Art-lover Madonna agrees to present this year's Turner Prize

In a rare marriage of pop and art, Madonna will present this year's Turner Prize.

The pop icon will hand £20,000 to the winning artist, who will join a growing list of luminaries – including Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin – to have walked off with Britain'sleading, and most controversial, modern art award.

The four short-listed candidates this year are Richard Billingham, a photographer; Martin Creed, an installation artist; Isaac Julien, a film-maker; and Mike Nelson, an installation and sculpture artist. Their work will be shown at the Tate Britain from next month.

The London gallery, which will host the awards on 9 December, said that Madonna had agreed to compere the ceremony, which will be broadcast live on Channel 4.

A spokesman for the gallery said: "We know Madonna to have a long-standing interest in contemporary British art, and she is a distinguished art collector in her own right. We are absolutely delighted she is presenting it this year."

The move marks a growing relationship between Tate Britain and Madonna. She has already loaned the gallery a self-portrait by the Mexican surrealist Frida Kahlo from her large private collection.

The painting, which has not been seen by the public for a decade, depicts Kahlo with a monkey around her neck, and is expected to go on display next month as part of a surrealist exhibition of some 450 works.

Previous presenters of the Turner Prize include the fashion designers Paul Smith and Agnès B, who were invited because of their enduring interest in the art world.

Candidates for the prize, established in 1984, are restricted to British artists under the age of 50. Last year's Turner Prize was won by the photographer Wolfgang Tillmans.

* The group chief executive of Barclays Bank promised yesterday that there would be no "crass commercialisation" behind its £1.9m sponsorship of some of the country's leading arts institutions.

Matthew Barrett announced at the National Theatre in London that Barclays was becoming the largest business sponsor of the theatre, to which it will give £1m. The British Museum, the National Gallery and Tate Britain will also receive £900,000 as part of the sponsorship package, which will run for two years from November and will be branded "Invest and Inspire".

"Hopefully we can foster some goodwill for Barclays but it will have to be done with some taste," Mr Barrett said. "It will be subtle. There will be no crass commercialisation. We will not be approaching this in the way we do our sponsorship of the FA Premiership."