LONDON, ENGLAND.- Arts Minister, Estelle Morris, announced today that the Department for Culture is to double its annual contribution to the Wolfson Museum and Gallery Improvement Fund to £2 million from April 2004. The significant increase will be matched by £2m from the Wolfson Foundation, making total funds available each year £4m. Doubling the money in the Fund will enable coverage of the scheme to be extended.
 
Speaking to the Museums Association Annual Conference in Brighton today the Minister said: ’Museums are central to networks of knowledge, engaging with people locally, nationally and internationally. They support learning and skills, community identity and cohesion and the economy and open up worlds of creativity and new experience for all.
 
’We must continue to ensure that sufficient attention is paid to the core business, the care, research and preservation of the collections, which underpins other aspects of the work of museums and galleries. It therefore gives me great pleasure to announce increased funding to support the improvement of the quality of displays, public spaces, access for disabled visitors and environmental controls in museums and galleries across Britain through the DCMS Wolfson Museum and Gallery Improvement Fund and welcome the matching contribution from the Wolfson Foundation.’
 
In July 2003, the Department for Culture announced that fourteen museums and galleries in London, Cambridge, Liverpool, Newcastle and Oxford had been awarded grants totalling £2 million from the DCMS Wolfson Museum and Gallery Improvement Fund.