Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford 

The Ashmolean Museum is one of the great university museums of the world that extends and enhances public access to its remarkable collections of art and archaeology and is nominated for an ambitious redevelopment. The sensitively executed £61 million redevelopment, designed by award-winning Rick Mather Architects, has extended the Grade1 listed building to provide 39 new galleries, an education centre, rooftop restaurant, conservation studios, study rooms and stores. 

Design team: Rick Mather Architects; Metaphor Design, exhibition design 

Blists Hill Victorian Town, Ironbridge Museum Trust 

Blists Hill Victorian Town is the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust’s largest site totalling 54 acres, and presents life in a typical town of the East Shropshire Coalfield around 1900. The £12 million development of Blists Hill has seen the creation of a landmark Visitor Centre and World Heritage Site exhibition, a new street of shops and trades, a clay- mining experience, a narrow gauge railway and an incline lift. 

Great North Museum: Hancock, Newcastle 

Great North Museum is a major new museum for the North East of England, which sees three outstanding collections of natural history, archaeology and world cultures combined for the first time in the refurbished Grade II listed Hancock Museum. The collections are from the original Hancock Museum, Newcastle University’s Museum of Antiquities and the Shefton Museum. The University’s Hatton Gallery is also part of Great North Museum and remains in its existing building. 

Design team: Terry Farrell and Partners, architects; Casson Mann, exhibition design

Hampton Court Palace, London for Henry VIII: heads and hearts Historic 

Royal Palaces  

In 2009, independent charity Historic Royal Palaces celebrated the anniversary of Henry VIII’s accession with Henry VIII: head and hearts at Hampton Court Palace, the most ambitious programme of exhibitions, events, displays and preparatory conservation work it had ever staged at the King’s former royal residence. Henry VIII: head and hearts involved 38 original projects which contributed to the permanent transformation of the palace, including the re-presentation of the Tudor State Apartments, the creation of a Tudor Garden, the restoration of Base Court, the opening of the King’s Council Chamber to the public for the first time, the 'virtual restoration' of one of Henry's 500-year-old tapestries and new Tudor-inspired uniforms for warders. 

Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry Heritage and Arts Trust 

The Herbert re-launched in October 2008 following a £20 million redevelopment of the existing building. The new space incorporates an atrium, seven new permanent galleries, a History Centre, creative media studios, education spaces, temporary exhibition galleries, collections stores and other visitor facilities. Design team: Pringle, Ricards and Sharratt, architects; Event Communications, exhibition design 

The Leach Pottery, Bernard Leach (St Ives) Trust Ltd 

Founded by Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada in 1920, by 2005 The Leach Pottery was faced with closure. The Leach Restoration Project was launched and a rescue bid that enabled a £1.7 million restoration to begin. The old pottery reopened to the public in 2008 and the new studios were completed in February 2009, providing workspace for a new generation of potters and a living legacy to Bernard Leach's life and work. The old pottery workshop has been sensitively preserved and the famous Japanese climbing kiln, the first of its kind to be built in the west, is now a scheduled monument. 

Design team: GHK Architects 

National Army Museum: Conflicts of Interest 

The National Army Museum is nominated for Conflicts of Interest, a new gallery exploring the impact of four decades of conflict on British soldiers and civilians worldwide. 

Design team: support from designers Met Studio and interactive agency GR/DD

Natural History Museum: Darwin Centre 

The Natural History Museum is nominated for the Darwin Centre, a £78 million landmark life sciences complex, and the most significant expansion at the Museum since it moved to South Kensington in 1881. The Darwin Centre allows visitors to explore world-class science in action in a new public space with its giant concrete Cocoon, which houses 17 million insect and three million plant specimens, plus laboratories where visitors can witness scientists at work. 

 Design team: C F Møller Architects 

The Royal Institution for Great Britain, for Science in the Making 

The Royal Institution of Great Britain in nominated for Science in the Making. The important scientific collection of the 200-year old Royal Institution has been brought to life in this new exhibition as part of a major £22 million refurbishment of the Grade I listed building, supporting the Institution’s mission of making science accessible to all. The major renovation and reconfiguration project has seen an increase of 40% in the spaces accessible to the public. The historic displays reflecting the themes of Experimentation, People and Communication, are spread across three floors of the building, with the highlight of the exhibition, Faraday's original magnetic laboratory as it was in the 1850s. The varied interpretation includes film, interactive exhibits and a palm- top eGuide. 

 Design team: Terry Farrell and Partners, Architects; Event: Exhibition and Design 

The Towner, Eastbourne Borough Council 

Towner, the contemporary art museum for the South East, is the £8.6 million new home of Eastbourne’s Towner Art Gallery, which opened to the public in April 2009. The dramatic new building provides Towner with a range of purpose built spaces that enable it to operate as a regional centre of excellence for the visual arts, allowing major exhibitions of contemporary and historical art to be presented alongside changing displays of the important Towner Collection. With its collection of mainly 20th century British Art, and an emerging collection of international contemporary art, Towner is at the forefront of gallery learning and research in the UK, and offers a wide range of public programmes. 

Design team: Rick Mather Architects 

Ulster Museum, National Museums Northern Ireland 

Opening up the Ulster Museum has been a comprehensive project representing the first substantial development of the Museum in almost 40 years and making an important contribution to the cultural rejuvenation of Northern Ireland. The three year project, at a cost of £17.2 million, has radically reconfigured the Museum’s listed building, offering a series of new galleries including interactive Learning Zones, a stunning new Applied Art Gallery and state-of-the-art, 3 storey-high Window on Our World display. The Ulster Museum re-opened on 22 October 2009 with a landmark retrospective exhibition by world-renowned abstract artist, Sean Scully. Since its redevelopment, the Ulster Museum has become Northern Ireland’s busiest visitor attraction. 

Design team: Hamilton Architects; Haley Sharpe Designers