Christina Mackie and The Nottingham Castle Museum win the Contemporary Art Society Annual Award 2011

The Contemporary Art Society has announced Christina Mackie and the Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery as the winning proposal for its Annual Award. Cornelia Parker OBE presented the £60,000 prize to the winning museum for its proposal to commission a major new work of art, selected by a panel of judges. The award follows five British museums, paired with five prestigious artists, being shortlisted to win the prize earlier this year. The Contemporary Art Society’s Annual Award for museums - commission to collect - is now in its third year. The aim of Award is to support museums to commission new work through a £60,000 award funded by the Sfumato Foundation that, once completed will remain within the museum’s permanent collection. The Award aims to encourage artists and museums to work together to create significant new works of art for their collections and for audiences now and in the future to enjoy. This is the UK’s only award that supports contemporary art entering public collections through a new commission.

On winning the prize for the Nottingham Castle Museum, Councillor Dave Trimble, Portfolio holder for Leisure Culture and Tourism at Nottingham City Council said: “We are delighted to have won this prestigious award for Nottingham. It’s a great acknowledgement of the work of our Museums & Galleries team and also well-deserved recognition for the artist Christina Mackie. The Award will enable us to support the realisation of Christina’s ideas through to the creation of her new installation for Nottingham Castle, drawing inspiration from our important mineral and natural sciences collection at Wollaton Hall. Not only will this give us the opportunity to work with the artist to create a major piece, of national significance, it will also build on the founding mission of the Castle Museum to use our collections to inspire new creativity to provide an enriched experience for our many visitors, for years to come. This in entirely in keeping with our vision for the future of Nottingham Castle Museum.”

Artist Christina Mackie, who will be creating the work with the Nottingham Castle Museum, said of winning the award: “I am thrilled to have had this opportunity to develop a relationship with Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery. We are really looking forward to continuing with this significant project we set out as a proposal and bringing it to completion within the context of this unique museum collection. This would not be possible without the Contemporary Art Society whose Annual Award directly supports contemporary art entering public collections via commission.“

Paul Hobson, Director of Contemporary Art Society, said of this year’s Annual Award winners:“This year's selection panel had a particularly difficult decision to make with a shortlist of proposals of especially high calibre for this, our third Annual Award for Museums. I would like to congratulate all the shortlisted museums for the exceptionally strong quality of their submissions; I know the panel would ideally have enabled all five proposals to be realised, but we could not be more delighted with their choice. Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery and their proposed commission with Christina Mackie will result in a great and significant new work that will be shown for the first time at the Castle in late 2012 and from then remain an important part of the ever evolving collection”.

Previous winners of the Annual Award include the Hepworth Wakefield and Wolverhampton Art Gallery for their proposal with Luke Fowler and Museums Sheffield, the Graves Art Gallery with Katherina Šedá. This year’s panel of judges were Adam Chodzko (Artist), Maurice Davies (Head of Policy, Museums Association), Rosy Greenlees (Director, Crafts Council), Michael Stanley (Director, Modern Art Oxford).