Revisiting Museums of Influence: Four Decades of Innovation and Public Quality in European Museums [1 ed.] 0367435403, 9780367435400

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REVISITING MUSEUMS OF INFLUENCE

Revisiting Museums of Influence presents 50 portraits of a range of European museums that have made striking innovations in public quality over the past 40 years. In so doing, the book demonstrates that excellence can be found in museums no matter their subject matter, scale, or source of funding. Written by leading professionals in the field of museology, who have acted as judges for the European Museum of the Year Award, the portraits describe museums that had, or should have had, an influence on other museums around the world.The portraits aim to capture the moment when this potential was identified, and the introduction will locate the institutions in the wider history of museums in Europe over the period, as well as drawing out common themes of change and innovation that unite the portraits. Providing many very diverse portraits, Revisiting Museums of Influence captures the immense capacity of the museum to respond to changing societal needs. As a result, the book will be essential reading for students of museology and museum professionals around the world in shaping the museums they wish to create. Scholars and students of art history, archaeology, ethnography, anthropology, cultural and visual studies, architecture, memory studies and history will also find much to interest them. Mark O’Neill is an independent researcher and consultant and former Head of Glasgow Museums; Chair of the European Museum of the Year Jury; Associate Professor, College of Arts, Glasgow University; Research Fellow, Museum Studies, Leicester University; and Adviser, Event Communications, London. Jette Sandahl has been the founding director for two pioneering new museums, the Women’s Museum of Denmark and the Museum of World Cultures in Sweden. She has served as Director of Exhibitions and Public Programmes at the National Museum of Denmark, and as Director Experience at National Museum of New

Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Most recently, she was director of the Museum of Copenhagen, Denmark. She is Chair of the European Museum Forum, which oversees the European Museum of the Year Award. Marlen Mouliou is Assistant Professor of Museology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens-NKUA. From 2010 to 2016, she served as Secretary and Chair of the International Committee for the Collections and Activities of Museums of Cities (ICOM-CAMOC). Since 2016, she has been Member of the Panel of Judges for the European Museum of the Year Award and Vice-Chair of the European Academic Heritage Network (UNIVERSEUM).

REVISITING MUSEUMS OF INFLUENCE Four Decades of Innovation and Public Quality in European Museums

Edited by Mark O’Neill Jette Sandahl Marlen Mouliou

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Mark O’Neill, Jette Sandahl and Marlen Mouliou; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Mark O’Neill, Jette Sandahl and Marlen Mouliou to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: O’Neill, Mark, 1956- editor. | Sandahl, Jette, editor. | Mouliou, Marlen, editor. Title: Revisiting museums of influence : four decades of innovation and public quality in European museums / edited by Mark O’Neill, Jette Sandahl and Marlen Mouliou. Other titles: Four decades of innovation and public quality in European museums Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020033378 (print) | LCCN 2020033379 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367435417 (paperback) | ISBN 9780367435400 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003003977 (ebook) | ISBN 9781000262179 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781000262193 (epub) | ISBN 9781000262186 (mobi) Subjects: LCSH: Museums--Europe. | European Museum of the Year Award--History. Classification: LCC AM40 .R48 2021 (print) | LCC AM40 (ebook) | DDC 069.094--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020033378 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020033379 ISBN: 978-0-367-43540-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-43541-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-00397-7 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by SPi Global, India

To the EMYA community

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The European Museum Forum and the editors would like to thank all those who helped in the making of this book: former EMYA judge Hartmut Prasch, who first suggested the idea; the authors, who responded to our request for contributions; the Museum of Portimão, which hosts the EMYA archive; and all the museums and individuals who have provided photographs.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements vi Illustrations xiii PART 1

Introduction 1 Mark O’Neill, Jette Sandahl and Marlen Mouliou PART 2

Museum portraits

27

1 Ironbridge Gorge Museum Massimo Negri

28

2 Louisiana Museum of Modern Art Massimo Negri

32

3 Catharine Convent State Museum Ann Nicholls

36

4 Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation ‘V. Papandoniou’ Peter Schirmbeck

40

5 Stockholm Music Museum Peter Schirmbeck

44

viii  Contents

6 The Museum of Farming and Crafts of Calabria Peter Schirmbeck

48

7 Quarry Bank Mill Peter Schirmbeck

52

8 Heureka, the Finnish Science Centre Wim van der Weiden

56

9 The Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia Wim van der Weiden

60

1 0 The Vasa Museum Ann Nicholls

64

1 1 Alta Museum Ann Nicholls

68

1 2 Museum of the Romanian Peasant J. Patrick Greene

72

1 3 National Conservation Centre (National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside) 76 Wim van der Weiden 1 4 Krasnoyarsk Museum Centre J. Patrick Greene

80

1 5 Guggenheim Museum Maritta Pitkänen

84

1 6 In Flanders Fields Museum J. Patrick Greene

88

1 7 Chester Beatty Library Wim van der Weiden

92

1 8 The British Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum Massimo Negri

96

Contents  ix

1 9 MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante Massimo Negri

100

2 0 La Piscine, André Diligent Art and Industrial Museum Wim van der Weiden

104

2 1 Netherlands Open-Air Museum Mikhail Gnedovsky

108

2 2 German Emigration Centre Ann Nicholls

112

2 3 Museum of Portimão Jouetta van der Ploeg

116

2 4 Museum of Broken Relationships Sirje Helme

120

2 5 Tampere 1918 – Museum of the Finnish Civil War Mikhail Gnedovsky

124

2 6 Madinat al-Zahra Museum Jette Sandahl

128

2 7 Glasnevin Cemetery Museum Jouetta van der Ploeg

132

2 8 Archaeological Museum Ioannina Michael Ryan

136

2 9 Museum of Liverpool José Gameiro

140

3 0 National Maritime Museum Jahangir Selimkhanov

144

3 1 The Museum of Innocence Jette Sandahl

148

3 2 Baksi Museum Jette Sandahl

152

x  Contents

3 3 Žanis Lipke Memorial Mikhail Gnedovsky

156

3 4 Rijksmuseum Michael Ryan

160

3 5 MuCEM – Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations 164 José Gameiro 3 6 The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum Jahangir Selimkhanov

168

3 7 The Mary Rose Museum Michael Ryan

172

3 8 Sasso San Gottardo Museum Jahangir Selimkhanov

176

3 9 European Solidarity Centre Jette Sandahl

180

4 0 Odderøya Museum Harbour Jahangir Selimkhanov

184

4 1 Benfica FC Museum and FC Porto Museum Jahangir Selimkhanov

188

4 2 Yaroslavl Art Museum Michael Ryan

192

4 3 Mémorial ACTe, Caribbean Centre of Expressions and Memory of the Slave Trade and Slavery Jette Sandahl

196

4 4 Museum of the First President of Russia Boris Yeltsin Jahangir Selimkhanov

200

4 5 The Old Town Museum Jouetta van der Ploeg

204

4 6 Museum of Confluences Karmele Barandiaran

208

Contents  xi

4 7 Silesian Museum Marlen Mouliou

212

4 8 Marubi National Museum of Photography Marlen Mouliou

216

4 9 War Childhood Museum Marlen Mouliou

220

5 0 Rijksmuseum Boerhaave Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

224

PART 3

European Museum of the Year Awards 1977–2019

229

List of Contributors

247

Index 253

ILLUSTRATIONS

Cover image (paperback) Mémorial ACTe, Caribbean Centre of Expressions and Memory of the Slave Trade and Slavery, France Photograph: ©MACTe and G. Aricique Image 1 Ironbridge Gorge Museum, United Kingdom Photograph: ©The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust

28

Image 2 Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark Photograph: ©Kim Hansen/Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

32

Image 3 Catharine Convent State Museum, The Netherlands Photograph: ©Lilian van Rooij

36

Image 4 Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation ‘V. Papandoniou’, Greece Photograph: ©“V. Papantoniou” Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation

40

Image 5 Stockholm Music Museum, Sweden Photograph: ©Stockholm Music Museum, Sweden (EMF Archive)

44

Image 6 The Museum of Farming and Crafts of Calabria, Italy Photograph: ©Comune di Monterosso Calabro (VV)

48

xiv  Illustrations

Image 7 Quarry Bank Mill, United Kingdom Photograph: ©Konstantinos Arvanitis

52

Image 8 Heureka, the Finnish Science Centre, Finland Photograph: ©Heureka

56

Image 9 The Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia, Cyprus Photograph: ©The Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia

60

Image 10 The Vasa Museum, Sweden Photograph: ©Åke E:son Lindman

64

Image 11 Alta Museum, Norway Photograph: ©Bernt Holst/World Heritage Rock Art Centre – Alta Museum 68 Image 12 Museum of the Romanian Peasant, Romania Photograph: ©Marius Caraman/Photo from the Ethnological Archive of the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant

72

Image 13 National Conservation Centre (National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside), United Kingdom Photograph: ©Marlen Mouliou

76

Image 14 Krasnoyarsk Museum Centre, Russia Photograph: ©Krasnoyarsk Museum Centre & Vladimir Dmitrienko

80

Image 15 Guggenheim Museum, Spain Photograph: ©FMGB, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2020

84

Image 16 In Flanders Fields Museum, Belgium Photograph: ©In Flanders Fields Museum

88

Image 17 Chester Beatty Library, Ireland Photograph: ©The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin

92

Image 18 The British Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum, United Kingdom Photograph: ©Marlen Mouliou 96

Illustrations  xv

Image 19 MARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante, Spain Photograph: ©MARQ Museo Arqueológico de Alicante

100

Image 20 La Piscine, André Diligent Art and Industrial Museum, France Photograph: ©Roubaix – La Piscine. Architectes: A. Baert, 1932 – J.P. Philippon, 2001 and 2018

104

Image 21 Image 21 Netherlands Open-Air Museum, The Netherlands Photograph: ©Adrian Sommeling 108 Image 22 German Emigration Centre, Germany Photograph: ©Marlen Mouliou

112

Image 23 Museum of Portimão, Portugal Photograph: ©Museu de Portimão

116

Image 24 Museum of Broken Relationships, Croatia Photograph: ©Mare Milin

120

Image 25 Tampere 1918 – Museum of the Finnish Civil War, Finland Photograph: ©Saana Säilynoja/Vapriikki Photo Archives

124

Image 26 Madinat al-Zahra Museum, Spain Photograph: ©M. Pijuan. Conjunto Arqueológico Madinat al-Zahra

128

Image 27 Glasnevin Cemetery Museum, Ireland Photograph: ©Glasnevin Cemetery Museum

132

Image 28 The Archaeological Museum of Ioannina, Greece Photograph: ©Ephorate of Antiquities of Ioannina/Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports/Archaeological Receipts Fund

136

Image 29 Museum of Liverpool, United Kingdom Photograph: ©Liverpool Museum

140

Image 30 National Maritime Museum Amsterdam, The Netherlands Photograph: ©Twycer

144

xvi  Illustrations

Image 31 The Museum of Innocence, Turkey Photograph: ©Marlen Mouliou

148

Image 32 Baksi Museum, Turkey Photograph: ©Baksi Museum

152

Image 33 Žanis Lipke Memorial, Latvia Photograph: ©Ansis Starks/Zanis Lipke Memorial

156

Image 34 Rijksmuseum, The Netherlands Photograph: ©IwanBaan

160

Image 35 MuCEM – Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations, France Photograph: ©José Gameiro 164 Image 36 The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, Switzerland Photograph: ©Alain Germond, Neuchâtel

168

Image 37 The Mary Rose Museum, United Kingdom Photograph: ©Hufton+Crow

172

Image 38 Sasso San Gottardo Museum, Switzerland Photograph: ©Fondazione Sasso San Gottardo

176

Image 39 European Solidarity Centre, Poland Photograph: ©Renata Dąbrowska/European Solidarity Centre

180

Image 40 Odderøya Museum Harbour, Norway Photograph: ©Arve Lindvig/Vest-Agder-museet

184

Image 41a Benfica FC Museum, Portugal Photograph: ©João Freitas/Benfica FC Museum

188

Image 41b FC Porto Museum, Portugal Photograph: ©Afonso Nunes/Museu FC Porto

188

Illustrations  xvii

Image 42 Yaroslavl Art Museum, Russia Photograph: ©Michael Ryan

192

Image 43 Mémorial ACTe, Caribbean Centre of Expressions and Memory of the Slave Trade and Slavery, France Photograph: ©MACTe and G. Aricique

196

Image 44 Museum of the First President of Russia Boris Yeltsin, Russia Photograph: ©Presidential Center of Boris Yeltsin,Yekaterinburg, Russia 200 Image 45 The Old Town Museum, Denmark Photograph: ©Thorsten Overgaard

204

Image 46 Museum of Confluences, France Photograph: ©Marlen Mouliou

208

Image 47 Silesian Museum, Poland Photograph: ©Muzeum Śląskie in Katowice/Marcin Czechowicz

212

Image 48 Marubi National Museum of Photography, Albania Photograph: ©Christian Richters and Blerta Hoçia

216

Image 49 War Childhood Museum, Bosnia and Herzegovina Photograph: ©War Childhood Museum

220

Image 50 Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, The Netherlands Photograph: ©Marlen Mouliou

224

PART 1

Introduction Mark O’Neill, Jette Sandahl and Marlen Mouliou

‘The museum refuses to stand still’ declared Kenneth Hudson (1916–1999), who founded the European Museum of the Year Award (EMYA) in 1977 (Hudson 2015, p. 136). The image he conjures up is of a dynamic, even restless, institution, not simply changing, but actively rejecting pressures to remain static. The purpose of the award was – and is – to recognise successful change, to celebrate new or renewed museums that have been exceptional in terms of innovation and quality. Nearly 1,900 museums from 44 countries have applied for the award in the 42 years of its existence. This book presents 50 portraits of 51 of these museums (41 is a double portrait – portraits are referred to by number in brackets). The portraits are all written by past and current members of the EMYA jury, who were asked to propose museums that they found especially memorable – not limiting themselves to candidates that had won the main, or indeed any, prize. In reducing their c.200 proposals to the final number, the editors have given some attention to the range of museum types, their geographical spread and the involvement of different generations of judges, but the key criterion was that, after many decades of working in, visiting and assessing museums, these were the ones the authors wished to write about. The process of selection reflects the nature of the European Museum of the Year Award. There are extensive guidelines for both candidates and judges, and every year the jury has to negotiate and agree which museums are most deserving of recognition. This book aims to capture some of the tacit, intellectual capital generated by the jury process as well as evoking the specific qualities of particular, memorable museums. The EMYA approach is highly critical, and based on a holistic experience of visiting and understanding each museum. As in a jury meeting, the authors come from a wide range of cultures and museum traditions and bring a great variety of intellectual backgrounds, experience, and theoretical perspectives to the conversation, as they champion museums that

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have impressed them. Some of the institutions portrayed have already proven to be museums of influence. For others it may be too soon to say. The judges identified them as having this potential and, while there is no concluding vote on their merits, the editors hope that insights will emerge from this diversity about the somewhat elusive and changing nature of museums, about how they innovate and how ideas of quality develop. The book is organised as follows.This introduction is in four sections.The first outlines Hudson’s concept of ‘public quality’ in the broad context of museum history, and offers some definitions of innovation and how these relate to EMYA’s understanding of the role of museums in society. It then explores some ways of reading the museum portraits that are at the heart of the book. Section III provides background on the history and development of EMYA and on the functioning of the awards. Section IV is a sketch of the broad context of change in the world of European museums in which the awards operate and offers some concluding reflections.The museum portraits are presented in the order of their participation in EMYA. They are followed by a list of all awards from 1977 to 2019. I Museum revolutions and progressive traditions EMYA was part of a major change in museums, variously described as ‘revolutions’ or ‘paradigm shifts’, which became evident in the 1970s (Hudson 1981, Anderson 2004, Knell et al. 2007). A core dimension of this process of change in museums was later summarised by Stephen Weil in his often-quoted dictum as ‘from being about something to being for someone’ (Weil 1999, p. 229, original emphasis).The mode of museum which was being challenged was a ‘traditional’ ideal of a public museum which emerged in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and which gave priority to collection, preservation and research over exhibition and education as the ‘core’ functions of museums (Abt 2006, p. 132). This shorthand history is only partly true – many early museums had great ambitions for engaging with and educating a very wide public. What now seems ‘traditional’ is often a later evolution which happened after the initial exuberant expression of a social purpose faded, and professionalisation and bureaucratisation took over. The first public museums, whether founded by Enlightened despots or emerging democratic national or city governments, represented a belief in Progress, with all that implies about changing the present to achieve a better future. Even though our relationship with ideas of progress have become, to say the least, complicated, finding a meaningful definition of progress is inherent not only in the idea of innovation, but in that of the museum itself. Thus, there is a tension, dating back to the first generations of the modern public museum, between the view that museums exist to meet the needs – cultural, educational, intellectual, economic, spiritual, political – of society, and the view that the professional tasks and processes of museums are purposes in themselves. There has indeed been a determined effort to change the status quo from the 1970s – but there are traditions of radicalism as

Introduction  3

well as of conservatism in museum history.The word ‘revolution’ may be accurate in its older sense of a return to a former state, and the ‘new paradigm’ may be a modernisation of founding values. There was also a political dimension to the nineteenth century model which was being challenged. Insofar as museums constituted something akin to the official biography of their society, their job was to flatter the identity of the dominant group, showing its members to be civilised, artistic, rational, unified, brave, creative, just in their victories and noble in their defeats. Even in the most inclusive nineteenth century museums, the group whose identity was privileged in this way was that of the bourgeois elite, whose assumptions about cultural, national, imperial, racial and gender hierarchies permeated every aspect of museum culture. While the processes of democratisation – in which museums have played a role – have eroded many of these assumptions, museums work within the taxonomic and institutional legacies of these worldviews, and easily slip into majority consensus narratives. These tend to present frictionless progress, to show deference to aristocratic elites of the past and to represent the achievement of modern democracy and human rights in ways that minimise the agency of the oppressed and the resistance from the powerful (Horne 1984). What are museums for? The paradox of ‘public quality’ The apparently paradoxical phrase ‘public quality’ was coined by Kenneth Hudson to encapsulate the criteria which the European Museum of the Year Awards would apply in assessing museums. It aims to transcend the assumption that consciously serving a public is in tension with stewardship of collections and ambitions for excellence. He defined ‘public quality’ as excellence across the whole range of the ‘museum package’: the collections; the architecture; the presentation and interpretation of the material on display; research publications and the shop; the educational programmes; activities other than those that are deliberately and obviously educational; publicity and marketing; management; attention to the physical comfort of visitors; the general atmosphere of the museum; and a ‘somewhat elusive but important quality that goes under the head of “ideas, imagination”’ (Hudson 1986, p. 22). In 1977 Hudson had argued that ‘museums are no longer considered to be merely storehouses or agents for the preservation of a country’s cultural and natural heritage, but powerful instruments of ‘education in the broadest sense’, and that ‘what a museum is attempting to achieve has become much more important than what it is’ (Hudson 1977, p. 1). Museums are both about something and for someone, unified by an active sense of purpose. Progress: invention, innovation, and imitation The high value placed on innovation in the past 60 years arises from its prevalence in economic thinking, especially about technological change (Godin 2012). A distinction is often made between invention, innovation, and imitation.

