What an achievement! The new Wedgwood Museum at Barlaston has been named The Museum of the Year.
Congratulations to Gaye Blake Roberts, the Museum's Director, and George Stonier, its Chairman. Both have worked for years to raise the finance, to open the museum and to create its beautiful Galleries.
This is the most important museum prize in Britain and to win it Wedgwood had to see off the challenge of the refurbished Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow, one of the UK's greatest museums. Wedgwood did so triumphantly, getting the vote of every judge according to the Chairman of the Judging Panel, David Puttnam.
The Museum has the finest collection of Wedgwood in the world, displayed brilliantly. Here is Josiah Wedgwood's genius: designer, inventor, entrepreneur and radical politician (campaigning against the Slave Trade). How badly we need people like him today!
If you haven't been already, go and visit the museum!