University art project with Turner Prize winner shortlisted for £60,000 award

In partnership with the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, the Ashmolean Museum is seeking funding to commission a new piece of work by artist Elizabeth Price to form part of its permanent collection.

The proposal is one of four to have been shortlisted for this year's £60,000 Contemporary Art Society Annual Award for Museums.

Professor Christopher Brown CBE, director of the Ashmolean Museum, said: 'It is a huge honour for the Ashmolean to be shortlisted for this year's Contemporary Art Society Annual Award for Museums.

'The Ashmolean is a rare place where people can study the history of the world through an encyclopaedic collection from Predynastic Egypt right up to art being made today.

'This prestigious award would give the country's oldest public museum the chance to work with one of the UK's most acclaimed contemporary artists, Elizabeth Price, and to collaborate with Oxford's world-famous Pitt Rivers Museum and the equally celebrated Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. Elizabeth has proposed a work which would open up the archives and collections of Oxford in a radical new way.

'From autumn 2013, the Ashmolean will be expanding its modern and contemporary art programmes with a series of ambitious exhibitions and projects. The opportunity to work with the current holder of the Turner Prize as part of this programme is a truly exciting prospect.'

Elizabeth, who was born in Bradford and received a BFA from the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in 1988, has recently returned to Oxford to take up a permanent University lectureship. The winner of the 2012 Turner Prize, Elizabeth wishes to make a new film that explores the photographic archives and collections of the University's museums, focusing particularly on the Ashmolean and Pitt Rivers.

The winner of this year's Contemporary Art Society Annual Award for Museums will be announced in November following deliberation by a judging panel comprising artist Brian Griffiths, arts journalist Charlotte Higgins, gallery director Elizabeth Neilson and curator Kirsty Ogg.