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Invention involves the creation of a new process or product (such as, for example, the first diorama, interactive or mental health programme). Innovation involves the application of the invention in the market, i.e. their deployment systematically and at scale to reach an audience. And imitation involves learning from these early adopters, without additional innovation. In museums, innovation in three domains – ‘business management, technology and value creation’ – has been shown to enhance ‘economic, market and social performance’ (Camarero et al. 2011, p. 262). Other recent interpretations of innovative museums frame them as social enterprises, driven by entrepreneurial vision and leadership, and prioritising social benefits (Eid 2019). Throughout the portraits, it is apparent that effective social innovation combined with intellectual innovation and technological and practical skill leads to enhanced ‘value creation’. Invention, innovation and imitation are not inherently linked – invention can take place without innovation; imitation can take place without innovation. Museums that aspire to share the status of the most prestigious ‘traditional’ museums can imitate them and be renewed without making any innovation. Others, less encumbered by the weight of prestige, find new ways of doing things (Camarero et al. 2011, p. 262). The essays in this book give a hint at the richness of the, as yet, unwritten history of the pathways through which museums learn from each other’s inventions and innovations. Beyond best practice: meeting a social need In his 1987 book, Museums of Influence, Hudson identified 37 museums that were paradigmatic, shaped by a strong societal purpose and shaping the future of museums, often through defining a particular genre – the art museum, the natural history museum, the science museum – and the museum profession itself. They achieved and went further than ‘public quality’. Each had done more than ‘broken new ground in such an original or striking way that other museums have felt disposed or compelled to follow their example’; instead, by its very ‘existence, its approach and its style, (it) has met a real social need’ (Hudson 1987, p. vii). II Memorability The brief for the portraits in this book did not include a definition of ‘memorable’ – it simply implied museums that remained in the authors’ minds years or decades after their visit. In keeping with the idea of the ‘museum package’, the portraits offer holistic accounts of museum visits, where memorability has resulted from a high degree of coherence, from an alignment of vision with implementation. Words like clear/clarity and integrated/integral, seamless and unity re-occur throughout the portraits. It is here that the boundaries between the interior world of the museum and the great world are negotiated,

Introduction  5

and where the judge balances critique and appreciation. Many museums are described as achieving a level of mastery, elegance and coherence comparable with that of a great work of art. A  few examples will make the point. The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (2) achieves an ‘extraordinary balance’ of all elements of the museum package. In MARQ (19), the portrait analyses four levels of integration – the displays with the contexts in which archaeologists work, the past with the present, the exhibition with other archaeological sites, and all the public facilities working together seamlessly.The Baksi Museum (32) ‘joins the historic with the present, the social with the educational, the financial with the cultural, and merges the creative processes with the goals and methods of cultural democracy’. Where this level of congruence is achieved, the result, as in Rijksmuseum Boerhaave (50), is ‘total absorption, to be carried away in time and space to places real and imagined, followed by a yearning to return’. What follows tries to tease out some of the dimensions of this level of coherence. Collections All the portraits celebrate the endless variety and wonder of things. From being rendered speechless by the sight of the Vasa (10) to being enchanted by the sculptures and their placing in the galleries and gardens of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (2), from being moved by the bullet-riddled jacket of a Solidarity activist (39) to the ‘profound aesthetic experience’ and insights afforded by the Rijksmuseum (34), the authors’ attention is compelled by objects throughout these portraits. Some portraits discuss how judges assess the collections as part of the overall package – do traditionally prestigious, magnificent collections have an advantage over museums who have more everyday objects? In the Chester Beatty Library (17), the magnificent collection of religious manuscripts and art was ‘more than just one of the factors for giving the institution an award’ – but it was combined with a ‘revolution’ in presentation that made it an exceptionally welcoming museum of world cultures. In assessing the British Galleries of the Victoria and Albert Museum (18) ‘it was inevitable that the uniqueness or the beauty of pieces on show were a plus’, but over the years ‘many museums with formidable collections did not attract a positive response from the judges; on the contrary, the jury rewarded museums showing a fresh approach to the interpretation of collections which were frequently not that “special’”. Putting an object in a museum is an act of ‘making special’ (Dissanayake 2003). This is their key mode of ‘value creation’. The transformation of the everyday – everyday objects, everyday lives – through museum making is one of the major themes running through the portraits. The accelerating museumification of an ever-wider range of objects is not a simple spreading of a process: it represents profound changes in museums, in their democratisation, in how they see their relationships with time, with their place, with their communities and with the wider world. The ways objects are collected, understood, presented, interpreted,

6  Mark O’Neill et al.

and re-interpreted have all been transformed as the result of a wide range of professional, technical, intellectual, social, and political developments. These forces have also transformed museums’ relationships with, and understandings of, everyday people – the non-experts who share the planet with museum professionals, and who sometimes visit museums. The increase in the scope of collections has not been the only innovation.The Conservation Centre in Liverpool (13) sought to bring the science of preserving objects from behind the scenes and open its mysteries to the public. Odderøya Museum Harbour (40) takes a different approach to conservation – and to collecting. It relies on shared/distributed ownership, and its collection is as much its network of contacts and its data as the objects it has acquired. The Museum of Broken Relationships (24) poses a very different challenge to traditional ideas of collecting, even beyond ideas of intangible heritage, representing as it does those most ephemeral yet powerful aspects of the everyday – our feelings and memories, which otherwise ‘may easily get lost in the turmoil of history’.The Museum of Innocence (31) embodies another challenging paradox: its collections tell a fictional story, which rings true at every level. The portraits also include examples of direct engagement with the turmoil of history – what has been called extreme collecting (Were and King 2014).The Tampere 1918 – Museum of Finnish Civil War (25) recounts how, during the conflict, a curator of the Häme Museum Society went out into the streets and collected items left after the battles. In the Solidarity Movement (39) opposition to Soviet rule in the 1980s, the activists were acutely aware of the significance of their actions, and documented their activities and their context, secreting material to ensure its survival during periods of intensified repression. As museums in Europe struggle to rethink their relationship with non-European collections and cultures, it is interesting that Hudson’s Museums of Influence did not feature a paradigmatic museum of ethnography, despite the existence of ‘very large and therefore, in professional museum jargon, “important” institutions’. This is because ‘none that I have yet seen or heard of contrives to communicate the essential features of the societies with which the museum or the collection is concerned’. ‘Ethnographic museums may collect widely but they do not dig deeply.The political consequences of doing so would be too serious, or so it is felt’ (Hudson 1987, p. vii/viii). These profound dilemmas and marked political consequences still prevail as ethnographic museums in Europe innovate their presentations of non-European cultures and approach the processes of de-colonisation. Signposts to ways forward may be found in a number of portraits, in which museums reframe existing collections, including ethnographic material, to create multi-disciplinary perspectives. The Museum of Confluences (46) merges ethnographic with natural history collections to create an interdisciplinary museum about humanity and nature. MuCEM (35) makes a radical change in perspective, focusing on a large geographical region, ‘on cultural change and intercultural dialogue, and on the processes of migration

Introduction  7

across borders’, so that the collections express ‘new meanings’ meeting ‘contemporary needs’. Perhaps the most radical shift, in values and in epistemology, is seen in MACTe – Mémorial ACTe, Caribbean Centre of Expressions and Memory of the Slave Trade and Slavery (43) in which the Other of the colonial racialised traditions now speaks in rich, authentic first-person voices. The communication revolution The ‘revolution’ in the presentation and interpretation of collections was a major element in the overall improvement of the museum package, a key domain where museums renegotiated their dichotomies. The traditional museum usually provided only minimal information about the objects on display, and rarely any at all on context. A seminal museum of which Kenneth Hudson used the word ‘revolution’ for its use of modern communication methods to interpret social and economic change was the Rüsselsheim Museum, which won the Council of Europe Prize in 1979 (Hudson 1981). Its director, in his portrait of the Stockholm Music Museum (5) in 1981, captures the excitement and impact of the new commitment to interpretation as a fully integrated element in the museum experience. Communication methods were extended to address ‘the intellect, feelings and the senses’ and often included a ‘mix of play with education’ that emerged in Science Centres like Heureka – The Finnish Science Centre (8), engaging adults as well as children. Constructivist theories of visitor agency and experiential education have given audiences a role in shaping the message, and changed the experience of museum visiting. The British Galleries of the Victoria and Albert Museum (18) in 2003 represented a significant milestone in their application on a large scale in a prestigious art museum. Many portraits describe excellent examples of the impact of improvement in design for communication and learning and in digital communication technologies. For example, the ‘extraordinary multimedia’ of the Museum of the First President Boris Yeltsin (44) helps to tell an ‘exciting and intriguing epic’. The two football museums, Benfica FC Museum and FC Porto Museum (41), enable a visitor with no prior knowledge of, or interest in, football to understand ‘how sport could become a source of pride and endurance for large crowds of fans’. Multisensory enhancements also foster learning and memorability, as in the deafening machinery at Quarry Bank Mill (7), as does music in the Yaroslavl Art Museum (42) and the Žanis Lipke Memorial (33).The immersive experiences in the German Emigration Centre (22) give ‘some small inkling of the state of mind of those leaving their own country for ever and venturing into the unknown’. In In Flanders Fields (16), the sensory onslaught is ‘almost overwhelming’ and in Tampere 1918 – Museum of the Finnish Civil War (25) they prompt the visitor to ask, ‘What is it like to be inside a war?’. In contrast, The Archaeological Museum of Ioannina (28) uses little or no technology, communicating through its ‘elegance and intellectual clarity’. What all the examples, indeed all the portraits, have in common is not praise for impressive design or novelty of effect per se, but for the way these contribute to

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what the museum is attempting to achieve. Or, to quote portrait 36 on how videos and games are used to address sensitive issues in The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum (36), they are ‘as precisely targeted as acupuncture’. While the power of resonant, beautiful, or impressive artefacts may not have changed, two examples may epitomise the vast new technical and artistic resources available to museums. The Žanis Lipke Memorial (33) tells the story of a tiny light in the vast darkness that was the Holocaust. It unfolds with an artistry in which ‘the meaning of visitors’ every step and every turn has been thoroughly planned, in both the scenario and in the design of the building’. Its immersive narrative power is captured in the portrait’s dramatic opening: ‘It could have been a novel, but it is a museum’. The Museum of Innocence (31) is both a novel and a museum – ‘The museum is not an illustration of the novel, and the novel is not an explanation of the museum’. In ‘its emotional density the museum exhibits an unsurpassed mastery in letting objects and material culture disclose their metaphoric, symbolic and psychological meanings’. As with novels, museum storytelling has an immense capacity for empathy and engagement, across a huge range of ideas, emotion and human lives in every conceivable cultural context, the capacity, in short, to immerse the visitor in the entire lifeworld of another. Museums and time: past, present and future Museums have to work out their place in time, which means a re-evaluation of objects, which are the material embodiment of the times that eddy through the museum. The ‘traditional’ museum is located outside time, or assumes a simple relationship with an idealised and static past. All the museums in this collection have defined more complex temporal positions than simply offering improved displays that enable people to look back, or even than simply being more aware of the present, reflected in better visitor services. Many make dramatic shifts in their relationship with time, in how they hold time past, time present and time future in dynamic tension, using this as a rich source of innovation. All museums offer opportunities for reflecting on the past. And, in a basic sense, museums hold important collections from the past, and many portrayed in this book are celebrated for vital tasks of rescuing or recovering material remnants. This may be the material culture of an entire economy, as at Ironbridge (1), a landmark of its kind and winner of the first EMYA. Or it may be a survival of the first industrial revolution in a rural landscape, as at Quarry Bank Mill (7), precious paintings, especially of religious art at Yaroslavl Art Museum (42), rescued in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, or 150 years of photographs that provide a myriad of personal narratives for an entire nation, as in Albania’s Marubi National Museum of Photography (48). The Alta Museum (11) treasures the few objects and buildings that survived the Nazis’ policy of total destruction during their occupation of Norway. New museums of everyday working life in Greece, the Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation (4), and in Italy,The Museum of Farming and Crafts (6), which opened in the early 1980s, revalued the recent past against stigma

Introduction  9

from both time past and from time future – from those who revered antiquity in a way that implied that more recent lives and cultures were of less worth, and from a ‘blind belief in progress’ that dismissed tradition as worthless. The Museum of Confluences (46) sees itself as at the confluence not just of two rivers, and of different neighbourhoods and communities of Lyon, but of past and present. The Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia (9) makes the distant past more accessible by taking the ‘genealogical approach’, starting with the familiar present and working backwards to prehistory, increasing the likelihood of taking their sense of human empathy with them as the cultures they encounter become more remote. The Museum of the First President of Russia Boris Yeltsin (44) combines the epic eventful narrative of its eponymous hero and his times with a gallery where time ‘freezes’ to communicate permanent values of democracy and human rights, offering timeless ideals to inspire society. The Baksi Museum (32) is a crucible where tradition and modernity are fused and refashioned, to create an inspiring vision of the future. The reuse of old buildings is also an act of defiance of time. La Piscine (20) transformed a beautiful and much-loved public bathhouse and swimming pool, which was about to be demolished, into an art museum. MARQ, the Archaeological Museum of Alicante (19), not only found a purpose for a redundant 1920s hospital building, but enhanced its new life by linking it with important sites across the region. Reconfiguring the museum’s relationship with time is also apparent in those which have innovated by eroding the distinction between temporary exhibitions and ‘permanent’ displays which are designed to last for perhaps 20 years, but usually last for much longer, due to the difficulty of securing the resources – and doing the thinking – required to change. Implicit in the term ‘permanent’ is a fantasy of not just the displays, but the knowledge they embody being somehow eternal. As the ‘permanent’ galleries become increasingly dated, in the face of new research and public interests, they are supplemented with temporary exhibitions with an increasingly different epistemology, often not only telling a story but one which has a clear author and a point of view. Some museums, including the Dutch National Maritime Museum (30), have devised, in addition to temporary exhibitions, a rota of medium term (two- to three-year) exhibitions, which means that over time, the displays can be renewed in phases, responding to public interests and new research. While this approach requires practical innovation, it is only possible through a shift in the museum’s view of time and innovations in epistemology, in the processes of creating and communicating knowledge. Time for healing Within the overall narrative of Progress, museums have long helped societies with what might be called ‘transitional therapy’ – dealing with the losses brought about by rapid social and economic change, most often through preserving relics of ways of life which were being superseded. Thus, the first open

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air museums (starting with Skansen in 1891) were nostalgic about disappearing rural ‘folk life’, which was often seen as more authentic than modern urban living and representing some essential aspect of national character, while also being safely in the past.The open-air museums featured in this book, Open-Air Museum (21) in the Netherlands and The Old Town Museum (45) in Denmark, have begun to shift from nationalistic nostalgia to contemporary engagement, recognising the impact of much more recent change and using their power of recognition to make powerful statements of inclusion for previously neglected groups. The role of museums in helping societies cope with loss and change is equally marked in other genres of museums and at other times of dramatic social change. In northern and eastern Europe, museums helped address the dislocations resulting from shift in the economy from heavy to light industry and to services, leisure, and tourism. Repairing the damaged confidence and sense of identity caused by the destruction of traditional occupations and the large-scale displacement of many geographical working class communities led, from the 1970s, to new types of museums, presenting the history of work and celebrating the lived experience of the majority of local people, and new academic disciplines including industrial archaeology, social, economic and urban history, and museology. The museums referred to above in Greece, the Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation (4), the UK, Ironbridge Gorge Museum and Quarry Bank Mill (1, 7) and Italy, The Museum of Farming and Crafts (6), can be seen in this light. The subject of the Museum of Liverpool (29) is the histories and identities of a once great city. The expertise of its citizens was fully recognised by the museum, so that ‘as a result of community consultation on a large scale, intellectual depth, a highly professional team, and an excellent (often idiosyncratic) creative presentation’ it was able to contribute to ‘the delicate process of community integration’ and to ‘build a bridge of mutual understanding among different cultures, diverse communities and current problems’.The Museum of Portimão (23) carries out a similar task, building trust and social capital in a coastal community once dedicated to fishing and farming and now dominated by mass tourism. The Silesian Museum (47) captures how the fate of the region’s people ‘was shaped by industrialisation, by the development of cities, by wars, power struggles and numerous crises, by the struggles of the working class as well as continuous social changes and eventually the fall of communism’. The Baksi Museum (32) not only engages local people in rich and complex ways but epitomises how the ‘future of Europe, as well as of contemporary Turkey, depends on negotiating the coexistence of conflicting cultures and ways of life, of different and often contradictory world views and systems of beliefs’. Museums have also come to have a healing role where cultural traditions and identities have been damaged not by economic change, but by active suppression and stigmatisation. Examples include the way the Alta Museum (11) treasures the few objects that survived the scorched earth policies of the Nazis

Introduction  11

during their occupation of Norway; traditions of land ownership and working, which were overturned by forced collectivisation, are celebrated in the Museum of the Romanian Peasant (12) and the re-assertion of the value of regional history and identity in a former museum of Lenin in Krasnoyarsk (14). The War Childhood Museum (49) evokes not just bereavement caused by war, but the blighting, for a whole generation, of a period of life usually associated with innocence, safety, and opportunity. As well as dealing with the ‘cultural bereavement’ (Williams 2000) of whole communities, museums have the capacity to deal with personal loss, an intrinsic aspect of human life. This happens most memorably perhaps in the Museum of Broken Relationships (24), and The Museum of Innocence (31). The sense of personal mortality can also be evoked simply by the evidence of the passing of the generations represented in museum collections, or by dramatic loss of life, such as represented by the Vasa Museum (10) and the ‘tragic time capsule’ of the Mary Rose (37), evoking the deep human fear of death by water. These existential reflections can also be inspired by the displays on religions in the Chester Beatty Library (17), the Catharine Convent State Museum (3), and in the museums of the dark side of humanity discussed below. Architecture and space Innovation in museums, and in the perception of those who found and fund museums, has been supported by technical developments in architecture. New materials and engineering techniques enabled museums to shift from the austere Greek temple and cathedral model to rectilinear modernist glass and steel palaces – the Archaeological Museum of Ioannina (28) is an elegant example. A more profound transformation came with computer-aided design. Almost any shape imaginable could be designed – and built.The paradigmatic example, again, is the Guggenheim Museum (15), where ‘the iconic chemistry between the design of building, its image and the public [which] turns out to be rather rare – and somewhat mysterious’ (Rybczynski 2008). Museums with striking architecture which have won awards, have been more than ‘iconic’ buildings; their architecture has expressed the symbolic meaning of their contents, and materialised their dynamic relationships with their communities, enabling them to capture some of the ‘mystery’. MuCEM’s (35) architecture and location embodies its role as ‘a place of dialogue about the challenges of the past and the present and as a bridge to the foundations of the Mediterranean world of tomorrow’. The Silesian Museum (47) plays a key role in creating an urban setting that is ‘absolutely mesmerising’. Some museums have commissioned buildings that are intentionally anti-­ monumental, notably Madinat Al-Zahra (26) merging with the landscape and supporting the museum’s collection. Many museums are fortunate in the buildings they have built or inherited, but others are less so; Krasnoyarsk Museum Centre (14) works with its ‘huge self-important building’ by ‘subverting’ it. Whether spectacular or refurbished, self-effacing or self-important, they all meet Hudson’s criterion for public quality in a museum building, which is that

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it should ‘give the impression, quite unmistakably, that it existed for the benefit of the people who visited it, rather than those who earned their living in it’ (quoted in Negri 2017, p. 4). Beyond economic regeneration As the rhetoric of neoliberal economics came to dominate public discourse from the late 1970s, many museum developments were justified in terms of economic regeneration, often inspired by the Guggenheim Museum (15) (Lorente 2002). This represents a major shift in rhetoric from the nineteenthcentury rationale of educating the masses and/or asserting national, cultural, or civic pride in competition with other nations, cities, or cultures. But underlying the economic rationales is a commitment by decision makers to valuing their place and their people; such museums are assertions of civic pride, identity and ambition. In a reverse of the usual pattern, the rational calculus of cost-benefit analyses masks the ‘ulterior’ motive of renewing an identity that has lost confidence or been damaged. While a museum that serves only tourists may increase cultural inequality and contribute to a sense of alienation among local people, those that can attract both local and tourist visitors communicate that the place is somewhere people want to visit – a powerful message where residents feel that their home is in decline or is stigmatised for its poverty or remoteness from cosmopolitan ‘centres’. It is clear that deep roots can be nurtured by museums when they are part of thoughtful regeneration strategies. Combined with the power of museums to validate suppressed or neglected identities, they can promote economic wellbeing, not as what economists would call a ‘positive externality’, but as an intrinsic part of a profound vision of how museums can meet human needs. Like the Guggenheim Museum (15), these museums can ‘hold a whole community together’, boosting its self-confidence and external reputation. Or, as it is pithily put in the motto of Marubi National Museum of Photography (48) in Albania: ‘A museum can change a city!’ Politics and ‘the human approach’ The ‘human approach’ is how the president of In Flanders Fields (16) described its philosophy. A TripAdvisor contributor is quoted as saying of Krasnoyarsk (14) that ‘Humanity is all through this place’. The Rijksmuseum (34) is an exemplar of ‘humane’ values. These are typical of the ethical foundations of the museums portrayed in this book. While most would sign up to humane values and general ideas of democratisation, the divisions of politics, memory and culture wars soon arise. What are the boundaries of museum politics? Some museums may seem to be explicitly political – as the International Red  Cross and Red Crescent Museum (36), in its ‘bold representation of true cultural diversity’. But its values – fairness, compassion, perseverance – are

Introduction  13

universal. For the European Solidarity Centre (39), it is its commitment to human solidarity, not to any abstract ideology, which provides its compass to navigate these difficult waters. For The Old Town Museum in Denmark (45), it involves being true to its mission of being ‘historically correct instead of being politically correct’. For the Dutch National Maritime Museum (30), it means dealing ‘honestly with … issues of conquests, colonies, slavery or the adverse impacts of whaling’. The Madinat al-Zahra Museum (26) sees itself as ‘beyond political and ideological questions’ but is aware of the modern relevance of its representation of Spain’s historic cultural diversity and of is social responsibility in enabling inter-cultural dialogue. The German Emigration Centre (22) has extended its brief to include immigration in pursuit of its mission to ‘transform fear into curiosity’. From deep inside a mountain in the centre of Europe, Sasso San Gottardo (38) takes Cold War military collections as a starting point to engage visitors in global stories about ‘defence, sustainable development, democracy, human rights, global economic order’. Rijksmuseum Boerhaave (50) offers ‘science with a human face’, not only educating ‘a broad public’ but also fostering ‘respect for science, an especially important goal given the rise of science sceptics in our day’. All the museums in this book have clear values that are fundamental to their role in society – the values of human rights and justice, which are the positive legacy of the Enlightenment, and on which the Council of Europe, EMYA’s founding partner, is based.They all recognise that democratisation is not a completed task, but one requiring eternal vigilance and renewal. How much reality can museums bear? Humanity, it has been said, cannot bear much reality. Is this true of museums? Beyond a shift in focus to the present and the future, aiming to increase democratic access and representation, based on valuing human rights and justice, a major issue confronting many museums is the reality of human cruelty, destructiveness and injustice. Addressing these poses many difficulties, not least because the nineteenth-century model museum, while seeing itself as neutral and objective, represented the march of Progress and the positive achievements of the city, state or empire. Broadening the story to be more ‘historically accurate’ can be seen as shaming the community whose identity has been embodied in the museum or, at the very least tarnishing their idealised self-image. In 1977 Kenneth Hudson reflected on whether there could ever really be an increase in the amount of reality that people could bear in museums: ‘in most Western countries… highly topical and socially important matters can be so controversial that museums can be excused from [sic] fighting shy of them’ (Hudson 1977, p. 5).These ‘matters’ included the vast horrors of European history – what has been called ‘the inventory of the irreparable’ (Steiner 1971, p. 51). Some steps have been taken. National, regional and specialist museums in Europe have attempted to give more frank accounts of recent history. In

