunterian Museum in London, an anatomy collection which has been magnificently rehoused in a way that is both entirely true to its 18th-century roots and astonishingly modern.
All four had what we were looking for in the best museum in the country in 2006, but in the end there was one winner. Before I began this project I could have written everything I knew about SS Great Britain on the back of a postage stamp; now, won over by a place that, above all, engaged my fascination, I'm starting to become an expert. Next weekend I'm going back to Bristol, kids in tow. I want them to hear this great story and be caught up in it, just as I was.
