In the lead up to the announcement of UK's Museum of the Year on July 6, ARTINFO profiles the five nominees: Bristol’s Arnolfini, London’s V&A and Bethlem Museum of the Mind, Jupiter Artland in West Lothian, and the York Art Gallery in Yorkshire.

Bristol’s Arnolfini, which celebrates its 55th birthday today, is in many ways the center of contemporary creativity in Bristol. More than just an art gallery featuring exhibitions by artists includingRichard Long, Bridget Riley, and Rachel Whiteread, it is an institution, spearheading the redevelopment of the city’s harborside from a working docks into an area rich with nightlife, tourists, and people. (It also has a particularly dodgy Wetherspoons which this writer, an ex-Bristol native, has terrible memories of. But you cannot blame that on the Arnolfini.)

The gallery was nominated by the Art Fund for the Museum of the Year prize largely because of a series of partnerships made by the Arnolfini in the preceding year. As the Art Fund put it in a press release, “Most significantly, 2015 saw Arnolfini enter a new strategic partnership with the University of the West of England’s Arts, Creative Industries and Education faculty […] to create a unique city campus: a new kind of learning environment and enriched opportunities for the public to engage with contemporary art.”

Discussing their success this year with ARTINFO, Arnolfini’s director of programmes Rob Bowman said: “2016 started with a bang, as we hosted the UK premiere of John Akomfrah’s ‘Vertigo Sea,’ a mesmeric film installation that is now touring to venues across the UK. We’re currently exhibiting the most ambitious presentation of ‘Art from Elsewhere,’ featuring film, photography, painting and installation by 37 international artists and reflecting on global economies and social change. And looking ahead, over the summer Arnolfini presents ‘Moving Targets’ – an explosion of art, music and workshops exploring punk as an attitude with more than one history and meaning. The year will draw to a close with a long-awaited solo exhibition by Irish artist and sculptor Daphne Wright.”

At the time of the award, Arnolfini will be approaching the end of its landmark “Art From Elsewhere” show, a co-exhibition with the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery that features international artists – including Jenny Holzer, Lothar Baumgarten, and MESCHAC GABA among nearly 40 others – who create “socially-engaged work” that “addresses life, politics and identity in a globalized society.”

“Art From Elsewhere” runs through July 17 at Arnolfini.