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Flanders Fields (16) in relation to the First World War, Glasnevin Museum (27) in relation to the Irish Revolution, War of Independence and Civil War, Tampere 1918 – Museum of Finnish Civil War (25) in relation to that country’s internecine conflict and the Leventis Municipal Museum (9) in relation to the divided city of Nicosia, illustrate some of the strategies: some choose to represent all sides in the conflict equally, others make sure to avoid monolithic, nationalistic, chauvinistic or resentful positions and language. The War Childhood Museum (49) rejects grand historical interpretations, and the opportunities they provide for position-taking, presenting instead the experience of children in wartime. The harrowing content of MACTe (43) is carried by a generosity, a boldness and an unflinching facing of reality that is, ultimately, more generative of hope than denial. And this is characteristic of all of these museums. However intense, moving, and painful visiting them may be, the portraits recount a sense of hope. They work to increase the amount of reality humankind can bear, meeting an unmet social need for truth – even if this truth is as much a matter of uncertainties as of certainties, as in Rijksmuseum Boerhaave (50). Part of the reason why they generate hope is that they represent courage, a word that (along with ‘brave’ and ‘bold’) appears frequently in these portraits. Courage is both a character virtue and a quality of mind. The leaders and teams that have created these museums have taken creative leaps, demonstrated technical mastery, transcended disciplinary boundaries. They have demonstrated perseverance, often over decades, and above all shown intellectual courage to find new ways forward – a new analysis of what society needs from museums, new frameworks to find the most important meanings in collections, new definitions of the museum and its roles in human progress. III The British – and European – origins of EMYA The European Museum of the Year Award was founded, with seed funding from the European Cultural Foundation, in 1977 and was designed to generate a creative network that drove up standards across the continent (Chew 2017). The concept of ‘public quality’, the defining criterion of the European Museum of the Year Award, was set out by its main founder, Kenneth Hudson (1916–1999). He was a broadcaster, ‘anti-museologist’, social and industrial historian and author of over 50 books, including (in 1962) the first book on industrial archaeology in English, and some of the founding texts of modern museology, including Museums for the 1980s (1977) and Museums of Influence (1987). The other key people were leading figures in British cultural life, who shared a European perspective. John Letts (1929–2006) was the founder of a lobbying organisation – National Heritage – and of the British Museum of the Year Award. The first chair was Richard Hoggart (1918–2014), a founder

Introduction  15

of British Cultural Studies, author of The Uses of Literacy (1957) and Assistant Director-General of UNESCO from 1971 to 1975. They were supported from the beginning by administrator Ann Nicholls (3, 10, 11, 22). In many ways, EMYA can be seen as part of a wider movement to raise standards and modernise museums. For example, the year of its foundation also saw the creation of specialist ICOM (International Council of Museums) committees for museology and marketing and the expansion of university training in museology (Lorente 2012). However, Hudson, who defined himself as an ‘anti-museologist’, always remained at a sceptical distance from these developments. He was especially wary of experts who sought prestige in obscure or fashionable jargon, declaring that ‘every profession has its theology and its own ways with heretics. I personally mistrust all theologies’ (quoted in van Mensch 2018, p. 41). A British award becomes European The transnational perspective of these founders is part of the story of European museums, much of it shaped by their experience of the Second World War: Hudson, as a conscientious objector, served in the Friends’ Ambulance Battalion, and Hoggart in the Royal Artillery. From the beginning, EMYA partnered with the Council of Europe and eligibility for the award is still limited to its member countries. The Council of Europe was founded in the aftermath of 1945 ‘to achieve a greater unity between its members for the purpose of safeguarding and realising the ideals and principles which are their common heritage and facilitating their economic and social progress’ (Council of Europe). It became involved in cultural activity very early, based on the European Cultural Convention of 1954 (Gambaro 2017, p. 1). It has grown from its ten founding members of 1949 – all Western European countries – to 47 at present, with a major expansion eastward since 1989. With members from Iceland to Turkey and from Portugal to Russia the Council of Europe embraces a great variety of cultures and polities. This book includes portraits of 51 museums from 24 countries who have participated in the annual competitions for the various EMYA awards over the years. Among these, The Council of Europe Museum Prize still has a special status. It is selected by the Committee on Culture, Science and Education of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on the basis of a shortlist provided by the EMYA jury. It is awarded to a museum that demonstrates excellence and puts particular emphasis on a European perspective, on the interplay between local and European identities, and reflects the founding values of the Council of Europe – democracy, human rights and the rule of law. The programme has expanded in other ways to reflect new dimensions in public quality and new issues museums need to address, so that there are now four named prizes in addition to the two main awards.The Meyvaert Museum Prize for Sustainability recognises museums that demonstrate an exceptional

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commitment to sustainability in how they operate and/or how they present issues of sustainability in its displays and programmes. The constant effort required to reduce barriers to access and to create genuinely inclusive displays is reflected in the most recent award added to the EMYA programme. This is the Portimão Museum Prize, given to Europe’s Most Welcoming Museum – the only prize sponsored by a European city, the Municipality of Portimão, Portugal. In 2010, The Kenneth Hudson Award was created to carry forward the spirit of his work, by recognising a person, project or a group of people who have demonstrated the most unusual, daring and, perhaps, controversial achievement that challenges common perceptions of the role of museum in the society. EMYA also supports professional development for individual staff in candidate museums, through awarding travel bursaries and internships funded by Event Communications Ltd. The evolution of the Silletto Prize is an example of the Europeanisation of British aspects of the programme. Sponsored by an Isle of Man charity, its original (2011) focus was on the integration of volunteers into the work of the museum. The tradition of volunteers working in museums was, however, relatively rare in continental Europe (though it may now be becoming more common), and the criteria have been broadened to reflect wider community engagement. It is now awarded more for what Kenneth Hudson called ‘the key to the new approach’, which involved a sense of being ‘fully integrated with its community’ (1977, p. 17). The jury can also confer Special Commendations on museums that have been innovative in a particular aspect of their service, and from which other museums can learn. These awards are announced at an annual ceremony which follows a conference at which all candidates present their museum in what has become an important networking and benchmarking event. Who applies? Who wins? Hudson remarked on the ‘mysterious process’ by which a steady number of about 50 museums a year applied – an average that has continued despite the great expansion of Council of Europe membership. Between 1977 and 2019 there have been 1,891 applications from museums, every one of them visited in person by at least one EMYA judge. Between 1977 and 2019, EMYA gave a total of 401 awards to museums in 36 countries. The dominance among the winners of about ten Western European countries has diminished over time. Geographical distribution is not itself a criterion – twice in its history, the European Museum of the Year Award and the Council of Europe Museum Prize went to applicants from the same country: in 2012 to the Museum of Innocence (31) and the Baksi Museum (32) in Turkey, and in 2016 to Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews and the European Solidarity Centre (39) in Poland. Nonetheless, as museums standards, societal ambitions for museums, as well as an emphasis on public quality and social purpose, aligning them more with the EMYA criteria, have grown across the whole of Europe, the awards have spread more evenly across

Introduction  17

the continent. In the first decade, museums in the top five countries won over 60 per cent of the awards, with the rest distributed among 14 other countries. In the most recent decade, the top five countries won 40 per cent of the awards, with 60 per cent being distributed among 19 other countries. The UK is the only country in the top five throughout. This position may be in part because the concept of ‘public quality’ reflects a museum tradition of working with the public that may be to some degree British, reflecting a politics of culture that differs from that of many continental countries. Britain has, historically, been more ambivalent about public funding of culture – and indeed about the idea of ‘culture’ itself – so that, despite its pronounced class distinctions, its museums were expected to deliver a public service (Minihan 1977). Thus, for example, the use of market research, audience research and public consultations to inform the planning of new displays may have been more congenial in British culture (which has also been more open to American influences) than elsewhere in Europe. From the earliest days, continental European judges were recruited to the jury and in most years have constituted a majority, but – not surprisingly in a UK-based charity – an overrepresentation of UK-based judges and trustees remains. The question of scale Participants at the annual EMYA conference sometimes seek patterns in awards, especially if they are candidates. Is there a prejudice for or against large, rich museums of art, or archaeology or natural history; for or against small, radical museums that push the boundaries with few resources? The pattern of the awards over the years shows that every conceivable scale and type of museum has been recognised. Kenneth Hudson, however, claimed he did have an issue with what he called ‘monster’ museums. Their very scale and the weight of tradition, he argued, meant that they were rarely a site of innovation and creativity, while it can, of course, be argued that it is bureaucratisation, not scale that is the issue (Camarero et al. 2011). When he did give the main award for the first time to an old, multidisciplinary national museum – the National Museum of Denmark in 1994 – it was for the combination of many innovations driven by a commitment to making its collections accessible, physically, digitally and intellectually, in the galleries and remotely. This was combined with opening up the architecture to create a light-filled courtyard, upgrading educational and all public facilities – lecture theatre, classrooms, shops, toilets, cafés – to the standards the public would expect in good retail or visitor attractions, setting a pattern for the refurbishment of many large institutions. Judging museums One of the remarkable things about being an EMYA judge is not so much seeing behind the scenes, or even getting a four-or five-hour tour from the senior

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staff – these are not unusual for people who work in museums – but the intensity of the encounter (Gnedovsky 2017a, 2017b). This intensity is, of course, partly because of the competition and the pressure on staff to put on a good show for the judge. It also arises from the fact that the staff have usually opened something new that took a huge effort, often a once-in-a-lifetime push to reach a new level of achievement – and perhaps they see the judge as someone who will really understand what they have done, what obstacles they have had to overcome and the subtleties of their specific vision. The intention and effort to really listen and the responsibility to make a fair assessment mean that the experience is also intense for the judges. The earliest portraits in this book date back more than 40 years – many judges recall these as some of the most memorable of their professional lives and still keep up with staff in the museums they assessed. Comparing the incomparable One of the frequently remarked upon difficulties of judging a museum competition is the very diversity of scale, subject, approach and cultural context. A judging visit is clearly an opportunity to assess professional quality – but public quality? The judges will – usually! – be treated with exceptional courtesy, which may be flattering, and one has to ask whether this is seductive enough to blind them to how the public might experience the museum. It is to mitigate this risk that two judges always visit museums nominated for the main awards, and, with their level of expertise, it is relatively easy to assess the museum in terms of current good practice. But the main mitigation is the fit between the staff narrative and what the judge is seeing, including visitor behaviour. Many candidate museums articulate their vision in terms of established and admired museological and social purposes – but it quickly becomes clear whether these have really been embraced or are added on as a sort of garnish – whether there is a discrepancy between the espoused vision and the reality. Some awards have gone to, and some of the essays in this book are devoted to, large and well-known museums that have compelled attention by their excellence. People sometimes argue that these museums do not ‘need’ an award – but awards are given on the basis of achievement, not of need. And far more often the awards have singled out and recognised museums that might not otherwise have come to international attention, or even been particularly appreciated in their local context: the value of external recognition cannot be underestimated, especially for a pioneering institution in a country with few innovative museums. Though there is still a hierarchy of museums in terms of social prestige, both in terms of location in metropoles and of subject matter, it is hard now to imagine how much more rigid this was in 1977. EMYA has made its own contribution to breaking this down, recognising new kinds of museum. While not aiming to be representative, this collection does capture something of the vast range of museum scale, type, subject, budget, approach and governance that EMYA has recognised over the decades.

Introduction  19

IV The museum boom The focus of this book on Europe is largely historical, reflecting its origins in the community of practice of European Museum of the Year Award jury (Wenger 1998). EMYA emerged in the 1970s as a museum boom began to accelerate, a boom in which museums not only grew in numbers but became a universal phenomenon, present in every country and reflecting every culture (Simmons 2016). Judged by their steadily increasing number, museums are amongst the most successful institutions in the world. Museums everywhere reflect global trends, such as fashions and power of the international art market, the boom in tourism, and competition among nations and cities for cultural status and prestige. They are also deployed in every country as means of communal selfexpression and as a way of knowing which reflects local as well as international epistemologies and perspectives. In 1998 Hudson estimated that three quarters of museums in Europe had not existed in 1945 (2015, p. 137). A reasonable estimate of the number of museums in 2019, in the 47 countries of the Council of Europe is c. 40,000 (Negri 2016, p. 12). As many as half of these have been founded in the past 30 years, an average of over 600 a year across the continent (Rocco 2013). There has been an increase in the number of museums founded by third sector organisations – charities, foundations, voluntary groups – and by private companies. This all suggests a thriving institution, deployed by a diverse range of social actors in societies with widely differing cultures and polities. In this context an award programme that identifies and recognises excellence and innovation has a significant role to play. Underlying most of the growth in Europe is an overall increase in public funding, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP, which, in most countries, includes an increase in spend on the arts and heritage (Judt 2005, pp. 377–8). Within this broad increase there are great variations across the continent, as well as great disparities within countries between large museums which, however constrained they feel their budgets to be, can appear rich to smaller, local, and voluntary museums. Aggregated data for Europe is not available, but examples of the impact of new sources of funding include both EU funding, which though a relatively small part of its overall budget, has been significant, especially for museums in Eastern Europe (e.g. National Institute for Museums and Public Collections 2020), and the creation of the Heritage Lottery Fund in the UK in 1994, which led to a huge investment in over 40,000 museum and heritage projects by 2017 (Crofts 2017). A recurring question is the extent to which funding drives innovation.Woven through the portraits are threads of many museum inventions and innovations over the past half century, many requiring new kinds of expertise both within the museum and drawing on external consultants – education, marketing, fundraising, retail management, digital information management, exhibition design,

20  Mark O’Neill et al.

interpretation, digital communications. All of these are required to improve standards – and all need to be funded. Further, applying for competitive funds requires skill, perseverance and entrepreneurialism. And funding, especially for large capital projects, can drive organisational change and renewal, providing opportunities to rethink, as well as to upgrade skills. The processes of bidding for funds like these, with conditions relating to clarity of objectives and quality control, and then, if funding is awarded, the delivery of the projects, have all greatly improved the competence of the sector (Paddon 2014). Innovation may be driven by higher public expectations – of customer service, for example – or by explicit legislation, as for disabled access, meeting social needs which have been newly recognised. In all of these cases, even within supposedly standardised bureaucracies, the changes required by society can happen slowly or quickly, whole- or half-heartedly, depending on the organisational culture of each institution. Innovations that are generally uncontentious quickly come to be perceived as best practice, and are often described as professionalisation and modernisation. These are more easily absorbed and more quickly imitated than others which may demand more fundamental change in the museum. In many countries, especially as the ‘neoliberal train’ moved across the continent, from Reagan’s America and Thatcher’s UK to Eastern and then Western Europe (Ther 2018), the governance structures of museums in many countries were changed to make them more entrepreneurial. In some, they were transferred from ministries responsible for education or public works to those for tourism and economic development, with an accompanying shift in priorities. In others, museums were transferred from direct state management into more ‘independent’ vehicles, which in theory gave more autonomy as they responded to pressure to reduce the proportion of their income provided by the state (Benedikter 2004, Camarero et al. 2011, p. 263,Vincente et al. 2012). A number of the museums in this book, including Ironbridge Gorge Museum (1), Sasso San Gottardo (38) and the Baksi Museum (32) show the development of new and innovative business models and new models of mixed funding thought most likely to foster innovation (Vincente et al. 2012). The War Childhood Museum (49) is part of a wider social enterprise dedicated to improving the economic as well as the social wellbeing of Sarajevo. Governance arrangements and museum practice also changed to reflect a growing respect for audiences, whose right to have a say in what the museum represented was increasingly acknowledged. This also represents how much museums have learned since the nineteenth century, when the then current understanding of human psychology meant that they assumed that visitors would be ‘civilised’ by mere exposure to great works of art and significant natural and historical objects. More recent philosophies of knowledge and more scientific understandings of visitor psychology, sociology and learning recognise the active role of visitors in generating knowledge through their social practices of visiting and through combining their understanding of what they are seeing and being told with what they already knew (Kolb 1984, Hein 1998).

Introduction  21

Exhibition teams have expanded to include educators, ‘content developers’, audience researchers and project managers as well as curators and conservators. There is no doubt that funding supports modernisation, through the application of new technologies, intellectual advances, and a general increase in standards of ‘public quality’, improving facilities, displays and events, through imitation and/or innovation. However, the key to intellectual and social innovation – especially those which go beyond best practice – do not depend on resources only. Innovative museums make the shift from the bureaucratic assumption that ‘what is not permitted is forbidden’ to the freedom of ‘what is not forbidden is permitted’, and rethink their role in terms of what society needs, and museums created by people from outside the profession often see potential which escape insiders. Museums like the Museum of Broken Relationships (24), the Baksi Museum (32) and the War Childhood Museum (49) have achieved remarkable innovations with modest resources. The audience boom The economic literature on museums assumes that they compete with each other for audiences and that this drives innovation (Vincente et al. 2012, p. 675). There is, of course, some truth in this, and museums can feel pressured by falling behind their peers in the quality of their presentation, communication and digital engagement, and by rates of growth in visit numbers. Museums are also acutely aware that potential visitors have many options other than museums for passing their leisure time. What is noteworthy, however, in this interaction of museums and society, is not so much the competitive pressures, but that the growth in the number of museums has taken place with very little evidence of saturation of the market or displacement of visits. Museums’ visit numbers in general are holding steady or rising. While competition may encourage innovation among existing museums, opening new museums seems driven by perceived social needs – whether these are economic, cultural, social, or educational – rather than by competition among cultural organisations.They are more likely to represent competition between cities, regions, and countries than among museums themselves. If the broad estimate that the number of museums has doubled in the past 20 years is correct, the implication is that overall audience growth has at least kept pace with the supply of new museums. A recent study, using data on 350,000 adults across 24 EU countries, found that between 2013 and 2017, the number of adults who had visited a museum in the preceding year had increased by 13 percentage points (European Commission 2017, p. 49), so that the proportion of the adult population that visited had reached 50% (European Commission 2017, p. 48). An analysis of the same data found that ‘the likelihood and number of visits to cultural sites depend significantly and consistently on … level of education, per capita household income, higher-level occupations (e.g. professionals), and student status’ (Falk and KatzGerro 2016, p. 146).The boom thus seems to reflect wider social trends in Europe,

22  Mark O’Neill et al.

notably the increasing levels of educational attainment, the higher percentage of populations going on to third level and professional education, increases in leisure time and changes in parenting, which place a higher value on child-centred activities, including those provided by museums (Wouters 2007, Kaelble 2013). The strong predominance of the well-educated and well-off in the museum visiting boom confirms that little has changed in the demographic of museum visitors and that, in general terms, museum visiting is about reinforcing a middle-class identity and passing on cultural capital, thus reproducing social inequalities (Bourdieu and Darbel 1991). The literatures on audience development and exhibition communication focuses on how museums can make their exhibitions and activities more attractive and accessible, while much work on social inclusion focuses on how to engage specific targeted groups (for example, Serrell 2016; Black 2012; Doubt et al. 2019), without addressing the overall fact that none of these strategies seems to have had a lasting or widespread impact on visitor profiles. Many celebrated examples of engagement with disenfranchised audiences are sustained by exceptional, additional funding, so that they never become ‘core’ and cease when the money dries up.What a museum really values is revealed during times of financial cutbacks. This is part of the reason why EMYA focuses on the long-term displays of new or renewed museums – it is clearer whether access is built into the core displays and functioning of the museum, rather than bolted on. If more than any other demographic factor (income, ethnicity, age) the single greatest predictor of museum visiting is level of educational attainment, then it is clear that much remains to be done if museums see themselves as ‘educational in the broadest sense’ (Hudson in Negri 2017, p. 11) and for genuinely inclusive museums to become the norm rather than the exception. The Museum of Liverpool (29) shows how public consultation and involvement can enable a museum to meet the demographics of its surrounding society. The choice of whose identity is validated is probably the single most important strategic decision made by the museum. Democratisation and museumification The portraits capture moments in the democratisation of museums, but also in the museumification of new kinds of object and new aspects of human life. All the museums in this book validate identities – of the staff, visitors and funders, and wider communities who fund them. New groups within society are given a voice for the first time and given prestige by the cultural authority of the museum. And objects, of old and new kinds, are given a voice, partly by improved interpretation and storytelling, by a new concern for communication, and also by a greater appreciation of the agency of objects, as carriers of meaning which cannot always be pinned down by prevailing ideologies. They can be cultural ambassadors, expressive memorials, reluctant exiles, oppressed captives, memento mori, spiritual beings, markers of identity, while at the same time being beautiful or ugly, well, or badly made, ancient or modern. Museums are now ‘befriending’ a

Introduction  23

much wider range of objects, and exploring not just the social life of people, but of the things they make and collect (Appadurai 1986,Tamen 2001, Poulot 2013). Museums are only in the most literal sense about the past; they preserve the things from the past we want to bring with us into the future, the things we rescue from the wreckage of change, the fragments we have shored against our ruin. The act of preservation is a profound statement about our values in the present and about the future we hope to build. Museums are cultural insurance policies, protecting us in a world of unpredictable change; these are the things we want to rescue from the flood. While museums can provide moments of tranquillity and escape from the stress of daily life and some may lapse into romantic nostalgia for a mythical past, the best process the stuff of nightmares and embody dreams of a better future. No matter what we are trying to preserve, our task is to make it meaningful in the present – to serve as resources for individuals, families, and communities to make meaningful lives for themselves. And, despite the advice of advocates of mindfulness about living in the present, a huge part of our meaning as individuals and as museum workers is about how we anticipate our future – whether with hope or fear, museums are clear expressions of the kind of future we want for our society. Like most organisations, or perhaps even more than most organisations, museums may be seen as institutional defences against anxiety – social and cultural, as well as existential. They are repositories of reassurance for what is salvaged from the processes of decay and dramatic historical change. How museums are to provide this stabilising force is central to debates about how museums should innovate, how progressive or conservative they should be. But perhaps these are not quite the right frame for the discussion.The arguments against social innovation in museums may not be about resisting change, but avoiding reflection. The conventional analogy between museums and the Greek temple or European cathedral is fundamentally mistaken, in that these were about engaging with, rather than avoiding, the ultimate issues of human existence – love and belonging, the sacred and the profane, honour and friendship, cruelty and benevolence, justice and mortality. In another transcendence of false dichotomies, some of the museums in this collection are memorable because they have found the courage to dig deep within, emotionally and ethically as well as intellectually. Perhaps the issue European museums struggle most with is the legacies of the colonial past, which are deeply rooted in not just in their assumptions about ownership, but about knowing and the authority and status it brings (Modest et al. 2019).While ‘fighting shy’ of controversial histories may still be understandable, it is debatable whether it is any longer defensible.While these issues have particular histories in Europe, museums across the world face their own dilemmas related to the legacies of difficult pasts and contemporary inequalities (Kidd et al. 2014; Mathur and Singh 2014; Janes and Sandell 2019; van Geert et al. 2018). Even museums that draw a great deal of their strength from within have an acute awareness of the outside world, fostered by generosity of spirit and a sense of solidarity. These recognise that the key factor in inclusivity is not

24  Mark O’Neill et al.

specific techniques of communication or marketing, but of the museum’s imagined community – the social groups who know they will be welcome. Communicated by a thousand unconscious messages, museums make it very clear whose histories, knowledges and citizenship are valued, and whose aren’t. Staff and institutional awareness of their cultural and social blind spots means that they can use the prestige and cultural authority of the institution to recognise disenfranchised groups previously unrepresented or misrepresented in displays and to address ignored or denied histories. Democracy and human rights are not achieved states so that a huge part of museum innovation needs to be based on defining its specific contribution to progress in the valuing of people. The museums in this book clearly demonstrate how innovation has led to technical and professional progress across the whole range of museum functions, and social innovation has greatly increased the range of cultures represented and of people made welcome to visit. Perhaps the great variety of perspectives and museums portrayed may also provide opportunities for reflection as to what roles museums can take in society, and on how museums can, as Kenneth Hudson said, meet real social needs. In the face of the inventory of the irreparable, it may be too extravagant an aspiration, but perhaps the path to future innovation in museums is a philosophy that declares, to paraphrase the Roman playwright and former slave Terence, ‘our subject is our shared humanity and nothing human is alien to us’. What may be emerging from these portraits is a new vision of museum storytelling based on an institutional culture of generosity and courageous intellect, a curatorship of the heart, and what might be called a connoisseurship of the human. References Abt, J. (2006). The Origin of the Public Museum, in Macdonald, S. (Ed.), A Companion to Museum Studies. Oxford. Blackwell, pp. 115–134. Anderson, G. (2004). Reinventing the Museum: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift. Lanham, MD. Altamira Press. Appadurai, A. (1986). Commodities and the Politics of Value, in Appadurai, A. (Ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–63. Benedikter, R. (2004). Privatisation of Italian Cultural Heritage. International Journal of Heritage Studies 10, 369–389. Black, G. (2012). Transforming Museums in the Twenty-First. Abingdon. Routledge. Bourdieu, P. & Darbel, A. (with Schnapper, D.) (1991 [1966]). The Love of Art: European Art Museums and Their Public (transl.). Cambridge. Polity Press. Camarero, C., Garrido, M. J., & Vicente, E. (2011). How Cultural Organizations’ Size and Funding Influence Innovation and Performance:The Case of Museums. Cultural Economics 35, 247–266. Chew, N. (2017). The Art of Accomplishing Miracles: Forty Years of the European Museum of the Year Award and the Council of Europe Museum Prize, 1977–2017, in Gnedovsky, M. (Ed.), pp. 14–46. Council of Europe Website. Available from: https://70.coe.int/home/#912 [accessed 29 April 2019].

