The Natural History Museum in London and Orkney’s former Royal Navy base at Scapa Flow are in the running to be named the UK’s Museum of the Year.

They are joined on the shortlist for the £120,000 award by Glasgow’s Burrell Collection and the MAC in Belfast.

Leighton House, located in London’s Holland Park, completes the five-strong shortlist.

The winner will be announced at the British Museum on 12 July, with the four runners-up receiving £15,000 each.

The 2023 prize marks the 10th year of Art Fund’s Museum of the Year, which aims to champion the UK’s 2,500 museums, galleries and heritage sites.

Have you heard the one about the sheep so big the CEO of Tesla made it his profile picture?

Elon Musk first tweeted the picture as a joke, but then went a step further by replacing his Twitter avatar with the image of the farmyard animal.

This did not sit right with the sheep photo’s owners, the Museum of English Rural Life, which soon made a change of its own.

Now visitors to its Twitter page will be greeted with Musk’s smiling face.

Musk is known for participating in running jokes and slang online, such as previously asking Twitter users for their “dankest memes” and releasing a rap song about Harambe, the gorilla shot dead in a US zoo who then became a social media touchstone. 

And he has been enjoying his time as a sheep by replying to genuine Tesla car customers with oblique sheep puns to thank them for their purchases.

Likewise, the Museum of English Rural Life regularly joins in with internet humour, and has used its time as Musk to tweet jokes about “electric sheep called Teslewe”.

A survey of more than 120 museums and museum services across the country found that more than a third had cut their paid staff while nearly half had increased the number of unpaid interns and volunteers required to maintain their institutions.

The study by the Museums Association (MA) found that staff reductions were primarily the result of a loss of public investment, with just shy of half reporting a cut to their overall income in the 12 months to July this year and nearly a quarter losing more than 10 per cent of their earnings.

The industry body said that members were concerned that the loss of paid staff, including curators, would lead to lower standards, in particular in the care and interpretation of museum collections.

One local authority museum, based in south England, reported: “We have gone over to a professional volunteer model with many of our front-of-house staff new volunteers.”

Museums, galleries and tourist attractions nationwide could be subject to part closures over the next few days as union workers strike in a row over pay, working conditions and pensions.

As the busy half-term week continues, hundreds of staff at the National Gallery and Tate galleries in London will walkout on Thursday, which could result in some part-closures, while Tate Liverpool has announced it will close for the day.

On Friday, staff at the Natural History, Science and Victoria and Albert museums in London, as well as workers at National Museums Liverpool, a group of seven free museums, will refuse to work along with staff from a range of government departments. On Sunday, union members at English Heritage sites, including Stonehenge, will strike