Palace reopens

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Palace reopens


On Saturday 24 March Kew Palace, the countryside retreat of King George III and his family, will reopen its doors to the public after a brief winter closure period.

Press release

On Saturday 24 March Kew Palace, the countryside retreat of King George III and his family, will reopen its doors to the public after a brief winter closure period. After a hugely successful opening season in 2006, when this petite royal palace opened its doors following a decade-long £6.6 million conservation and restoration project visitors will once again be able to enjoy this most modest and unexpected of royal residences. And this year the Kew Palace is also celebrating being long-listed for the highly prestigious Gulbenkian Prize for museums and galleries 2007.

Faithfully presented as King George III and his family would have known it in the early 1800s, Kew Palace was the setting for many personal family dramas that made history. The palace is well known as sanctuary for King George III during his bouts of illness, presumed as ‘madness’ but now known to have been porphyria. Queen Charlotte, his devoted wife, spent her last days at ‘dear Kew’ before she passed away in her bedroom at Kew Palace. And two of their sons, including the Duke of Kent, father to the future Queen Victoria, were married in the first floor Drawing Room. Most recently the palace hosted the private 80th Birthday party of HM The Queen in April 2006.

The setting for these stories and many more are the ornately decorated and furnished rooms, also home to unique objects belonging to the palace’s inhabitants including the remarkable baby (or doll’s) house made by the daughters of King George III, the poignant waistcoat worn by King George in his final years, Queen Charlotte’s chair in which she died and a series of items not publicly displayed last year will go on display including an original tea caddy decorated with a painting of the palace.

All of these combined with a highly innovative interpretation scheme to tell the story of George III and his time at Kew with his family has contributed to make the Kew Palace worthy of nomination and long-listing for the Gulbenkian Prize for museums and galleries 2007. Kew Palace is listed alongside nine other museums and galleries around the country. During the next two months the Gulbenkian Prize judges will visit the Kew Palace and the other long-listed museums and galleries to determine their short-list of four. The winner of the Gulbenkian Prize will be announced in May during Museums and Galleries Month 2007.

Historic Royal Palaces are now appealing to these visitors and other supporters to go online and pledge their support for Kew Palace to win the award at www.thegulbenkianprize.org.uk where they can post their comments and messages of support.

Notes to editors

For further information about Kew Palace please contact Sarah Watson on 020 3166 6166 or email sarah.watson@hrp.org.uk . To download images of Kew Palace and some of the objects on display please visit HRP’s online photographic library at hrp.newsteam.co.uk.

For opening hours click here

For admission prices click here

Historic Royal Palaces
Historic Royal Palaces is the independent charity that looks after the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, the Banqueting House, Kensington Palace and Kew Palace.  We help everyone explore the story of how monarchs and people have shaped society, in some of the greatest palaces ever built (registered charity number 1068852).

We receive no funding from the Government or the Crown, so we depend on the support of our visitors, members, donors, volunteers and sponsors. These palaces are owned by The Queen on behalf of the nation, and we manage them for the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

We believe in four principles. 

Guardianship: giving these palaces a future as long and valuable as their past.
Discovery: encouraging people to make links with their own lives and today’s world. 
Showmanship: doing everything with panache.
Independence: having our own point of view and finding new ways to do our work.

More information about Historic Royal Palaces is available here

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Although administered and cared for by Historic Royal Palaces, Kew Palace sits within the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. For further information about Kew Gardens please visit www.kew.org or contact Oliver Basciano or Anna Quenby in the Kew Gardens Press Office, Telephone 020 8332 5607, email pr@kew.org.
The Gulbenkian Prize for museums and galleries 2007

• Paula Ridley, who is both Director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation UK Branch and Chairman of the V&A, took no part in assessing applications for the Prize at any stage of the process.

• The Gulbenkian Prize for museums and galleries is principally funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, whose Headquarters are in Lisbon. For 50 years the Foundation’s UK Branch has been a pioneering funder of developments in contemporary arts, education and social policy in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland and a leading agency in the promotion of Portuguese culture. The Arts Programme has traditionally played an active role in encouraging artists and arts organisations, including museums, to find original and inventive ways of developing their practice. It currently has two funding programmes, The Arts in Public Spaces and The Arts and Science.

• Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian was an Armenian, who became a British citizen and conducted his business in London before finally settling in Portugal. His distinguished private collection of art and artefacts is housed in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, which is recognised as one of the best small museums in Europe. The tradition of collecting has been continued by the Foundation and the holdings of its Modern Art Centre include an extensive collection of modern British artworks.

• The Gulbenkian Prize for museums and galleries is administered by the Museum Prize, a charitable company created in 2002 by The Art Fund, the Campaign for Museums, the Museums Association, and National Heritage.

• The Prize is also supported by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), the national development agency working for and on behalf of museums, libraries and archives and advising government on policy and priorities for the sector.

Additional sponsorship and in-kind support provided by

• A Supporter of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
• Blackwall Green (a member of the Heath Lambert Group)
• Consensus Business Group
• The Arbib Foundation
• Event Communications
• Lloyds TSB Private Banking
• Endsleigh Insurance Brokers
• Caixa Geral de Depositos
• Farrer & Co
• D&F Wines
• 24 Hour Museum

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