Introduction  25

Crofts, S. (2017). It Could Be You…. Building Surveying Journal July/August, 32–33. Dissanayake, E. (2003). The Core of Art: Making Special. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies 1(2), 13–38. Doubt, D., Wenye, S., & Sarahann, Y. (2019).  Museums as Points of Connection: How Institutions  in North America and Europe Engage with Diaspora Communities. The Museum Scholar. 3/1. Available from: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/ 57866b6debbd1aedaf92e668/t/5da75e9b0f48e53d3b87b3ce/1571249820833/TMS_ vol3_Doubt_Sun_Yeh.pdf [accessed 4 May 2020]. Eid, H. (2019). Museum Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship: A New Model for a Changing Era. Abingdon. Routledge. Falk, M. & Katz-Gerro,T. (2016). Cultural Participation in Europe: Can We Identify Common Determinants? Journal of Cultural Economics 40, 127–162. Gambaro, A. (2017). The Council of Europe Core Values at the Heart of European Museums, in Gnedovsky, M. (Ed.), pp. 9–13. Gnedovsky, M. (Ed.). (2017a). The Spirit of EMYA, Zagreb. European Museum Forum, pp. 47–59. Gnedovsky, M. (2017b). Forty Years of the European Museum of the Year Award and Council of Europe Museum Prize 1977–2017. Zagreb. European Museum Forum. Godin (2012). “Innovation Studies”: The Invention of a Specialty. Minerva 50(4), 397–421. Hein, G. E. (1998). Learning in the Museum. London/New York. Routledge. Hoggart, R. (1957). The Uses of Literacy. London. Chatto & Windus. Horne, D. (1984). The Great Museum. Sydney. Pluto Press. Hudson, K. (1977). Museums for the 1980s, A Survey of World Trends. New York. Holmes & Meier. Hudson, K. (1981). The Rüsselsheim Revolution. History Today 31(4), 48–49. Hudson, K. (1986 [2009]). Measuring the Good Museum, in Negri, M., Niccolucci, F., & Sani, M. (Eds.), Quality in Museums. Milan. ARCHAEOLINGUA, pp. 22–24. Hudson, K. (1987). Museums of Influence. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. Hudson, K. (1997 [2009]). The Concept of Public Quality in Museums, in Negri, M., Niccolucci, F., & Sani, M. (Eds.), Quality in Museums. Milan. ARCHAEOLINGUA, pp. 18–21. Hudson, K. (2015 [1998]). The Museum Refuses to Stand Still. Museum International 261–264, 136–143. Janes, R. & Sandell, R. (Eds.) (2019). Museum Activism. Abingdon. Routledge. Judt, T. (2005). Postwar; A History of Europe since 1945. London.Vintage. Kaelble, H. (2013). A Social History of Europe 1945–2000. New York. Berghahn. Kidd, J., Cairns, S., Draco, A., Ryall, A., & Stearn, M. (Eds.). (2014). Challenging History in the Museum. Abingdon. Routledge. Knell, S., MacLeod, S., & Watson, S. (2007). Museum Revolutions. Abingdon. Routledge. Kolb, D. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience at the Sources of Learning and Development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Prentice-Hall. Lorente, J. P. (2002). Urban Cultural Policy and Urban Regeneration: The Special Case of Declining Port Cities—Liverpool, Marseilles, Bilbao, in Crane, D., Kawashima, N., & Kawasaki, K. (Eds.), Global Culture: Arts, Media, Policy, and Globalization. New York. Routledge, pp. 93–104. Lorente, J. P. (2012). The Development of Museum Studies in Universities: From Technical Training to Critical Museology. Museum Management and Curatorship 27(3), 237–252. Mathur, S. & Singh, K. (Eds.). (2014). No Touching, No Spitting, No Praying: The Museum in South Asia. New Delhi. Routledge India.

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Modest, W., Thomas, N., Prlić, & Augustat, C. (Eds.). (2019). Matters of Belonging, Ethnographic Museums in a Changing Europe. Leiden. Sidestone Press. Minihan, J. (1977). The Nationalization of Culture, The Development of State Subsidies to the Arts in Great Britain. London. Hamish Hamilton. National Institute for Museums and Public Collections. (2020). Investments in the Development of Museums. Warsaw. Polish Ministry of Culture. Negri, M. (2016). La grande rivolutione dei musei europei.Venice. Marsilio Editori. Negri, M.(Ed.). (2017). A Tiger in a Museum Is Not a Tiger: An Anthology of the Thoughts of Kenneth Hudson (1916–1999). Milan. European Museum Academy. Available from: www.academia.edu/36031145/A_TIGER_IN_A_MUSEUM_IS_NOT_A_TIGER [accessed 4 May 2020]. Paddon, H. (2014). Redisplaying Museum Collections: Contemporary Display and Interpretation in British Museums. Abingdon. Routledge. Poulot, D. (2013). Another History of Museums: from the Discourse to the Museum-Piece. Anais do Museu Paulista 21(1), 27–47. Rocco, F. (2013). Temples of Delight. The Economist. Available from: https://www.economist. com/node/21591704/sources [accessed 4 May 2020]. Rybczynski, W. (2008). When Buildings Try Too Hard. Wall Street Journal. Available from: www.wsj.com/articles/SB122731149503149341 [accessed 22 April 2020]. Serrell, B. (2016). Judging Exhibitions:A Framework for Assessing Excellence.Abingdon. Routledge. Simmons, J. E. (2016). Museums: A History. Lanham. Rowman & Littlefield. Steiner, G. (1971). Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes towards the Redefinition of Culture. London. Faber and Faber. Tamen, M. (2001). Friends of Interpretable Objects. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. Ther, P. (2018).X Europe since 1989, A History. Woodstock. Princeton University Press. Van Geert, F., Canals, A., & González,Y. N., (2018) La representación multicultural del indígena en los museos de comunidad latinoamericanos., Boletín Americanista., 2 (/77), pp 185–202. Van Mensch, P. (2018). Private Collection as Public Challenge, in von Roth, D. & Escherich, L. (Eds.), Private Passion – Public Challenge: Musikinstrumente sammeln in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Heidelberg. arthistoricum.net. Vicente, E., Camarero, C., & Garrido, M. J. (2012). Insights into Innovation in European Museums. Public Management Review 14(5), 649–679. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. Were, G. & King, J. C. H. (Eds.). (2014). Extreme Collecting. New York. Berghahn Books. Weil, S. E. (1999). From Being about Something to Being for Somebody: The Ongoing Transformation of the American Museum. Daedalus 128(3), 229–258. Williams, R. (2000). Lost Icons: Reflections on Cultural Bereavement. Edinburgh. T.T. Clark. Wouters, C. (2007). Informalization: Manners and Emotions since 1890. London. Sage.

PART 2

Museum portraits

IMAGE 1 

Ironbridge Gorge Museum, United Kingdom. ©The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust

1 IRONBRIDGE GORGE MUSEUM Telford, United Kingdom European Museum of the Year Award 1977 Massimo Negri

At the origins of contemporary British identity there is undoubtedly the upheaval of the Industrial Revolution, the moment of the social, cultural and anthropological refoundation of society in the eighteenth century – a tumultuous technological and economic development that would subsequently spread across the whole continent, even if in very different ways and times, from country to country, from region to region of Europe and onwards to the rest of the world. Despite many differences, the roots of industrial civilisation are still a founding element of modern Western culture. If we ‘read’ the museum landscape of the contemporary era also as a projection of the great socio-cultural upheavals that animated the European scene at that time, our journey can legitimately begin from what is called ‘The birthplace of the Industrial Revolution’: The Ironbridge Gorge Museum, built around the first iron bridge in human history. Ironbridge Gorge consists of a very large area of the valley of the River Severn, which in the eighteenth century could be considered as one of the most important highways of Great Britain. Here in 1708, in the village of Coalbrookdale, Abraham Darby, a Quaker pioneer of the iron industry, made the first experiments in casting iron, initially producing cooking pots and furnishing objects (vases, benches, etc.). He progressed to a bold project of casting structural elements (a little like those of ‘Meccano’ or ‘Erector set’) that made it possible to build ingenious structures that until then had been made of stone, brick or wood, including the famous Ironbridge, which opened to traffic in 1779. Almost deserted by the process of de-industrialisation, Ironbridge Gorge was reborn with the creation of the museum, which presented a completely new model of interpreting the past. The project started at the end of the 1960s with excavations and volunteer plans to save historic sites from total decay. The first element that opened to the public was the reconstruction of a Victorian town

30  Massimo Negri

in Blists Hill at Coalport in 1973. The museum is now spread over several locations characterised by important industrial monuments and thematic interpretive nuclei. To give you an idea of the size, just remember that the Blists Hill Museum includes a disused mine, smelting furnaces, steam engines and the Shropshire Canal with the large inclined plane that connected it to Coalport. This is a significant area – about 20 hectares of industrial landscape, which is preserved as it was 200 years ago. Ironbridge Gorge Museum currently counts 35 structures and places such as these. It is for the scale and number of the buildings that are preserved from the first industrial revolution that Ironbridge Gorge has been included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. It is not an open-air museum in which most of the buildings are rebuilt from other locations, but a great project of the conservation and enhancement of a geographically and historically coherent landscape that is conceived as a museum as a whole. The Ironbridge Gorge industrial economy reached its maximum prosperity in the second half of the eighteenth century, when about a third of all iron produced in Great Britain was being smelted in the area. Since its origins as an independent museum, Ironbridge has been characterised as an organisation inspired by precise management criteria and as economically sustainable, which in view of its size has been a very difficult task – but it is still a success story today. It certainly looks very different from what it was when Director Neil Cossons arrived in 1971, when it was derelict and almost forgotten.To use his own words, he gave himself as his main objective making ‘on-site preservation more realistic in consumer terms’ (Cossons, 1980, p. 143). This meant making the museum a major cultural tourist destination that attracted visits to a place not so frequented or easily accessible. Today, almost 50 years after its foundation, the museum still attracts over half a million visits a year, generates £6,000,000 in revenue and proudly defines itself as ‘entrepreneurial’.This result has been obtained basically following three paths: the diversification of activities (including an internationally recognised university course in industrial archaeology); the continuous increase in the number of the sites exhibited; and, lastly, a certain accentuation of the spectacular aspects. These include the reconstruction of life in a Victorian village with actors and performers and, more recently, Ingenuity, a Science Centre intended especially for children. At the time this was an innovative and contentious model, which was criticised as having elements of a theme park, but the heritage it presents, along with the documents and collections preserved and interpreted remain entirely authentic, and its link with the cultural roots of modern Britain are much felt by all generations. Beamish in Durham (1971) and the Black Country Museum in Dudley (1978) are of the same generation and inspired by similar principles – products of the same cultural humus. When talking about Ironbridge one cannot avoid mentioning what was happening in France at more or less the same time, with the creation of the first Ecomuseum in Le Creusot-Montceau in the 1970s.This was conceived as a new

Ironbridge Gorge Museum  31

model of integrating the museum approach into that of landscape preservation, to create a museum without walls, ‘which is the mirror of the community’ in the words of its creators Hugues de Varine and Georges Henri Rivière (Rivière, 1985, p. 182).This, too, was an area that, since the end of the eighteenth century, marked the development of major industrial activities: steel, mining, ceramics, glassware and transport. The headquarters of this museum are nowadays located at the complex, which originally was Queen Marie-Antoinette’s glassware factory (1787), later the family Schneider’s industrial site and now is transformed into the Museum of Man and Industry. The idea of an Ecomuseum was totally new at the time and had a strong Utopian and political accent. Ironbridge and Le Creusot can be considered as two different ways to face the same problems: how to preserve, keep alive and make accessible the heritage of former industrial areas in the era of the de-industrialisation. The French approach was based on an ideological vision, the British one (as frequently happens, not only in the museum field) on a pragmatic approach. The results were and are totally different, but it is a fact that the Ironbridge Gorge Museum has been a successful model of a sustainable museum, which is not only founded on rigorous research and conservation but also has a major impact as an attraction and a crucial expression of national identity. More than 40 years on, it may be difficult to see why it was given the first European Museum of the Year Award, or why this seemed to challenge traditional museum hierarchies – but this is a reflection of the fact that many of its (sometimes controversial) innovations in subject matter, interpretation and organisation are now taken for granted. References Cossons, N. (1980). The museum in the valley, Ironbridge Gorge, Museum 32(3), 138–153. Rivière, G. H. (1985). The ecomuseum – an evolutive definition, Museum 37(4), 182–184.

IMAGE 2 

 ouisiana Museum of Modern Art,  Denmark. Photograph: ©Kim Hansen/Louisiana Museum of L Modern Art

2 LOUISIANA MUSEUM OF MODERN ART Copenhagen, Denmark European Museum of the Year Award 1978 Massimo Negri

Throughout Europe there are several museums that consist of a private art collection made accessible to the public, thanks to the permanent deposit in a building expressly devoted to this purpose. A different variation of the same typology is offered when the collector is also the creator and the owner of the building and the ‘soul’ of the consequent museum. Sometimes these initiatives are due to a dynasty of entrepreneurs, or perhaps to a person who has also originated a brand, especially in the fashion sector (the Prada Foundation in Milan, the Louis Vuitton Foundation or the Cartier Foundation in Paris, for example). In other circumstances, a dynasty of industrialists also becomes a dynasty of collectors, and eventually their works of arts are acquired by the state and become public, as in the case of the Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, where the state paid the value of the collection to set up a private foundation, which owned the collection and managed the museum. It happens also that not only the collection, but the location where it is hosted and exhibited, is the result of the dialogue between the collector and an architect or the result of a re-adaptive use of an historic building carried out under the guidance of the collector, as in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.That is to say, the preconditions of having an important collection, a generous collector willing to make it open to the public, and a supportive government can lead to a large variety of final results. Louisiana is one of these cases, and more specifically the achievement of Knud W. Jensen’s more than 50 years of effort, in Humlebæk, north of Copenhagen. The name Louisiana has nothing to do with the American state, but with the fact that, over the years, the first owner of the place in the nineteenth century

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married in succession three wives, all named Louise. Their name was given to the museum which opened in 1958. In 1984 Jensen wrote: The original aim of the Museum was to show the interplay between art, architecture, and landscape, and by so doing create a specifically Danish milieu, a refuge for those with a commitment to contemporary art. The 1960s, however, brought about changes in the art scene in Denmark, and consequently in the course taken by Louisiana. It seemed essential at this point to open the doors to international art, as the opportunities for contact with it were far too limited. In order to give an impression of the most important movements of the 20th century Louisiana mounted seven to eight exhibitions every year. (Jensen 1984: 259)

The main elements that a visitor immediately perceives when experiencing Louisiana are, first of all, an extraordinary dialogue between the inside and the outside of the museum, the landscape and the art works – both those displayed in the galleries (which keep visitors in visual contact with the exteriors thanks to a sensitive design of glass walls and glass corridors) and those on show in the open air, with sculptures positioned in the beautiful park surrounding the complex of buildings that form the museum. Among the latter, the oldest is a simple house from 1855, used now as the reception, which means that the first impression is more of a domestic environment than an art gallery. The museum was built in stages – by 1978 there had been four (1958, 1966, 1971, 1976), a process that has continued to this day. This means that visitors can walk along a path reflecting different architectural spaces, all inspired by the principle of pursuing a balance with the landscape and integrating contemporary buildings and artworks into the surrounding nature. It has to be said that such a ‘mechanism’ works extremely well. Louisiana is the opposite of the model that has emerged in the last 30 years in modern art museums all over the world: massive buildings designed by a starchitect, with the most surprising forms possible, generally in an urban context, where art works have to adapt themselves to the strong architectural design. On the contrary, here there is an extraordinary balance between a familiar scale and the necessary range of the exhibition, which is one of the most important aspects of a well-designed art museum. The two iconic high points of this museum are the group of Calder’s sculptures in the garden in front of the Concert Hall and the 13 works by Giacometti, including the ensemble of Femmes de Venice placed together on a podium as well as three sculptures, Femme Debout, Homme qui Marche and Grande Tête,

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which Giacometti himself wished to be shown as a group. Writing (again in 1984) Jensen set out the philosophy of Louisiana: I believe that it is important to revisit works of art: to find a particular painting or sculpture in its expected place provides a fixed point through all the changes which typify a museum of modern art with so many different exhibitions and different events.The visitor, who has not been here before, will perhaps experience the collection like a voyage of discovery … a little escapism is permissible at Louisiana, but the idea is first and foremost to show that art can be used by everyone in their personal lives. (1984: 265)

Although very discreetly integrated into the landscape with its ponds, trees, slopes and woods, Louisiana is not a small museum: the total area is more than 10,000 square metres, and all the facilities needed by a modern cultural organisation with a rich programme of activities are available: meeting rooms, auditorium, cafeteria, temporary exhibition gallery, storage, shop, etc. In this respect its ‘public quality’ is evident, and its history has reflected a continuous attention to the needs of its visitors. It is the model of a museum that you visit always with pleasure, leaves you with good memories and invites you to come back. The growth of the collection means not only that there is always something new to be seen, but also that the curatorial side, which had been under Jensen’s guidance until his death in 2000, has coherently pursued the idea of documenting contemporary art trends, but at the same time reflected a freedom of choice deriving from the collector’s taste and vision. Louisiana will remain inimitable in the precise constellation of the balance between the watery landscape in northern Denmark, its specific architecture and one of the most sophisticated collections of international art of the twentieth century, so that it was not destined to be a model as such. The ambition to achieve so complete and beautiful an integration of landscape, buildings and collections continues, however, to influence museums across the world. For this, and for its strong-minded freedom from the fashions of the art world, it was fitting that it was the first art museum to win the European Museum of the Year Award. Reference Jensen, K. W. (1984). Louisiana. Museum Management and Curatorship 3(3), 257–270.

