The shortlist is out for the 2006 Gulbenkian Prize, which honors Britain’s best museum of the year, and one of the judges says that the experience has been eye-opening. “There are so many different museums that sometimes it’s like comparing oranges with apples. And yet, when you get the measure of a place, there are a few magic ingredients. Top of the list is the sort of enthusiasm that’s catching: an enthusiasm that means you turn up somewhere knowing little about a subject, and leave feeling inspired by it. Beyond that, there are things like how welcoming a place is; how easy it is to access information; how much sense the layout makes; in a nutshell, how user-friendly it is.”