IN LESS than a week’s time the Oxford Museum of Natural History will discover whether it will be handed a major award.

Staff have been working hard to impress the panel of judges who will decide the winner of the Art Fund’s Museum of the Year prize after the museum was announced as a finalist in April.

Last Friday the five judges visited the museum as part of their tour around the country to assess the six museums and galleries on the shortlist.

And the Natural History Museum was also visited by BBC Radio Two presenter Ken Bruce, whose interview with museum administrator Wendy Shepherd was broadcast on Chris Evans’ breakfast show on the station on Monday.

The winner will be announced at a ceremony at the Tate Modern in London on Wednesday.

Ms Shepherd said: “The judges had a whistle-stop tour of the museum and we tried to showcase everything we do.

“We had to put our best foot forward and it was a very short visit so we had to try to get across a lot to them.

“They looked at the Sensing Evolution touch tables and they looked at the new Sensing Evolution exhibition.

“Some of them had never been to the museum before so the building does sort of sell itself. When they walked through the door, it was spectacular to them.”

The prize will see £100,000 awarded to the winner, which will be the museum deemed to have met all or some of a list of criteria including demonstrating excellence and innovation and bringing its collection to life for audiences.

Last year the prize was won by the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

All of the museums on the 2015 shortlist have been featured on BBC Radio 2 but the Natural History Museum got an extra boost by being selected to appear on the breakfast show, which has about 9.6 million listeners per week.

Ms Shepherd said: “I think we are quite lucky because we got the Chris Evans show. Other museums did not get quite so popular shows. Ken Bruce had never been here even though he lives in Thame.

“The judges apparently do not make up their minds until the morning of July 1.

“It is a great honour to be nominated because we have been around for a very long time so it is recognition of the great work we do.”

In the run-up to the judges visiting the museum, parts of its historic dodo skeleton went on a tour of Great Britain.

A cast of the museum’s dodo head, which is the only remaining soft tissue material of the extinct animal anywhere in the world, travelled from Land’s End to John O’Groats along with real dodo foot bones.

The specimen visited museums in Bristol, Derby and Glasgow along the way from June 8 to June 15.