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Catharine Convent State Museum, The Netherlands. Photograph: ©Lilian van Rooij

3 CATHARINE CONVENT STATE MUSEUM Utrecht, The Netherlands European Museum of the Year Award 1980 Ann Nicholls

The museum building, physically attached to the Cathedral, is one of the best preserved late medieval monastery complexes in The Netherlands. The Carmelites, a medieval begging order, started construction of the monastery in 1468. Much later, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it served as a hospital and was the precursor of the Academic Hospital Utrecht. Its collections included many artefacts from the museum of religious art of the Catholic Archbishopric of Utrecht, located in the Convent until the opening of the new museum in June 1979. At the time of the judging visit by Kenneth Hudson in that same year, the displays showed how The Netherlands were converted to Christianity, what forms Christianity took in the Middle Ages and how, after the Reformation, it divided into a number of sects and denominations – Lutherans, Baptists, Remonstrants, and Old Catholics, as well as the Catholics who followed the official Roman rites. Kenneth Hudson noted that every attempt had been made to explain and illustrate the often-bitter religious dissensions that were a feature of life in The Netherlands for many generations and which absorbed such a high proportion of the national energy. The museum director, Dr D. P. R. A. Bouvy, pointed out that his museum only became possible when religious bigotry and fanaticism in The Netherlands had largely died away. In the exhibitions, the assumption was made that many visitors are religious illiterates, who know nothing about the Bible and nothing about the practice of the Christian religion. The significance of everything was explained from the beginning, yet without any condescension or childlike language. Kenneth Hudson noted that the scope and language of the explanatory texts and of the superb Guide were a model, repaying careful study. Every text in the museum was reproduced verbatim in the Dutch version of the Guide, together with excellent illustrations so that, in a very real sense,

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one could take the museum home. Foreign-language versions of the Guide contained a summary of the texts. The objects around which the exhibitions were constructed included vestments, service books, paintings, sculpture and goldsmiths’ work. These ranged from great paintings by Rembrandt and Frans Hals to pamphlets and simple household articles. In the Middle Ages art and religion were inextricably linked. Stories from the Bible and lives of saints were an important source of inspiration for artists. One room contained, in close proximity, a seventeenth-century Roman Catholic altar and an eighteenth-century Protestant church interior, brought to the museum after the churches to which they belonged had been demolished. The Treasure Room contained precious objects from the ninth to the twentieth centuries, including golden chalices, silver bowls, richly decorated reliquaries and robes, of both Catholic and Protestant origin. Catholic artefacts are very much in the majority, because the Protestant religion had hardly any objects. When the museum was announced as the winner of the 1980 European Museum of the Year Award competition, the judges noted that: this large new state museum established in the excellently restored Catharine Convent in Utrecht has succeeded brilliantly in a task which only 20 years ago would have been impossible – to provide an objective survey of what has happened in The Netherlands in the name of Christianity, from medieval times to the present day. It is not always an agreeable story and the museum makes no attempt to conceal the bitterness and fanaticism which have characterised the relations between one sect and denomination and another over the centuries. The courage with which this has been illustrated in museum terms, together with the professional brilliance of the display techniques, makes this, in the Committee’s view one of the outstanding world museums of the post-war period and one which seems certain to have considerable influence in other countries. (European Museum of the Year Award, 1980, p. 7)

The museum applied again as a candidate in 2008, after a complete renovation that took place between November 2004 and March 2006, reopening in September 2006. During the renovations the buildings were stripped of asbestos and the technical facilities were either replaced or updated. The interior of the complex was restored to its former glory and wherever possible modern additions were removed. Since then, there has been an increase in secularisation, with a resultant decline in religious awareness. Wishing to broaden its visitor base to include schoolchildren and young visitors, the museum chose to display its collections through a succession of stories – about the first missionaries, the role of the Church in the Middle Ages, the part played by prominent figures such as Luther and Calvin, the proliferation of religious denominations and

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sects, and the Dutch phenomenon of Verzuiling or religious compartmentalisation along socio-religious lines. The displays were supplemented by an audio tour and a range of multimedia and audio-visual programmes. Educational programmes were targeted at primary and secondary children and people of nonDutch background. The judges on this occasion were François-Xavier Nève de Mévergnies from Belgium, and Massimo Negri from Italy. Referring to the booklet, Christianity in The Netherlands, Mr Nève remarked on the division of chapters: this astute ‘thematic’ regrouping allows for an historical linear development through which, almost unnoticeably, the young visitor is invited to grasp an ideological evolution – and it is well specified (in the book, not in the exhibit) that this is not finished.

Dr Negri emphasised ‘the public perception of Christian heritage in modern Dutch society and the museum programme which was designed to cope with these problems’. Receiving a Special Commendation in the 2008 EMYA competition for its work, the judges said the museum had undergone a challenging refurbishment and the result, in their opinion: is well balanced. Great efforts have been made to encourage younger people, in particular, to become more familiar with the symbols of the Christian religion, and the museum has also addressed the problem of how to communicate the Christian heritage to non-Christians. (European Museum Forum, 2008)

It was felt that the museum had fulfilled its mission of highlighting the aesthetic, cultural, and historical values of the Christian heritage, with the aim of obtaining a deeper vision of our present world. References European Museum of the Year Award (1980) London. EMYA. European Museum Forum (2008) European Museum of the Year Awards. Dublin. European Museum Forum.

IMAGE 4 

eloponnesian Folklore Foundation  ‘V.  Papandoniou’, Greece. Photograph: ©“V. Papantoniou” P Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation

4 PELOPONNESIAN FOLKLORE FOUNDATION ‘V. PAPANDONIOU’ Nafplion, Greece European Museum of the Year Award 1981 Peter Schirmbeck

My account of the Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation in Nafplion is based partly on memories of my visit while attending a meeting of the EMYA jury at Delphi. It was not the oracle of Delphi that moved me to visit the museum, but Kenneth Hudson, the founder of the European Museum of the Year Award, and an avid admirer of this institution. He personally reviewed this museum at the time, and his detailed account of it also informs the description below. Given the fact that thousands of folkloric museums around the world have existed for over a hundred years, the question rightly arises – what can be important about such a museum that it receives a European Museum Award? But it is exactly there, in the everyday, that we find, as we say in German, where the dog is buried, for in the case of the Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation, it is the everyday that is the hidden heart of the matter, as will soon be revealed. The great significance of this museum can only be understood if one considers it both in the narrower national Greek context, and equally importantly, in the context of our Western concept of ‘culture’, to which the Peloponnesian Folk Art Museum had to develop in opposition. As far as the national context is concerned, Kenneth Hudson argued in his judge’s report that in Greece a ‘disproportionate amount of money and attention is given to archaeology and ancient history’. I can only agree with this statement and even extend the core of this insight globally – in the context of this text, of course, only in a very condensed form. Since the Renaissance, our concept of art and culture has been significantly influenced by looking back to Antiquity, the culture of the Greeks and Romans. In this view ancient Greece, with its noble human ideals, its philosophy and its democracy, becomes a ‘peak of humanity’. The ideals of Antiquity lived on ethically in Humanism, artistically in Classicism, and shaped the European concept of culture. Questioning this provoked fierce protests. Thus, the painter Courbet, the father of Realism in France, was accused of

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‘departing from the Greeks’. The German Emperor Wilhelm II described the naturalistic pictures of the famous painter Max Liebermann as ‘gutter art’, and created, in the middle of World War I in Bad Homburg, one of his summer residences, a fountain with figures in the style of Antiquity. The worship of Antiquity continued in the New World also – during a visit to New York I have seen, for example, as the crowning glory of numerous skyscrapers, more ancient temples than exist on some Greek peninsulas. Of course, the glory of Antiquity also influenced the national identity of Greece, which explains, as Kenneth Hudson stated, the disproportionate, central place of archaeology and Ancient Greece, which, I would add, makes it possible to forget that, after Antiquity, people still lived in Greece – people whose existence for centuries depended on everyday work, in the fields, in workshops or at the domestic loom. Light was focused on Antiquity, the ideal. In its shadow, post-Antique people and their everyday living conditions were forgotten. Compared to thousands of d­ eified Antique sculptures in noble nudity, what justification would there be for focusing on everyday people and their clothing, as the Folk-Art Museum did? Probably none! Of course, this gap between ideal and reality showed strong parallels to the structure of my Rüsselsheim museum: it was an international tradition that industrial museums showed astonishing, flashy technology. When I added the less flashy industrial workplace, the shock was great. The origin of the FolkArt Museum in Nafplion was closely linked, as will be seen from the following quote from Hudson’s report, to Ioanna Papantoniou, who came from an industrialist family and founded the Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation in 1971. In his report Hudson underscored what new ground she entered in her homeland, the cradle of Antiquity: In other countries this would have been simple enough, but in Greece it required a special Act of Parliament … Mrs. Papantoniou herself had already formed a very fine collection of folk costumes and textiles, and this formed the basis of the Foundation’s collection, although it has subsequently been expanded. She realised early on, however, that the Foundation’s work demanded scholarship and research and in this she had to begin almost from the scratch.

He went on to say that: The foundation now has young, excellent and very enthusiastic researchers – I have met them – who are carrying out a national programme of work and publishing the results. Their schedule includes interviewing, recording, photographing and collecting, and they are very conscious of operating at the eleventh hour, if not later, in many cases.

Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation  43

Hudson thought that museographically, the museum was: very good indeed. Clever solutions have been found to the problem of protecting precious objects against damage by light, the objects on display are admirably chosen and displayed, and, above all, the graphics are first-class, something exceedingly rare East of the Adriatic.

Here I can only agree with the opinion of my colleague Kenneth Hudson in the jury, because – to be honest – I did not expect to meet in the Peloponnesian peninsula a museum of such high quality in content and design. The Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation differed from many ethnological ­museums – that show only finished objects – in that it presents not only the traditional costumes typical of the region, but also the necessary work processes, along with documents of the people involved in their production. This includes the production of natural textile fibres in the fields, the craft and artistic skills in the processing, as well as the associated techniques and professions. Spectacular historical photographs of the working practices are part of an informative and visually very vivid museum. It was the strategic decision to choose not the world of an idealised Antiquity as its theme, but the work, products and living conditions of the real existing people in Greece, that earned this museum the European Museum of the Year Award.

IMAGE 5 

Stockholm Music Museum,  Sweden. Photograph: ©Stockholm Music Museum, Sweden  (EMF Archive)

5 STOCKHOLM MUSIC MUSEUM Stockholm, Sweden Council of Europe Museum Prize 1981 Peter Schirmbeck

The award of the Council of Europe Museum Prize to Stockholm Music Museum in 1981 is to be understood in the context of the cultural upheaval of the 1968 movement that, internationally, in many areas of culture and education, in universities, schools, theatres, film, and museums, in emancipatory ways, brought forward previously suppressed content and led to new forms of mediation. At this point in time, museums increasingly no longer understood themselves just as institutions for the initiated, that is, for people who had or believed they had cultural knowledge at their disposal because of their family background, their education or their social status. Internationally, museums now sought to attract as broad a range of visitors as possible from all age groups and all social classes. It was also a time of developing the pedagogical work in museums, to make exhibited museum objects as accessible as possible to all people in order to raise awareness of the cultural and historical significance of the collection for visitors. An increasing task of the scientific staff, at this time, in many museums was to explore the social and political circumstances within which the exhibited objects were created, and then to communicate the meaning of the objects within this context. The universities prepared us for taking on this responsibility, as I got to know in the 1968 era, as part of my art history studies. In a seminar at the Kunsthistorisches Institut of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main, for example, our understanding of Matthias Grünewald’s famous Isenheim Altar, in its extremely expressive mode of the representation of anguish, was based on its emergence in the era of the peasant wars, as naturally as our understanding of the works of Käthe Kollwitz required study of the social and political conditions in the Germany of the imperial period and the Weimar Republic.

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When, as a member of the international jury, I visited the Music Museum, which was set up in a 300-year-old historical building, I encountered a series of factors that, in my view, justified a prize for this museum. From a musical instrument to a first tone – that’s just a small step. Creating at the beginning of a museum a whole space that addresses the topic of ‘tone’ in general and from different aspects, is, however, a great, remarkable step in conveying what musical instruments and musicians actually produce. Starting from the test of the wavelength of one’s own voice, visitors can try out different musical instruments, both simple and complex in technical construction, right down to the electronic synthesiser. For this purpose, various instruments were specially designed and built to allow their technique and sound production to be tried out by visitors. Such a museum-didactic introductory space only happens when it is the priority of the museum management, as it takes space and costs money that could be used in other ways. Which museum staff did not encounter views like these: ‘Why do we need all this, when we could have shown many more instruments from our store?’ The example of this clear and appealing experience shows how important it was for the Stockholm Music Museum to offer an attractive and generally understandable introduction to the topics of music and musical instruments to its guests. In the following historic, musicological exhibition of the museum, the different epochs of music history from the sixteenth century to the present were presented clearly, vividly – and audibly.The general aim of many museums from the 1970s and 1980s to exhibit the objects in their context, became reality in the Stockholm Music Museum. In order to embed musical instruments and music in their respective epochs, at the beginning of the display on each period, the museum created a cultural-historical overview with documents on city history, economic history, politics and society. The interpretation also showed which social events the music was commissioned for and played at, so that the museum realised its exhibition objective of placing musical instruments and music in their respective cultural-historical context. The musical instruments from the collection were well selected and displayed and visitors were able to listen to music from each epoch. The instruments were accompanied by documents showing where they were played – in the private sphere or in an orchestra hall, for example. There were also paintings and drawings showing the musical instruments with the people of their time. If matching originals were not available, the museum had good reproductions made. For the objects themselves, explanatory texts were given in two languages. Different basic colours were selected for each historic epoch, which contributed to the visually appealing overall structure of the museum.

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All of these elements illustrate that the interpretation of instruments and their music to visitors was not an afterthought for the Music Museum, but were from the beginning part of the appealing and imaginatively realised conception of this museum.

IMAGE 6 

The Museum of Farming and Crafts of Calabria, Italy. Photograph: ©Comune di Monterosso Calabro (VV)

6 THE MUSEUM OF FARMING AND CRAFTS OF CALABRIA Monterosso, Calabria, Italy Special Commendation 1984 Peter Schirmbeck

The great significance of the work, and of the very existence of this museum in southern Italy is revealed – as in the case of the Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation in Nafplion, Greece, which is also presented in this book – only within the cultural context in which it was created. Where the latter had to develop in the shadow of the ancient Greek heritage of antiquity, the weight of the globally admired cultural heritage of Italy that the Museum of Farming and Crafts faced was even heavier: the cultural heritage of Italy included the epochs of Greek and Roman antiquity with thousands of sculptures as well as the epochs of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque with thousands of buildings from Bramante to Palladio and thousands of paintings from Bellini and Michelangelo to Leonardo da Vinci and Tiepolo. What hopes could one have that a peasant wooden plough or a hand-drill made by hand, would be perceived as ‘worthy of esteem’, recognised as a ‘cultural treasure’, and collected and researched to be exhibited in a museum, when compared to artefacts created by giants of art and cultural history? As good as none. Agricultural implements rotting on the edge of a field or scrubland, discarded tools from the handcraft era eking out a dusty existence in dark workshop corners of eternity remain abandoned – unless recognised by the clever owner of a tavern for their ‘atmosphere-creating’ powers, as evidence of a past era, and used as decoration in the guest rooms. Who does not know them, the wooden spoked wheels of coaches and peasant carriages leaning against the wall in front of restaurants, to whose entrance doors repainted black ploughshares point the way, or the wooden wheel hubs, from whose former spoke openings now a candle or even a dimmed eco-light bulb spreads a pleasant light? The combination of two profound cultural transformations was the reason that, in the case of the Museum of Farming and Crafts in stony southern Italy, development went differently, and previously unnoticed or ‘kitschy’ objects of

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peasant and craft life and work, were taken seriously, collected, preserved, studied as cultural history, and became the core of a new museum. One of the two cultural transformations was that, in the framework of the 1968 movement, to which also Italy made a lively contribution, the traditional concept of culture, was considerably expanded by the inclusion of the world of work and everyday life, which surprisingly rose to become objects of scientific research and presented as material evidence in museums. The second culturalhistorical transformation, from which the creation of the Museum of Farming and Crafts benefitted, was the fact that in Calabria the transition to the industrial era was taking place right at that moment. In place of century old traditional forms of work and life, with their associated equipment, the mechanical, motorised world now entered with its industrially manufactured machines and tools.The opportunities that arose in this historic moment of the coincidence of these two cultural transformations were recognised by the initiators of the new museum – although they were by no means self-evident. Even today, I remember the enthusiastic words and eyes of the people I met during my jury visit to Monterosso: ‘The old farm tools were everywhere on the edge of the fields, we just needed to collect them … . We just had to get us an appropriate palazzo and set up the museum’. In general, two things become apparent here: first, how crucial it can be that at the right time, the right people are ‘on the spot’ to recognise and use the historic opportunity and call something cultural to life. Second, how unproductive a blind belief in progress is, when it promotes living according to the motto ‘we have to look ahead – away with the old junk’. This has led, for example, to many industrial cities and regions levelling their historic industrial heritage by the square kilometre. In Monterosso, the founders of the museum recognised the propitious moment and the cultural and historical value of the historic survivals, and collected thousands of objects from traditional agriculture and crafts. Not only did they work together with the local residents to collect the objects, but also to research and interpret them. Through oral-histories, the local residents explained the purpose of the objects, their manufacture, their functioning and particular role in the work process. All this was recorded and used in original form in the exhibition: not lengthy labels to explain the objects – rather the explanatory text panels were designed in the form of ‘question and answer’, which, of course, is a much livelier form of interpretation. Powerful historical photographs of the people at work also brought the exhibition to life. The following detail may illustrate the ingenuity and professionalism involved in the creation of the displays in Monterosso: inside the historic building that was converted for the museum, its creators found simple markings on the walls made by the farmers who used to deliver their olive oil here, but could not write. These quantity marks were consciously preserved as authentic, valuable documents of the peasant world and protected under glass.

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The creation of the Museum of Farming and Crafts of Calabria was driven by two objectives. First, to save and permanently preserve the tools of agriculture and crafts threatened with disappearance at a time of transformation. Second, to create a place for the people of the region and their visitors to present the ancient, centuries-old traditional working and life-forms of Calabria. If one compares this with the creation and goals of the Folk-Art Museum in Nafplion, and the framework and conditions under which these two museums were created, many parallels will emerge.

IMAGE 7 

Quarry Bank Mill, United Kingdom. Photograph: ©Konstantinos Arvanitis

7 QUARRY BANK MILL Styal, United Kingdom Special Commendation 1984 Peter Schirmbeck

Quarry Bank Mill is an eighteenth-century textile factory that was restored and opened to the public as a museum in 1983. Like Ironbridge, it is part of so-called ‘industrial heritage’, which had long been disregarded and has been allocated a place within the cultural and historical heritage of mankind for only a couple of generations. Let me say something about my personal experience of this change. During my study of art history at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, only these periods counted as art: the epochs from Antiquity to eighteenth century Classicism, and then, again, all epochs from Art Nouveau to the present.The epochs between these, Neo-Romanesque, Neo-Gothic, Neo-Renaissance and Neo-Baroque were considered worthless. If, in our excursions, we came across a building in one of these styles, it was given the thumbs down, which meant ‘released for demolition’. As the era of industrialisation in Germany began in the first half of the nineteenth century and reached its peak around 1900, tens of thousands of industrial buildings had sprung up in these art-historically ‘worthless’ styles. Accordingly, two generations ago – i.e. before about 1970 – thousands of factories, power plants, factory chimneys, railway stations, signal towers, etc. were demolished without a second thought. One day – it was probably the beginning of the 1970s – a sentence ran like wildfire through our art history institute of the university: ‘the Thyssen Foundation promotes the nineteenth century’. It concerned Geist’s publication Arcades, A 19th Century Building Type (1969/1983). This was sensational and marked a change of attitude towards the previously disregarded nineteenth century. Admittedly, it took a good two generations before it was generally acknowledged that not only temples, Gothic churches, Renaissance town halls, half-timbered buildings and Baroque castles have cultural value and should be

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preserved, but also the typical buildings of our industrial era – such as factories, power plants, train stations, entrepreneur villas, and workers’ housing estates. Things could have happened in a similar way in England, with works such as Industrial Archaeology in Britain (Buchanan) appearing in 1972 and Remains of a Revolution (Burton) in 1975. It was around this time that Kenneth Hudson, a leading exponent of industrial archaeology (he published the first book on the subject in 1963), as well as the founder of EMYA, asked me to give a lecture in Glasgow on industrial history in museums. I stood there in shock in front of a recently demolished and bulldozed industrial site of about 50,000 square metres, something that I had not expected in a country where the Industrial Revolution was born. The complex of the Quarry Bank Mill textile factory, founded in 1784, comprises many relevant and typical components of an industrial production facility at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in England: the factory building itself, in its sober yet striking brick architecture, located on the waterway, the historical cast-iron machinery inside, the water wheel and the steam engine for energy production, the associated workers’ housing estate and an architecturally ‘noble’ residential building, where the living conditions of the founding Greg family are documented. What is impressive when visiting this ensemble as a contemporary industrial museum, is that the historic looms are in operation, and visitors experience the industrial production process not only with their eyes, but also with their ears – they have to wear ear protectors when walking through the weaving room (or at least that was mandatory at the time of my jury visit). The operation ‘in action’ serves not only to demonstrate industrial production as ‘authentically’ as possible, but also to earn money for the maintenance of the museum, as the finished textiles are for sale. The didactic conception of the museum includes not only the presentation of the industrial production process itself, but also the juxtaposition of spinning and weaving by hand and the same process carried out mechanically. In addition, the museum has interesting archive material on the history of the textile factory and its owners – including even the toys of the family’s children. The situation of Quarry Bank Mill deserves particular attention, as it is special that this factory sits in isolation in the midst of a natural landscape.While in the course of advancing industrialisation, a new factory normally was followed by some move to create an industrial area, with nature far away; in the case of Quarry Bank Mill, it remained a factory surrounded by nature. This peculiarity made it possible, taking a point of departure from Quarry Bank Mill, to observe in a unique way fundamental and, to date, relevant relationships between industry and nature. When visiting the museum, one learns, for example, that the founder, Samuel Greg, repeatedly rode his horse in the surrounding area, to look for improved possibilities for the water operation of his factory.The energy demands of industrial production are illustrated through this as well as by the

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enormous dimensions of the water wheel – 9.8 metres. In order to increase the pressure from the water drawn from the River Bollin, the great wheel was sunk into a pit and the water brought to it through a kilometre-long tunnel. This is only one significant example of an intervention in nature brought about by industrialisation, which has happened tens of thousands of times in the course of industrial development. The principle of the water wheel for energy generation was followed by that of the steam engine. In 1810, the first of these was installed in Quarry Bank Mill; in 1836, another was added. In addition to the natural energy provided by the watercourse, energy generation through combustion, steam, cylinder and piston movement came in – a principle that was then applied in millions of locomotives as well as in billions of combustion piston engines for automobiles, one of the reasons for today’s climate change. As well as getting to know about industrial textile production ‘in action’, through the meeting of nature (evoked by the beauty of the undisturbed surrounding landscape), on the one hand, and the factory in the middle of it, on the other, the museum offers visitors the opportunity to reflect on the relationship between nature and industry, on technical-industrial progress and its stunning, steadily increasing industrial productivity, as well as on its price, the increasing destruction of the natural foundations of life. References Buchanan, R. A. (1972). Industrial Archaeology in Britain. Harmondsworth. Penguin. Burton, A. (1975). Remains of a Revolution. London. Sphere Books. Geist, J. F. (1969). Passagen, ein Bautyp des19. Jahrhunderts. Munich. Prestel. Published in English in 1983 as Arcades,The History of a Building Type. MIT Press. Cambridge, Mass. Hudson, K. (1963). Industrial Archaeology, an Introduction. London. John Baker.

IMAGE 8 

Heureka, the Finnish Science Centre, Finland. Photograph: ©Heureka

8 HEUREKA, THE FINNISH SCIENCE CENTRE Vantaa, Finland Special Commendation 1990 Wim van der Weiden

The world now contains several dozen institutions that call themselves s­cience museums and a great many more which prefer to be known as science centres, all set up with the aim of arousing a wider and more informed interest in ‘science’, that is, I suppose, relying on my dictionary, in ‘systematic methodical exploration of the phenomena of the material universe’. (Kenneth Hudson, 1998, p. 19)

Science centres can be considered to be a rather recent phenomenon. Heureka, which opened in 1989, belongs to the second wave of science centres, like Nemo in Amsterdam. Science museums can be considered the precursors of these centres. In the course of the past century museums and science centres had to adapt to an ever-changing world in order to survive. After the First World War, many museums of science and technology wanted to inform visitors about production methods and technology, which were very often seen as the benefits of industrialisation (technology). The first science museums stem from the first quarter of the twentieth century: the Technisches Museum Vienna opened in 1918, the Deutsches Museum in Munich in 1925 and the modern incarnation of the Science Museum in London dates from the same period. These museums were essentially historyof-technology museums and consequently a storehouse of technological, historical artefacts. As in art museums, collecting and conserving objects of historical importance were some of the most important duties. They also showed examples of contemporary technology as aids to technical education and to support a narrative of industrial progress.The Palais de la Découverte, created in 1937, can be seen as a predecessor of the future science centres, which emerged

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in the second half of the twentieth century. Its founder, the Nobel Prize winner Jean Perrin, described the Palais as a ‘scientific cultural centre’ and as a ‘dynamic museum’. Scientific experiments were demonstrated in comprehensible language, artefacts were of minor importance: it was not the Musée de la Découverte! From the very beginning it promoted the public interest in science, especially among young people. After the Second World War, genuine science centres were founded in Canada and the United States: both the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto and the Exploratorium in San Francisco date from 1969. From the 1970s onwards, corporate exhibitions about industrial sectors became more and more outdated. A more critical attitude to technology and the belief in technology-driven progress came into fashion. Many science museums/centres transformed into institutions that presented themselves as an extra-curricular educational resource in the fields of chemistry, physics, engineering and computing. La Villette in Paris was the first one in Europe in 1986. All are places where people could learn about science and technology through playful interaction: a mix of play with education. Such was the situation when the planning of Heureka started in 1981. Over 1,000 scientists participated in the making of the content.Together they thought up the six sectors of the permanent exhibition: The Universe, Life, Human Society, Production, The World of Sound and, outside, The Science Park. The enthusiastic and knowledgeable coordinator was the Director of Science, PerEdvin Persson. (Later, he became general director until his retirement some years ago. As president of ECSITE (European Collaborative of Science, Industry and Technology Exhibitions), he was also very active and successful in the wider world of science museums/centres.) Persson succeeded in satisfying all founders of Heureka, a miracle looking at the backgrounds of the partners: the University of Helsinki, the Helsinki University of Technology, the Federation of Finnish Scientific Societies, the Confederation of Finnish Industries, the Teachers’Trade Union in Finland, the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions, The Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Trade, the City of Vantaa. Being a historian, I mostly enjoyed two sub-sections – the one on languages showing, for instance, the relationship between Finnish and Hungarian, and the one on philosophy. By means of question-and-answer games visitors could find out if they are more Socratic or Platonic people. These examples show that Heureka was not just about displaying technical innovations. On the contrary: it places people’s physical, mental, social and cultural interests in the spotlight. Communication methods were used that addressed the intellect, feelings and the senses. Learning by doing: hands-on! All information and explanations were available in three languages: Finnish, Swedish and English. Many very customer-friendly guides gave demonstrations, explained the games and answered questions.

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Heureka was housed in a purpose-built futuristic building in Vantaa, a suburb in the Helsinki metropolitan area. The architects based the design on natural phenomena and the laws that govern them. For example: the painted steel structures on the mirror-clad exterior show how light is systematically diffracted into different colours, whilst the shapes that make up the building reflect the basic laws of geometry. In the Science Park there were displays of Finnish bedrocks: a geological garden. The result is a fascinating, extremely imposing building, inside, and outside. One minus point only: in the Verne Theatre, an Omnimax Space theatre of 200 seats, the distortion of the films on show was abominable. (It was completely refurbished in 2007, with a reduced capacity of 135 seats.) No wonder that I was really impressed, as were all of the 400,000 visitors between 28 April and 22 October 1989, the date of my visit. I saw a queue of about 150 metres in front of the ticket office! It was a state-of-the-art science centre; in my opinion the best I had ever seen. And it was so up-to-date that in 1989 it was already preparing a temporary exhibition on artificial intelligence! Reference Hudson, K. (2017). A Tiger in a Museum is Not a Tiger: An Anthology of the Thoughts of Kenneth Hudson (1916–1999). Ljubljana/The Hague. European Museum Academy.

IMAGE 9 

 he Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia, Cyprus. Photograph: ©The Leventis Municipal Museum T of Nicosia

9 THE LEVENTIS MUNICIPAL MUSEUM OF NICOSIA Nicosia, Cyprus European Museum of the Year Award 1991 Wim van der Weiden

Cyprus, October 1990. An independent Republic since 1960 after the ratification of the Zurich agreements, which put an end to the period of British rule (1878–1960). The application of the constitution created serious frictions between the two communities – Greeks 70 per cent, Turks 30 per cent – in 1963. This resulted in the still existing demarcation of the so-called Green Line of Nicosia, controlled by UN soldiers since 1964. Instead of creating peace, the situation grew worse after the Turkish invasion in 1974. From that time on until the present day, Cyprus has been divided into a Greek and Turkish part. The Greek part became an EU member state in 2004. The northern part has been a separate Turkish Cypriot state since 1983, only recognised by Turkey. This was the constellation when I visited the Leventis Municipal Museum in October 1990. It was my first visit to Cyprus and I was very curious to see and experience what was going on in the island. My expectations of the museum were not too high, to be honest. In my perception most of the museums in that area of the world at that time were archaeological, and not known for being very innovative. But I was completely wrong: to my great surprise and astonishment, I entered an up-to-date, modern and very pleasant city museum. It deserved the European Museum of the Year Award! Why? The building itself, a large, nineteenth-century mansion occupied by a former mayor, is remarkable. In 1983, it was in complete disrepair. The mayor at that time (1974–2001), Lellos Demetriades, wanted to revitalise the old city within the Venetian walls. To that end he approached the Anastasios G. Leventis Foundation to buy the building and restore it for use as a historical museum of Nicosia.The municipality, on its side, would then run the museum. Both parties have done what they promised until the present day. The museum opened in 1989 and has now existed for more than 30 years, integrated into the shopping and tourist area of the old city.

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A big house means a small museum. The space is restricted but used ingeniously. Thanks to the smart displays in the small exhibition rooms the visitor gets the impression that it is larger than it is in reality. At the same time, you feel at home because of the homely atmosphere in general. An unexpected element is the small, charming amphitheatre in the yard, used for educational purposes, performances etc. (The museum secured an extension in the adjacent buildings and has now expanded to three times its original dimensions.) Cyprus has always been strategically important to foreign powers, wishing to exercise influence or control in the eastern Mediterranean, Europe’s gateway to the Middle East. Cyprus has long been the watchtower of two continents. Nicosia became capital of Cyprus around the tenth century. Since then it has played an important part in the historical, political, and social development of the island. And that is exactly what is presented in the permanent exhibitions, showing the various historical periods and the main events that have marked Nicosia’s long existence. The exhibition is arranged in chronological sequence starting from the present day, going back into the past. In doing so, the museum offers the visitor better opportunities to identify with the historical development of the city. In 1989 this approach was quite new. Most historical museums still start in prehistoric times and go up to the present day. I prefer this ‘genealogical’ method for understanding the past. For the chequered history of Nicosia, it is particularly relevant. So, visitors start in the room ‘Nicosia 1960–1989’ and continue their way through the British period (1878–1960), the Turkish period (1570–1878), the Venetian period (1489–1570), the Frankish period (1192–1489), the Byzantine period (335–1192), and the Ancient period (2300 bce–335ce). The storyline is clear, focusing primarily on daily life; it is also very understandable for school children. In 1989 the museum stood out for its innovative ideas and design based on state of the art museological concepts. It proved to be the first modern museum in Cyprus: as Kenneth Hudson put it ‘Nothing will ever be the same again’. The display was really revolutionary, meeting international museum standards. Compared with many boring and dull archaeological museums, it was a relief! Both concept and presentation were striking, taking into account that the origins of the museum date from 1984 – one year after the Turkish Cypriot state was created. They were not nationalistic, chauvinistic or resentful at all. Being one of the divided capitals in Europe – nowadays the only existing one – it was remarkable and, as such, praise-worthy. For a great part, this approach has to be credited to the curator, Loukia Loizou Hadjigavriel. Before realising the museum, she did an in-depth study of all aspects of the museum profession. She visited many museums, observing, studying, researching. As a matter of fact, she was the kind of personality Kenneth Hudson admired because she possessed the skills and talents needed

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to create a really good museum. In the magazine of the Committee of the European Museum of the Year Award, in the spring of 1992 he wrote: We came to the conclusion that the museum which scored more highly than others was the Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia, whose quietly brilliant and astonishingly determined and well-informed and politically sensitive curator has given Cyprus its first modern museum and provided it a real opportunity to break out of the straitjacket of archaeology which has held back museological progress for far too long. It is a museum with style, with wit, with cultural balance and above all, with a keen sense of the needs and tastes of today’s public.

Reference European Museum of the Year Award (1992). EMYA Magazine. London. EMYA.

IMAGE 10 

The Vasa Museum, Sweden. Photograph: ©Åke E:son Lindman

10 THE VASA MUSEUM Stockholm, Sweden Special Commendation 1992 Ann Nicholls

My first impression on entering the museum was one of awe, to see this magnificent ship in all its extravagant glory as it must have looked when launched more than 300 years ago, swiftly followed by appreciation of the years of conservation and restoration that had led to this point. To put it into context, the royal warship Vasa set out on her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628, with four sails set. Still within the harbour, the ship heeled over in a squall, water poured in through the open gun ports and the ship sank like a stone. Her loss was a national disaster, both for King Gustavus II Adolphus who had commissioned the warship and for his poverty-stricken subjects who had paid for her. Despite a major enquiry in 1628, no blame could be established, although ‘it was generally agreed that the Vasa was wrongly designed and basically unstable’ (National Board of Public Building, 1990, p. 14). There was no record of how many people were on board when the Vasa went down, but an estimate was two hundred, and we now know that about 30 men, women, and children perished. At least 11 skeletons have been found. The victims were interred in the Galärvarv cemetery adjoining the new museum in 1963, two years after the ship was raised. Efforts to recover the Vasa at the time failed and subsequently the ship was forgotten until in 1956 a marine archaeologist, Anders Franzén, managed to locate the vessel and raise interest in salvaging it. Five years later, following a complex and hazardous operation, the Vasa broke the surface of the water in April 1961 after 333 years on the seabed. A temporary museum was built to house the ship, to be a workshop for preservation and restoration, and to give the public the chance to see it. Conservation was a huge task: ‘a 1,000 tons of saturated oak … in addition about 13,500 wooden fragments of all sizes … plus some 500 sculptured figures, 200 ornaments, and 12,000 details in wood, textile, leather, and metal’ (National Board of Public Building, 1990, p. 37). In September 1988, the vessel was transferred to the permanent museum premises

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on the waterfront, near the Nordic Museum. By then almost 12 million people had seen the Vasa. Constructed over a dry dock, the design of the new museum was the winning entry in a competition and was the work of a Stockholm husband and wife architectural team, Göran Månsson and Marianne Dahlbäck.The materials used are copper, concrete, and wood, needing very little exterior maintenance. The copper has weathered to a distinctive green colour, and special copper-based paints in red and yellow were also used. Entry to the building is through five sets of doors forming an air lock, enabling strict control of the climate to be maintained. The interior is basically one large open space with the Vasa to one side, enabling visitors to view the vessel on several levels at close range. On the walkways near the side of the ship are interpretive panels every few metres in at least eight languages, pointing out one particular feature of the vessel. The two architects have managed to keep the feeling of space, which is remarkable considering the large annual number of visitors.The Vasa Museum is now the most visited museum in Sweden – the 2017 published visit numbers were 1,495,760. The Vasa itself is, of course, the prime exhibit and its size is awe-inspiring. On entering the vast space where it is housed, I was rendered almost speechless at my first sight of the great warship, rescued from its watery grave. The objects found in the vessel were not as numerous as from the Mary Rose, Henry VIII’s vessel which sank in Portsmouth harbour in July 1545 with the loss of more than 450 men. Far fewer people were on board the Vasa at the time of the disaster and it was not fully victualled, whereas the Mary Rose was full of supplies and artefacts. Those items that have been recovered from the Vasa were well displayed, and exhibitions included a representation of the enquiry into the sinking, work of the master craftsmen, the discovery and salvaging of the ship, examples of conservation, and the seventeenth-century historical and social context. Added more recently are more detailed programmes on the ongoing conservation of the oak used in the ship, how fast the degradation is progressing, and research into the deformation of the woodwork, which will necessitate finding new means of support for the vessel. A fascinating exhibition called ‘Face to Face’ now deals with the osteological and archaeological research on the skeletons found aboard and includes six facial reconstructions together with a film about their production. A wide range of programmes for schools has been developed since the opening of the museum, ranging from preschool age to gymnasium level and including special schools. These programmes are a mixture of science, history, technology and fairy tales, depending on the age of the pupils. The comprehensive website now includes 16 two-minute films on various aspects of the museum, in a mixture of Swedish and English. There is also an audio guide in a wide range of languages. An auditorium seating three hundred people showed a film on the raising of the ship at the time of my visit and it is now updated regularly. A much smaller viewing room showed an excellent slide presentation

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on the enquiry which followed the disaster. This was short and succinct and left the question of blame open. It had one or two surprises – when the commentary referred to thirty seamen being asked to run from one side of the deck to the other to test the stability of the vessel, a lamp at one side of the screen in the auditorium began to sway. As one of the judges of this museum I was most impressed with the achievement of Lars-Åke Kvarning and his staff. Having visited the Vasa regularly since then, whenever I am in Stockholm, I am full of admiration for the continuing research work that is being carried out in order to maintain the ship, at the same time continuing to make the visitor experience an exciting, informative and genuinely unique one. In my opinion, this museum is ‘the one that got away’ in the EMYA competition. Reference National Board of Public Building (1990). The Vasa Museum – an old ship in a new house. National Board of Public Building. Stockholm.

IMAGE 11 

Alta Museum, Norway. Photograph: ©Bernt Holst/World Heritage Rock Art Centre – Alta Museum

11 ALTA MUSEUM Alta, Norway European Museum of the Year Award 1993 Ann Nicholls

Alta is the largest town in the northern province of Finnmark, with a population of about 16,000. The region is sparsely populated by a multi-ethnic and multilingual mixture of Norwegians, Sámi and Finns. It has a coastal culture, with fishing and reindeer hunting still important in the economy. When the occupying German forces retreated from Finnmark towards the end of the Second World War, they implemented their scorched earth policy of burning most of the buildings and nearly all the people’s possessions, leaving them with only the clothes they stood up in. After the Germans left, in Alta only five churches and ten sheds remained. Old objects are therefore rare and specially valued. Some local people managed to hide objects and photographs and after the war these same people became founder members of the Historical Society, an organisation with which the museum still has close ties. The town is in an enviable location at the head of the Altafjord and is a stop for cruise ships on their way to the North Cape. At the time the museum was a candidate for EMYA it stayed open for 24 hours when a cruise ship was anchored offshore. Nowadays, the museum has extensive summer hours, achieved with the temporary employment of students who speak a wide range of European ­languages. After starting life as a museum in a school bomb shelter and then a school, a new building designed by a Swiss architect opened in June 1991 with an area of 2,500 square metres. The low-maintenance construction is based on traditional Norwegian designs and there is a flexible grid system of lighting. From the main entrance one can see through the museum to the fjord. At the time of my visit, it was clear that the collections were of regional interest with exhibitions including Stone Age archaeology, economic and military history. Areas covered include copper mining, slate quarrying, agriculture and forestry. The museum aimed to document and communicate the long history of ethnic pluralism. The archives included documentation of the protest

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movement against the damming of the Alta-Kautokeino water system, which attracted national attention. What began in 1970 as opposition from the local community and environmental organisations to this proposal, ended as a flagship for the rights of the indigenous population, with demonstrations throughout the country and several thousand people taking part in civil disobedience activities to stop work on the project. The museum has responsibility for an adjoining park containing the largest concentration of rock art made by hunter gatherers in northern Europe, discovered in 1973. It includes both rock carvings and rock paintings and over six thousand figures have been registered. An important source of archaeological material, it provides a unique insight into people’s thoughts and rituals, social organisation, technology and use of resources.The site was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1985 as the first prehistoric monument in the Nordic countries to be so honoured. Conservation of the site has been of primary concern over the decades, aimed at slowing down the process of chemical erosion, biological erosion, and mechanical destruction. I joined the visitors who were directed along pathways and were kept away from the rock surfaces. We were told that regular cutting and weeding prevents the growth of vegetation in the area. Alta Museum also has responsibility for the associated World Heritage Rock Art Centre. The existence of the rock art inevitably brought many more tourists to the area and to the museum and it responded by extending its opening hours and providing facilities including an elegant cafeteria and a post office selling commemorative stamps and featuring the museum’s postmark. If there was ever an award for a director’s office Alta would be a strong contender, as the room has a wonderful open view right down the fjord. As the largest town in the region, Alta has the full range of schools and further education establishments as well as a teacher training college. The museum was, and still is, regarded as a good local learning resource. During the 1990s, school textbooks concentrated on the history and resources of southern Norway. In its search for the European Museum of the Year, the jury were looking for a combination of originality, style, stamina, and proven success. It was hoped that the eventual winner, given appropriate publicity, would produce a beneficial influence on museums in other countries. It was felt that Alta Museum had great style, a modest construction budget and an equally undistinguished sum for its annual running costs. Within these parameters the judges felt that it combines a serious intellectual purpose with the need to make the museum function as a community centre as well as a museum. It has energetic, highly efficient, and socially responsible management … This [is] an example to be widely followed, a museum with a high survival value in today’s harsh economic climate. (European Museum Forum, 1993, p. 58)

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The museum’s efforts to maintain a good dialogue with the Historical Society, the Music Society and the Neighbourhood Society, as well as the regional tourist organisation, played no little part in integrating it into the local community and the wider region. To find a museum of this quality far from the national capital was a surprise and a delight. Reference European Museum Forum, European Museum of the Year Award 1993, Lisbon.

IMAGE 12 

 useum of the Romanian Peasant, Romania. Photograph: ©Marius Caraman/Photo M from the Ethnological Archive of the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant

12 MUSEUM OF THE ROMANIAN PEASANT Bucharest, Romania European Museum of the Year Award 1996 J. Patrick Greene

When I set off for Bucharest on 30 September 1995, I had no prior knowledge of its museums, but I was keenly aware that Romania had experienced a traumatic recent history. The dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu had been overthrown in a violent popular uprising in 1989. Who could forget the moment when huge crowds, assembled to pledge loyalty to the Leader, turned against him as he stood on a balcony with his wife? The derisive chants of the multitude spelt the end for the dictator. A few days later, both Ceausescu and his wife had been executed and a period of turmoil ensued. Against this background, I was not sure what to expect. I flew with TAROM, the national airline, in a Russianbuilt Tupolev plane. The tray table, made from a sheet of steel, was attached to the back of the seat in front by a pair of nuts and bolts. During the flight, the vibration caused the attachments to work loose until, suddenly, the tray table fell into my lap. Arriving, relieved, at Bucharest airport I was puzzled when the pilot asked all the passengers in the front half of the plane to remain seated until those in the rear half had disembarked. He explained that this was necessary to prevent the plane from tipping backwards onto its tail. I was met by Virgil Nitulescu who, at the time, was an official with the Arts Ministry. We went for a walking tour of the centre of the city, during which he gave me a vivid account of the events six years previously. The next day, I made my visit as an EMYA judge to the Museum of the Romanian Peasant. It is fair to say that I was astonished and delighted by what I found. The museum was fascinating with beautiful displays and wonderful collections. I recorded my impression: A remarkable attempt to display ethnographic material in an innovative manner. Most things are on open display and there are no DO NOT TOUCH notices – visitors don’t.The ground floor is complete (but still experimental) with displays on the theme of the cross. Labels are avoided. Each zone takes a different aspect of the cross, from deeply religious to purely decorative.

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I noted four innovations and bright ideas: •

The museum is experimental in nature and is constantly trying new ideas and ways of exhibiting the collection. The most radical is painting parts of the building with a fresco finish to complement the exhibits – and scratching symbols and messages into the painted surface. • The ‘Missionary Museum’ happens from time to time – a horse-drawn cart accompanied by members of staff playing traditional instruments, travels through the streets and then a stall is set up to publicise the museum. • The museum holds Donors’ Days, during which peasants who have given objects are invited into the museum, set up a display, and are presented with beautiful certificates designed by the director. • The museum had no money for a café, so a French supporter gave a donation to buy cakes, biscuit, etc. – these are sold, and the income is reinvested to increase the stock and furnish the café.

I was very impressed with the director, Horia Bernea, and noted that he was a very remarkable man. He was appointed to the role immediately after the 1989 revolution and assembled a dedicated and devoted staff who created the museum, the first phase of which opened in 1992. He was an artist of international standing, who applied his skills to the design of the museum, creating settings for objects in an original manner (other museums in Romania did not like his radical approach). He was clearly respected and loved by his staff. I also noted that the museum was based on excellent collections, cared for to the highest standards. It possessed 90,000 items, very well documented, well housed in good conditions including a telematic environmental monitoring system. The museum’s collections included costume, furniture, religious items, carpets, ceramics and wooden objects, with a photographic archive and a start on video. In addition to the qualities that I have described, the story of the museum and its role in post-Ceausescu Romania set it apart. Work on the original museum began in 1906. It opened in 1912 and eventually housed in an attractive building that was taken over as the Museum of the Communist Party after the Second World War. An extension was built in the 1970s, complete with an enormous socialist-realist mosaic on the exterior façade. After the 1989 revolution it reverted to its role as the guardian and showcase of Romania’s rich peasant culture. In carrying out its activities, the Museum of the Romanian Peasant has been an active participant in measures to heal the damage inflicted by the Ceausescu regime. His antipathy to the peasants was exemplified by a programme of collectivisation that led to the destruction of thousands of traditional houses in villages across the country. Buildings were destroyed on an enormous scale, replaced by sub-standard concrete structures. The museum took on the role of affirming the wealth of peasant culture, and the response by peasants was

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enormous. Their culture was validated and valued. A timber church was reerected outside the museum, deliberately challenging the Communist mosaic mural. The EMF jury selected the Museum of the Romanian Peasant as recipient of the 1996 European Museum of the Year Award for its originality, for its quality and as a symbol of leadership in the post-Communist era. I have a beautiful little book produced by the museum in 2000. It is called Discover the Museum – By Yourself. In a manner that is characteristic of the museum it gives visitors clues to enable them to see beyond the surface of the displays. It also includes this beautiful quotation from Alexandru Tzigara-Samurcas (the founder of the museum in 1906) from ‘How to use the museum’: The museum is the highest yet simplest of schools. The school of the museum is indeed simple, for he who searches into it needs no special training. He will only have to keep his eyes open to understand what lies before him. If you know how to look at things and how to penetrate their meaning, they will start talking a language that will make more sense to you than any book can ever do. (Museum of the Romanian Peasant, 2000)

Reference Museum of the Romanian Peasant (2000).  Discover the Museum – By Yourself. Bucharest. Museum of the Romanian Peasant.

IMAGE 13  National Conservation Centre (National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside), United Kingdom. Photograph: ©Marlen Mouliou

13 NATIONAL CONSERVATION CENTRE (NATIONAL MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES ON MERSEYSIDE) Liverpool, United Kingdom European Museum of the Year Award 1998 Wim van der Weiden In the late 1980s, there was a general increased European interest amongst museums in collections care and preventive conservation. At the same time, national collections were coming to be seen as common cultural heritage that had to be coordinated and better shown, interpreted and explained to society, nationally and internationally. For example, in 1987 a report about the condition of the Dutch state-owned national cultural heritage was published, pointing out the bad state of conservation of substantial parts of it. The Dutch response was the Delta Plan, named after a giant flood control system, built after the devastating flood in 1953; this plan stimulated national museums to make an inventory of their collections and to assess their condition. Also, in 1987, a report of the Comptroller and Auditor General in the UK drew attention to the great difficulties faced by institutions in charge of the custody, care and maintenance of the British national collections.Two further reports were published in 1989, one by the National Audit Office and one by the Public Account Committee. They identified the need for substantial improvements in conservation provision: ‘It must now be tackled urgently, on the basis of a clear and concerted national programme, planned over a number of years and targeted at priority areas and supported by an appropriate allocation of resources’. The National Museums and Galleries, Merseyside, was created in 1986, exactly in the period of these museological (and political!) developments. It consists of seven national museums: the Liverpool Museum, the Walker Art Gallery, the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Sudley Art Gallery, the Oratory, the Museum of Liverpool Life and the Maritime Museum. So, the museum came into being at the very moment that governments realized that the care for cultural heritage had been neglected. It might have been one of the reasons that from the very beginning the idea was to create a conservation division, structured by materialbased departments such as paper, paintings, textiles, ceramics and so on. The

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masterplan set out how it should work: the division would have its own keeper and would be supported by departments of conservation science, technical services, transport, and handling. In order to serve all the museum’s outstanding collections, the division must be housed under one roof. That building must provide a physical place for all conservation activities and should also make those activities accessible to a wider audience. In 1973, I took my eldest daughter, then aged five, with me to my museum, the Museum for Education, later known as Museon, in The Hague. She looked around in the exhibition rooms with great interest. But after about half an hour she said to me: ‘What are you doing here? Everything is fixed, done!’ I realised she was right, in some sense. At that time, outsiders usually only saw the final result of the work of the museum profession: exhibitions and objects in showcases, illustrated by text labels and in some cases explained in educational programmes. During the last 25 years of the last century most museums changed their focus from the collection to the visitor. The first of the ten recommendations of the American Association of Museums report Excellence and Equity was that museums should ‘Assert that museums place education at the centre of their public service role. Assure that the commitment to serve the public is clearly stated in every museum’s mission and central to every museum’s activities’ (1992, p. 8). Liverpool’s Conservation Centre was an interesting and, in many ways, successful attempt to solve the eternal dichotomy between the curators/scholars/ scientists and the interpreters of their disciplines, the educators. It succeeded in building a bridge between research, conservation, and education to a wide audience, in particular by literally showing what curators and conservators do. The Centre found its residence in the former Midland Railway Goods Offices, a substantial Grade II listed Victorian warehouse, that turned out to be a suitable building. A Display Gallery was incorporated into the ground floor of the centre. Most laboratories, studios for paper conservation, picture conservation, and restoration, ceramics, metals and textiles were on the first and second floor. In the Display Gallery visitors got a fascinating insight into what conservators do and why they do it. The great variety of disciplines required by the diversity of objects/materials and so the need for many – 35! – conservators, each with a completely different training, was made clear. ‘Caught in time’ was one of the displays that showed how materials could be affected by all kinds of agents of decay: light, pollution, humidity, people and so on.Via so-called ‘Acoustiguides’, 18 conservators gave information about the processes and principles of conservation; how they rescued objects, and how their work is a mixture of good judgement, scientific knowledge and experience combined with practical skills, an artistic eye, and a sense of history. The Display Gallery really functioned like a museum. All 35 conservators spent 5 per cent of their time on public services: demonstrations, lectures, Live-Video-Link sessions (in 1997!) showing conservators at work answering questions from the audience, tours behind the scenes

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through the studios and laboratories, for all walks of life and ages. All conservators got media training! Andrew Durham, the Keeper of Conservation, set an example for all his staff (he is now director of Artlab Australia in Adelaide). The National Conservation Centre became a lively and dynamic venue, an eye-opener behind the scenes of a museum, for a wide audience including schools, without becoming too technical and scientific. Thanks to the inspiring project management of Jim Forrester, with full support from Richard Foster, the General Director, the National Conservation Centre was opened in October 1996. When the judges of EMYA visited the centre in August 1997, it was in full operation. They observed that what had been achieved was really unique in Europe. (To my regret the Display Gallery was closed in 2010, being a victim of the Global Financial Crisis. The building itself continued to be used for its core function, conservation. The director at the time, David Fleming, described the centre’s closure to the public after 14 years as the result of ‘the harsh reality of government cuts’.) Reference American Association of Museums (1992). Excellence and Equity. Washington DC. American Association of Museums.

IMAGE 14 

 rasnoyarsk Museum Centre, Russia. Photograph: ©Krasnoyarsk Museum Centre & Vladimir K Dmitrienko

14 KRASNOYARSK MUSEUM CENTRE Krasnoyarsk, Russia Council of Europe Museum Prize 1998 J. Patrick Greene

After 1996, when Russia became a member state of the Council of Europe, under the auspices of which the European Museum Forum operated, Russian museums could enter for the European Museum of the Year Awards.Two judges visited the Russian candidates, myself and my colleague on the EMF committee Dr Hermann Schäfer. Museums were enthusiastic about taking part in such an international activity and many candidates entered in 1997 for the 1998 awards. Hermann and I met up in Moscow and visited several museums together. We then split up, Hermann visiting candidates in western Russia and I set off for Siberia, accompanied by Misha Gnedovsky who was later involved in the Open Society organisation and whose companionship I greatly valued. The first candidate I visited was in Salekhard, the Yamalo-Nenetz Museum, in a bleak town north of the Arctic Circle to which many people were exiled during the Soviet era. The museum was a beacon of light in the dreary town, with fascinating exhibitions about the rich culture of the indigenous reindeerherding people of northern Siberia, the story of how Siberia was absorbed into the Czarist Empire, and a moving display about the gulags, notably the attempt to build a railway across northern Siberia that was one of Stalin’s megalomaniac (and ultimately unsuccessful) schemes. The next museum that I visited was the Children’s Museum at Noyabrsk. This oil town could not be reached by road so people had to fly in and out, such was its isolation.The museum was inspirational, with the young staff creating excellent programmes for the children, such as one in which they had to imagine their grandmothers’ lives when they were young. It was a long journey to Krasnoyarsk, involving a flight and an overnight ride on the trans-Siberian Railway. The city was so far east that I had initially failed to find it on the map – it shares a longitude with Bangladesh. I had already witnessed a flowering of imagination and experimentation in the post-soviet

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Russian Federation in the two Siberian museums that I had visited, but my expectations of the Museum Centre in Krasnoyarsk were not great – it was, after all, in the building of what had been the Lenin Museum. My first impressions were not encouraging. As a western European, I found the bleak brown concrete structure had all the charm of the ‘coffin’ that encased the reactors at Chernobyl. Even though it had opened as recently as 1987, the structure was already showing signs of decay; I found the interior architecture pompous and aggressive. The team operating the Museum Centre had taken this unpromising place and transformed it in remarkable ways, as I wrote in my judge’s report, ‘taking a huge self-important building and, since the changes of 1991, subverting it. The Centre has developed as a kind of laboratory of museum practice’.‘The building has become humanised and popular – more than four hundred thousand visitors in a remote city of one million people, in the centre of Asia four time zones from Moscow.’ I remarked that ‘an interesting decision has been to preserve part of the Lenin exhibition (unlike any of the other sixteen Lenin Museums) – a valuable document from the Soviet era illustrating the saint-like status accorded to Lenin’. I had witnessed this phenomenon in a visit to Moscow in the years of Glasnost, with Young Pioneers placing carnations before the statues of Lenin in the museum near Red Square where, to my astonishment, I encountered Lenin’s Rolls-Royce limousine. The Krasnoyarsk Museum Centre took a radical approach mixing the work of curators, artists, designers and architects, involving groups from the community such as veterans from the Afghan and Chechen conflicts.They had created a moving exhibit of electric candles alongside the pictures and names of the many combatants from the region who had died as soldiers in these wars.The pictures of Soviet leaders were placed in ammunition boxes to symbolise what the veterans perceived as their guilt for the wars in Chechnya. Another exhibition was staged by the Memorial Association, the organisation that was researching the hidden history of the gulags, providing information for families whose members had disappeared.The temporary exhibition during my visit was Siberian Spirits, about the beliefs of the people in the region, interpreted using the excellent archaeological collections of collaborating museums as well as installations by artists. The quality of the exhibition design was breath-taking. The Museum Centre was supported by funds from the Regional Administration supplemented by admission fees and income from shops that rented part of the building, from hires of the three hundred-seat auditorium and from an excellent restaurant. The director of the Museum Centre, Mikhail Shoubsky and Ana Glinska, head of programmes, explained the use of the word ‘centre’. The museum had not set out to develop collections, but rather to act as a focus for museums throughout the region with a strong emphasis on collaboration. This was a basis for an extremely ambitious programme, the First International Museum Biennale.With five thousand square metres of exhibition

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space, the Museum Centre was well-placed to host the event. Entrants were allocated an area in which they could create an exhibition. The intention was that ten museums would participate, but 40 entered in 1995, and a similar number were anticipated in September 1997, including some from abroad. My report summarised my view: The Museum Centre is one big bright idea – the transformation of an embarrassment into a real asset for the region, with an international awareness. This has encouraged the formation of the Open Museum Association. Already there are thirty members, and a quarterly newsletter. This is a very special place that puts traditional museums to shame with its enterprise and imagination, despite financial constraints and a perceived remoteness that Krasnoyarsk (rightly) refuses to accept – it is central in terms of the vast Russian Federation.

The EMYA Jury recommended the Krasnoyarsk Museum Centre to the Council of Europe for their Museum Prize for 1998. Both the jury and the Council were impressed by the adventurous way in which finance was found from a mixture of private and public sources, by the first-class management, by a radically new approach to presentation and interpretation, with a close involvement of community groups, and by the decision not to create a collecting museum, but to encourage other museums within a very large country to participate in collaborative exhibitions and events. Writing this account of the Museum Centre 21 years later, I wondered how much of the maverick spirit survives today. I came across a Moscow Times article describing how artists had erected a giant cardboard statue of Lenin outside the museum, modelled in the style of the Minecraft computer game, that had incurred the wrath of the local branch of the Communist Party. The leader described it as ‘blasphemy’. And this is a quote from Tripadvisor: ‘Humanity is all through this place. Go with an open mind, time to imagine and share the spirit of Southern Siberia.’ I needn’t have worried!

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Guggenheim Museum, Spain. Photograph: ©FMGB, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2020

15 GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM Bilbao, Spain European Museum of the Year 2000 Maritta Pitkänen

Herald of the new millennium I was on my way to Bilbao on 8 September 1999 to evaluate something exceptionally progressive, conceived on an entirely new scale and capable of upsetting a lot of the established, familiar and respected criteria and virtues applied in the world of museums. I was about to make the acquaintance of a worldfamous extension of the Guggenheim Art Museum network. I was entering the nucleus of a phenomenon that had already given rise to considerable international debate concerning museums. Would it live up to expectations? A gigantic futuristic sculpture As we arrived in Bilbao by car, our view of the street suddenly broadened out into a whole cityscape, and we saw in front of us a vast and utterly astonishing building, the soaring creation of the architects Frank O. Gehry & Associates, an expressionistic sculpture in motion, reflecting a variety of metallic colours as the sun gradually set. The River Nervión, which flowed past the building, seemed to symbolise the stream of creative people and ideas that had given birth to the museum and from which it had gathered its strength. The beauty of the museum building’s external architecture immediately filled me with joy and delight. This 24,000 m2 construction in titanium resembled in part an asymmetrical flower, and in part an elegantly shaped ship’s hull; as it changed colour continuously with variations in the light it, quite literally, took my breath away. Down a flight of steps past Jeff Koons’ amusing Puppy statue covered in fresh flowers, we passed naturally into the central concourse – a sharp contrast to the steps that usually rise up steeply at the entrance to an old-style museum. The height of this space was that of an ancient cathedral, and it lifted my thoughts

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to higher spheres as it filled me with amazement. The main concourse is full of light, even though the walls and floor are of traditional concrete. The exhibition rooms are on three levels and form independent entities, which makes every visit a journey of discovery on account of the irregular shape of the building. The labyrinthine steel construction by Richard Serra in the basement was evidently intended to be a permanent feature and serves well to recall the city’s industrial past and its associations with iron. It is this past that is now being built upon, as if forging a present and a future out of that same elemental metal. The temporary exhibition on the history of Chinese art made it quite clear that the museum intended to perform a global function. From the idea to the opening The museum’s background distinguished it from anything that had gone before. It had simultaneously local, regional, national, European and global dimensions: a multiplicity of scales hitherto unknown in the museum world, with extensive social and economic ambitions. In the 1980s, the administration of the Basque Country decided to renew the economy, steering it away from declining shipbuilding, steel and manufacturing towards service industries, including tourism, culture and the arts. The overall city development plan included increasing the capacity of the port of Bilbao, building a congress centre and concert hall, a new metro, a new air terminal for the city and a footbridge over the River Nervión. A museum of contemporary art was to be the flagship of this policy. In 1991, the Basque authorities contacted the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; by the end of the year, a declaration of intent had been signed and an international architectural competition inaugurated with the aim of obtaining a startlingly beautiful museum building. When the museum opened in 1997 the total costs of the project had been 100 million dollars, of which the building accounted for 65 million. Within the first year, however, it had attracted 1.36 million visits, and a couple of years later the museum could be said to have paid for itself. The museum has, in fact, done much to improve both Bilbao’s and Spain’s national economy ever since its inauguration, having a substantial influence on tourism in the region, as the demand for accommodation, transportation and other auxiliary services expanded many times over. The building performs an iconic function and is a notable landmark. It is an immediately recognisable symbol of the city of Bilbao and a splendid continuation of the network of Guggenheim museums. Collections and collecting The carefully documented collections available in the Guggenheim’s New York headquarters, from which individual works or whole exhibitions can

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be transferred to Bilbao, were the starting point for new acquisitions for the museum. These are intended to cover specific themes and works of outstanding significance by leading contemporary artists. There is an emphasis on social and historical phenomena, and care is also taken to acquire examples of Spanish and Basque art. Targeted visitor services In the words of the director, Juan Antonio Vidarte, it is the public who justify the existence of the museum. Descriptions of the exhibits were available for visitors in all the rooms in an impressive variety of languages: Basque, Catalan, Spanish, English, Portuguese and French, and also sign language for the deaf. Audio guide services have been provided in addition to the traditional written information. A star is born An art museum is expected not only to open the eyes of its visitors to the joy of art, history and their own personal world but also to broaden these perspectives continually. A museum also bears a certain responsibility for the kind of world that it opens up to its visitors. In this case it is the global world of contemporary art with all its stimulating content. The content that this museum has to offer more than satisfies the expectations aroused by the external form of its building, and the art contained in the changing exhibitions brings its visitors into contact with things that they might otherwise never experience. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is an institution that became a benchmark for international comparisons, and a future model for carefully planned museum projects linked with social and economic ambitions. It also represents a strong bond that holds a whole community and region together and has raised the city to the forefront of the global cultural scene – at the same time as it has boosted respect for the importance of museums the world over. Note Thanks to Malcolm Hicks for translating the text from Finnish.

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In Flanders Fields Museum, Belgium. Photograph: ©In Flanders Fields Museum

16 IN FLANDERS FIELDS MUSEUM Ypres, Belgium Council of Europe Museum Prize 2000 J. Patrick Greene

On 4 August 1914, Germany broke the agreement with Britain and France to protect Belgium’s neutrality. Troops crossed the border in a military invasion designed to outflank the French defensive lines, with the aim of quickly advancing towards Paris. The German army, held up by the flooding of the polders, surrounded Ypres on three sides, bombarding it throughout much of the war.To counter-attack, British, French and Allied forces made costly advances from the Ypres Salient into the German lines on the surrounding hills.The quiet, beautiful medieval town was soon a shattered ruin, its inhabitants becoming casualties or evacuees seeking safety elsewhere in Belgium, The Netherlands, France and Britain. In the centre of the city was the enormous Wool Hall, a Gothic-style medieval building that was largely reduced to rubble. When the war came to an end in 1918, the decision was taken to rebuild the city as accurately as possible, replicating the design that existed before the conflict.The Wool Hall was chosen as the very appropriate location for the In Flanders Fields Museum, which was a candidate in the 2000 European Museum of the Year Awards. The decision to create the museum emerged from the 1995 policy document for Ypres, which agreed that as a ‘peace town’, it should more actively promote its historic past and world-wide reputation in relation to the First World War. To accomplish this objective, the Remembrance Museum Ypres Salient had to be redeveloped. In Flanders Fields Museum was the result. The approach was described in the museum’s application by the president of its board: What has not changed (since the First World War) is the essence of war. The suffering that war causes. The mud of Flanders and the cold of Kosovo are perfectly comparable from that point of view. Therefore, there is only one stand that can be taken towards the museum: the human approach.

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The museum’s method is to illustrate the themes of the story with tableaux, objects, documents, sound, film and sculpture in a way that touches the emotions. It also provides an authoritative account of the military campaigns that involved soldiers from many countries, and the destruction of the town itself. At the entrance is a large block of stone inscribed with the names of other ‘martyr cities’ such as Sarajevo, Nagasaki and Warsaw. As they enter the museum, each visitor is provided with an identity of an actual individual who was involved in the war – a resident of the city, a combatant, in my case a nurse – whose story I was able to follow through touch screens at various key points. The exhibition content is almost overwhelming, especially the sounds of a shell whistling overhead and exploding. It felt as though all the senses were being assaulted at the same time – but who are we to complain if we think of what the combatants faced? I noted that visitors were totally absorbed, following the story with rapt attention. I was moved by the very effective designs of the displays on the gas attack at Passchendaele, the Christmas truce of 1914, the flooding of the polders, the evacuation of Ypres, etc. I admired the inclusion of all sides in the conflict and the use of four languages, Flemish, French, German and English. Quotes are in the language of the individual with a hand-list of translations available for visitors. The museum’s name was inspired by the poem by the Canadian Major John McCrae: ‘In Flanders Fields the poppies blow, between the crosses, row on row’. The strength of the museum lies in the fact that it is based on outstanding historical research and strong leadership. The exhibition designers were Event Communications, a UK-based company with an impressive track record of imaginative museum design. It was clear that the collaboration had worked very well, under the guidance of a not-for-profit foundation established for the purpose. There were just 25 employees in total, including front-of-house staff, to run this museum and four other museums in the town. I admired the museum’s Documentation Centre, which was managed in a highly professional manner. The collections were being added to all the time, as were the stories of individuals caught up in the war, often as a result of approaches by descendants. These, in turn, were being utilised to add to the range of people that visitors could encounter in the form of identities to be followed through the exhibition. Lots of objects were included in the displays – fragments of destroyed historic buildings, a flame thrower, gas masks, barbed wire, aerial photographs, grave markers, a prosthetic leg, and a hand loom to explain the city’s prosperity in the Middle Ages. A notable gift was the signal flag used on the grave of Major William Redmond (brother of the Irish nationalist leader) that had come into the possession of the Geldof family in Dublin (the Geldorfs were a Flemish family). Bob Geldof offered the flag to the museum. In Flanders Fields Museum was given the 2000 Council of Europe Museum Prize. The citation read: ‘In its portrayal of the war as a major European tragedy, instead of a stage for the performance of heroic deeds, it achieves new heights

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for a museum of this type.’ ‘Visiting the Museum is an emotional experience’ said members of the jury. ‘Although the subject is a war fought in the early years of the twentieth century, it is made relevant to the general desire for peace by the town’s reconstruction and references to current conflicts elsewhere in the world.' In Flanders Fields Museum has had a major impact, globally, on the way in which museums tackle the topic of human conflict. That can be seen in the many exhibitions that were staged during the centenary of the First World War. It influenced me in the way in which Museums Victoria responded to the challenge of providing insights into the human cost of the war as it impacted Australians. Visitors could follow eight people from the state of Victoria in an emotionally charged exhibition Love and Sorrow. So, two decades after the museum entered for the European Museum of the Year Awards, is it still a museum of influence? Judging by the website, it is still innovating. I was impressed by the range of tours to battlefield sites offered by the museum. I particularly enjoyed a video blog in which one of the curators talked about ‘false news’ and showed, using the museum’s archive, the way in which false news was created on both sides of the First World War in order to demonise their enemies.

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Chester Beatty Library, Ireland. Photograph: ©The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin

17 CHESTER BEATTY LIBRARY Dublin, Ireland European Museum of the Year Award 2002 Wim van der Weiden

In Dublin, three museological extremes applied for the EMYA in 2002: the Guinness Storehouse, the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Chester Beatty Library. These are the three museums that the jurors had to digest in two days: the spectacular visitor experience of brewing in the Guinness Storehouse, the new galleries of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in the seventeenth-century Royal Hospital Kilmainham and the new premises of the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin Castle. This visit to Dublin showed how diverse the world of museums was – and still is – and how jurors of EMYA have to adjust their opinions to the kind of institution they visit. The Guinness Storehouse effortlessly met the standards of similar experiences elsewhere in Europe. The Irish Museum of Modern Art was equal to most contemporary museums of the same size. But the Chester Beatty Library was really outstanding. The jurors did not hesitate in nominating the institution for the Main Award. Why? ‘Public quality’ has always been the main criterion in the process of judging a museum for the Awards of EMYA. That holds good for the Chester Beatty Library as well. But, thanks to the distinguished collector Sir Alfred Chester Beatty (1875–1968), in this case the collection is more than just one of the factors for giving the institution an award. Born in New York, he became a very successful mining engineer and entrepreneur who opened up many areas to mining enterprises in America, Africa and Europe. The wealth that flowed from his success – he was a millionaire by the age of 30 – allowed him to become, among other things, a great benefactor to hospitals and medical research. During the Second World War, as an admirer of Winston Churchill, he made an important contribution to the Allied war effort. At the same time, he followed his collector’s instincts, starting with minerals and stamps, books and manuscripts. By the time of his death his collection included exceptional Islamic, East Asian and biblical manuscripts,

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outstanding Western printed books, Old Master prints and South-East Asian, Tibetan, Ethiopian and Armenian holdings of great importance. All together there are 57 different languages present in the collections, which capture the richness of human creative and religious expression from 2700 bce to the present day. Chester Beatty left America for Britain in 1911, becoming a naturalised British subject in 1933, but, disillusioned after the defeat of Churchill in the 1945 elections, he decided to set up his Library in Dublin. It opened in 1953 to researchers and later, in a limited way, to the public. According to his will the Library was to be owned and governed by a charitable trust, with revenue funding provided by the state. He stipulated that a new gallery should be built. This opened in 1973, but the new premises did not meet the standards for modern display and conservation and, being located in the suburbs, were not convenient for visitors. For these reasons the Board of Trustees seized the opportunity to obtain the Clock Tower Building in the garden of Dublin Castle, a prime city centre location. This eighteenth-century building was completely restored. The main exhibitions are situated in a purpose-built new building. A glass-roofed entrance connects the old building with the new block. The result is very satisfying: a perfect balance between old and new. Visitors approach the Library via a large inner court of Dublin Castle, consisting of footpaths and a lawn inset with a design of snaking lines.The entrance hall is light and bright, thanks to the glass roof. The Palestinian restaurant and the shop are situated in the same area. A very charming Japanese style garden is laid out on the roof. The overall atmosphere is very inviting thanks to the variation of spaces. For influence to operate and for change to take place, three things are necessary. First, there must be people of exceptional vision and originality of mind to develop the new ideas. Second, the time and the social climate must be right and, third, there must be the means of transmitting the new thinking. (Hudson 1987, p. 4)

Exactly these three components occurred in the last decade of the twentieth century at the Chester Beatty Library. Its director, Michael Ryan, and his team, together with Celestine Phelan and her co-workers from Event Communications, built up an ideal unit to create a splendid display concept based on the precious collections. The Library became a museum. But it kept its original appellation, because it also remained a research library for scholars from all over the world. The main exhibition was dedicated to three of the great religions of the world: Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. This is reflected in the colours used in the exhibition rooms: purple, green and red. A serene atmosphere was created by illuminating the objects by no more than forty lux, by using hardly any sounds and limiting the multimedia to those that really were an addition

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to the understanding of the theme concerned, for instance the importance of the pilgrimage to Mecca for Muslims.The other permanent exhibition ‘Artistic Traditions’ was a vehicle to explain all kinds of materials and techniques like bindings and covers, metal and stone, paper and parchment, papyrus and palm leaf, textiles, woodwork and lacquer, all using a selection of objects from the extensive collection. In short, there was no comparison between the redisplay of the collections and the exhibitions in the former library building. The Library has experienced a revolution. A successful revolution: in the first 11 months the Library attracted 70,000 visits. (The former premises received 5,000 visits annually.) Visitors were offered all kinds of support: free public tours, lectures, children’s workshops, family events like a Japanese tea ceremony, etc., partly with the help of 30 trained volunteers. The staff showed very strong feelings for ‘Public quality’ as well.The elegant, evocative displays promoted the appreciation and understanding of world cultures, and reached out to the culturally diverse communities in Ireland, which have seen their share of strife over the years. Reference Hudson, K. (1987). Museums of Influence. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.

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 he British Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum, United Kingdom. Photograph: ©Marlen T Mouliou

18 THE BRITISH GALLERIES AT THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM London, United Kingdom European Museum of the Year Award 2003 Massimo Negri

In November 2001, the Victoria and Albert Museum opened their new British Galleries to the public, and on the same day free admission was introduced. The new galleries tell the story of British design from the sixteenth to the twentieth century and display the best of historic British furniture, textile, ceramics, jewellery, silver, dress and a selection of paintings and sculptures. If I am not wrong that very year EMYA also had as candidates in London Tate Britain and the Imperial War Museum – so three flagships of the British museums fleet. Consequently, the assessment was particularly difficult considering the prestige of all these institutions. But the British Galleries were revealed to be, without doubt, the most exciting and innovative case. EMYA’s philosophy of innovation had two pillars: Kenneth Hudson’s idea of the ‘public quality’ of museums, and innovative practices in display techniques. The importance of the collection was not influential in itself, although indirectly it was inevitable that the uniqueness or the beauty of pieces on show were a plus. However, over the years, many museums with formidable collections did not attract a positive response from the judges; on the contrary, the jury rewarded museums showing a fresh approach to the interpretation of collections, which were frequently not that ‘special’. Thus, the British Galleries were, in some sense, an exception in the EMYA context, representing a case of a big museum feeling the imperative of a renovation in its visual language, although it had no problem in attracting large numbers of visitors or maintaining a high reputation. Wilk’s and Humphrey’s 2004 book on Creating the British Galleries at the V&A: A Study in Museology is still a reference, not only for learning about that specific project, but also for the methodology followed by the project team. This was coordinated by Gwyn Miles over a five-year period, mostly under the directorship of Alan Borg, an art

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historian who had been director of the Imperial War Museum; when I visited the museum as a jury member, Mark Jones had taken over. The British Galleries became almost immediately a classic of contemporary museology. Its 15 galleries covered an area of about three thousand square metres and about three thousand pieces of decorative and fine art spanning four centuries were exhibited and reinterpreted. Among the masterpieces on display we find the iconic cast iron outdoor chair by Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781– 1841), and the Hob-grate in cast iron by Robert Adam (1728–1792), everyday objects that represent the definition of new aesthetic canons, anticipating a key process of modernity, in which objects conceived of as status symbols are mass produced for sale to all levels of consumers. The iconic ‘Great Bed of Ware’ by Hans Vredeman de Vries (1527–1604), mentioned by Shakespeare in Twelfth Night, is also a magnet for visitors.This list shows the variety of materials with all the consequent problems of conservation and options in the ways of exhibiting. The traditional presentation in a museum of applied art frequently runs the risk of creating the atmosphere of a store or an auction room just the day before the sale, rather than the environment of a public museum. The British Galleries went far beyond that. Their collections were reinterpreted as documents of design history, and of the history of social and anthropological behaviour in Britain encompassing a period of radical changes, including the explosion of the extra-European discoveries and the Industrial Revolution. Dinah Casson, who designed the layout, compared the British Galleries to a banquet: If you eat everything at once you will become seriously ill. I like to make an analogy between museums and the act of eating because we eat small bits: a small sorbet, something heavier and then a crispy bite. Museums should be so. For their part, the curators of the Victoria and Albert Museum write about their interpretative choices: some art museums get nervous when dealing with interpretative instruments, fearing that they interfere with the ‘pure’ experience and thus create separate spaces for interpretation.

She felt that the layout should provide interpretation ‘in the moment and in the physical point where the curiosity of the visitor emerges’, on the grounds that it ‘is not reasonable’ to ask visitors to travel ‘a certain distance to find answers to the questions that the exhibition route has aroused’ (Casson, 2004, p. 74). From a conceptual point of view, the galleries had four themes, which are explicit in the texts at the beginning of each room: Style /Who led taste? / Fashionable living /What was new? There is clearly a search for a balance between art history and social history, according to a clear, simple and stimulating articulation, both for the most experienced visitor and for the novice. It is equally clear that the capacity for communication is the result of hard work, of a complete mastery of the subject and the necessary authority of the communicator. Even though the British Galleries are as far as possible from a

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pedantic museum (which is always a risk for prestigious and learned institutions), the written word continues to play an important role, while avoiding the negative effect of a textbook on the walls. In this regard, great attention had been devoted to drafting the different texts, in which a precise hierarchy has been established, following the guidelines of a manual that remains a reference point for anyone who attempts the very difficult art of writing descriptive and/ or narrative texts for an exhibition. The digital dimension of the Victoria and Albert Museum is also exemplary for the intensity, completeness and effectiveness of the multimedia stations that accompany the visitor. The database of the collection, also available on the website, offers endless possibilities of discovery before and after the visit, and the web television of the museum is an excellent example of edutainment. Between cultural chronicle and critical analysis of artistic phenomena, the interactive map allows a comprehensive virtual visit, free and easy. Historical-critical texts are always signed, taking cultural responsibility in a way rarely practised by major museums. The engaging, attractive and, at that time, unexpected, Discovery Areas offer opportunities for hands-on experiences which are always intelligent and without that childish flavour that this kind of installation frequently brings with them. The Period Rooms, with the reassembling of complete sets of decorations and furniture, are very accurate and rigorous from the philological point of view. There was an experimental element in the whole project, which has proved later to be very fruitful for the renovation of other wings of the Victoria and Albert Museum. A similar approach in term of interpretive design has guided the renewal of the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries in 2009, which means that the experiment has succeeded. It is rare to find on the European scene such a big name in the museum family that has the courage to radically revise its way of being. References Casson, D. (2004). Designing the Galleries. 37–48, in C. Wilk & N. Humphrey, Creating the British Galleries at the V&A: A Study in Museology. London.Victoria and Albert Museum. Wilk, C. and Humphrey, N. (2004). Creating the British Galleries at the V&A: A Study in Museology. London.Victoria and Albert Museum.

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 ARQ Archaeological Museum of Alicante, Spain. Photograph: ©MARQ Museo Arqueológico de M Alicante

19 MARQ ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF ALICANTE Alicante, Spain European Museum of the Year Award 2004 Massimo Negri

In 2017, when MARQ celebrated the 85th anniversary of its establishment, it also marked 15 years from the opening of its new venue in a former hospital, and 15 years since winning the European Museum of the Year Award. Since then, I have visited the museum several times and I still consider it a turning point in museological and museographical thinking as far as archaeological museums are concerned. But to understand better the meaning of the renovation of MARQ (at its inception called the Provincial Archaeological Museum of Alicante), it is appropriate to position it in the context of what was called in Spanish ‘el cambio’, that is the relatively smooth transition from Franco’s dictatorship to the reestablishment of the monarchy and a democratic constitution, between 1975 and 1979. The following years witnessed a real cultural explosion in all of Spain, the blooming of a new generation of writers, actors, movie directors, architects and artists. At the political and administrative levels, a new class of leaders and officers came into power, anxious to redefine the profile of Spain, especially in the European context. This happened also in architecture and museums, a renaissance marked by the opening of the Guggenheim Bilbao in 1997. Behind this, there was an important political and administrative development based on the large degree of autonomy given to the 17 Generalitat or regions – the expression of a long tradition of strong regional identity, with its roots in the various kingdoms, duchies and other entities of the Medieval period. It also built on the Foundations set up during the Franco period to restore, maintain and develop local cultural heritage and on the dedicated work of local prominent personalities. The new MARQ project in the late 1990s showed from the beginning the results of this new spirit in public administration. The initiative was taken by the Provincial Government (Diputacion) supported by the Valencia Region;

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the restoration of the building for re-adaptive use was carried out by the local departments of public works and architecture, and a Foundation was established to ensure maximum flexibility and efficiency in the management of the project and of the future new museum. This was the context. Boris Micka was selected for the exhibition design, and a team of archaeologists and curators developed the concept and the storyline. The plan of the building – a hospital from the 1920s – is quite rigid and looks like a sort of double-edged comb with four teeth on each side and a central space connecting these wings.The two heads at the ends play the roles respectively of the entrance hall and staircases cylinder as well as the home of the library. In some sense, this rigidity (which is always seen as a disadvantage) has helped the museum to adopt a clear functional plan and to simplify the museological concept. To formulate it briefly: the MARQ presents a series of galleries (the teeth of the comb) in chronological order: Prehistory, Iberian Culture, Roman Culture, Middle Age, Modern and contemporary times. One of the galleries is dedicated to temporary exhibitions, which benefit from cooperation and exchanges with some of the world’s leading museums, including the British Museum. The central ’spine’ of the plan is devoted to the work of the archaeologists in three emblematic fields: field archaeology, urban archaeology and underwater archaeology. This means the work of MARQ in excavating and creating access to important sites, including the Neolithic cave paintings of the Sanctuary of Pla de Petracos, Roman Alicante (Lucentum) and Illeta dels Banyets (which has strata from the Bronze age to the Roman period), is visible to the visiting public. The museum is notable for its good use of space. The refurbished building offers all the facilities needed by a contemporary museum, with excellent storage and laboratories, a conference room, a temporary exhibition space, a good restaurant and a shop, which probably is the only weak point in the whole complex, being located in a small independent structure at the entrance, not profiting from the usual strategic positioning of a shopping opportunity at the exit. Nevertheless, all the facilities work very well, in an integrated way. Conceptually speaking there are three main overarching themes. First, is the presentation not only of the collection but also of the work of the archaeologists, which is the origin of the museum. This is relevant as visitors rarely have a clear idea of the relationship between the exhibits on show and the different contexts in which archaeologists work. Second, is the time span, which also includes modern times and industrial archaeology, offering a stimulating and complete view of the methods of archaeology and the significance of archaeological finds for understanding human history. And third, is the integration of the inside and the outside of the museum, between the exhibitions and the open-air sites. Moving closer to the exhibition philosophy, we can identify two strategies. In the galleries there is an analytical approach, balanced at the emotional and informative level by large-format projections, which give an easily understood sense

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of context.The second involves the reconstructions of large-scale archaeological sites with interactive devices and some tactile experiences. The general style of the presentation is visually rich, with a suggestive use of lighting. The palette of colours makes a generous use of red, black, gold, that is to say strong colours, which instead of suffocating the visual relationship between the visitors and the exhibit, reinforce the latter’s ‘presence’ in the exhibition space. The overall impression is of an integrated approach to the interpretative process and all the stages of interior design development. There is the necessary portion of magic, a didactic side, which is not childish or too minimalist, with a good balance between tradition and the contemporary all along the exhibition path. Materials in all spaces are of the highest quality and solidity: marble, wood, crystals and the lighting apparatus. The multimedia devices are maintained to ensure they always work. As a result, the visit is pleasant, not tiring, and meets the needs of all kinds of visitors: those still wearing their swimming costumes and planning a night at the disco, families with children and specialists, appropriate for a town like Alicante, which is an important touristic destination. The role of a museum like MARQ is to improve the quality of, and add value to, the standard holiday. MARQ is also realistic: it is closed on Sunday afternoons when the competition from the beaches is too strong, but is open till 10.00 p.m. on weekdays, when it can offer an ‘evening out’. Not to be underestimated in terms of customer satisfaction is the fact that the MARQ Foundation has adopted UNI and ISO certifications and other Quality Management programmes, competing in this respect with the Guggenheim Bilbao, one of the few museums in Europe to adopt the EFQM Model. Kenneth Hudson used to define a good museum as having ‘a package of qualities’ – quality in conservation and research, quality in the exhibition and in general in communication, quality in the physical and intellectual experience offered to visitors, quality in good use of resources. MARQ in Alicante is exactly that: an excellent package of qualities.

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 a Piscine, André Diligent Art and Industrial Museum, France. Photograph: ©Roubaix – La Piscine. L Architectes: A. Baert, 1932 – J.P. Philippon, 2001 and 2018

20 LA PISCINE, ANDRÉ DILIGENT ART AND INDUSTRIAL MUSEUM Roubaix, France Special Commendation 2004 Wim van der Weiden

Museums in monuments, such as town halls, churches, castles, indoor markets and mansions or the former houses of rich people became quite common all over Europe in the twentieth century. But more recently, since the late 1970s, factories and other types of former industrial premises have become a new category of building to house museums, one that continues to grow in number. Kenneth Hudson, being one of the fathers of industrial archaeology, recognised the potential of industrial heritage as a source of information and as a factor of reflection about identity in contemporary society. That is why he applauded museums about (former) industries as well as the use of former factories as homes for all kinds of museums, even art museums! And it is certainly not by chance that the first winner of EMYA in 1977 was the Ironbridge Gorge Museum, Telford, England. La Piscine (The Swimming Pool) in Roubaix is a very special example of the conversion of an industrial construction into a museum of art and industry. Roubaix is situated in the north of France in the Lille metropolitan area. It is a historically mono-industrial city, which had grown rapidly in the nineteenth century because of its textile industries. In the early years of the twentieth century, it was one of the world’s textile capitals, abounding with factories and warehouses, which fell into decline in the middle of the 1970s. The textile industry attracted labourers from all over Europe. Densely populated neighbourhoods arose quickly, without any sanitary provision.That is why the first socialist city council decided to build a swimming pool with heated water. Not a simple one, but a glorious one devoted to body, hygiene and sports: a hygiene sanctuary in answer to the difficult lives of the working-class population. At the time of its opening I noted a description from a now lost 2001 copy of British Airways’ High Life magazine: ‘Toilers from the neighbouring facility

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(textile factories) would come to frolic while their working-class wives luxuriated at the hands of the on-site hairdresser and manicurist.’ It was to become a space for social interaction, where the bosses’ offspring met the children of the workers, a meeting place for all social classes in a working textile town, named in honour of André Diligent, Mayor of Roubaix from 1983 to 1994. Albert Baert, an architect from Lille, was commissioned to design the swimming pool. He took a Cistercian abbey as a model, interpreted in a neo-Byzantine style with a modern version of a cloistered garden. Instead of a monastic chapel he made a big cathedral-like nave for the pool, illuminated by stained glass windows that symbolise the rising and setting sun. In the wings of the building bathtubs as ‘monk cells’ were divided over two floors.The cafeteria was the ‘refectory of the swimmers’. More modern functions included a hairdressing salon, steam baths and a launderette. Lots of art-deco elements are to be admired in the architecture and decorative details from the balustrades to the clothes hangers. The ‘most beautiful swimming pool of France’ opened in 1932. For safety reasons, it closed down in 1985. In 1994 Jean-Paul Philippon, one of the architects of Musée d’Orsay, was commissioned to renovate the swimming pool and to convert it into a ‘museum of solidarity’. The building is a tribute to Jules Guesde, who was a member of the Council of Roubaix from 1893 to 1898 (he characterised Roubaix as ‘the holy town of socialism’) and the strongest advocate for its preservation. Philippon preserved the original structure of the site, while integrating the special necessities for the conservation and exhibition of the collections. The main part – still full of water – was narrowed down to a strip to make room for sculptures on both sides. This ‘canal’ could be covered by a stage floor for all sorts of receptions, performances, fashion shows etc. Tiled shower cabins and changing rooms were transformed into showcases for fragile fabrics, ceramics and so on. The museum shop is housed in the spectacular filter-rooms and the fine art collection is shown in chronological and thematic order in the former bathtub wings. Behind the façade of the former textile factory, in a large new hall, are the entrance area and temporary exhibitions gallery. The result of the renovation/adaptation/extension is striking: a really unique museum came into being in 2001. For many people the building itself is the main reason to pay a visit to La Piscine. Bruno Gaudichon had been the curator/director from the very beginning. He selected La Piscine as the ideal place for the rebirth of the municipal museum that was closed in 1940 and not reopened after the liberation. He developed a museum concept based on the diversity and variety of the rich collections: applied arts and art, from textiles to furniture, from paintings to sculptures. The fabric collection is exceptional, ranging from Coptic Egypt to contemporary examples. The collection documents several aspects of the textile tradition of the town, making use of applied art and art objects as the Swimming Pool itself

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does. In the end, every museum is a museum of social history, Kenneth Hudson always stated. This museum proves it! The collections have been made accessible to people from all walks of life, by creating a multi-sensual circuit through the exhibitions. Materials to touch, sounds of splashing water, even whiffs of chlorine, have been put in to complete the experience of the visit. Workshops, school programmes, courses for adults, events and guided tours are all offered in a very professional way. La Piscine has all the requisites to be an example for derelict formerly industrial towns, which are investing in culture to raise their profile. It helps to revitalise the town and its citizens, re-establishing a local sense of self-esteem after a long period of decay. Recently, the museum has been closed for two years for renovation and extension works. It reopened in 2018, showing a continued commitment to renewal. La Piscine has become one of the most lauded cultural attractions in the north of France.

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Netherlands Open-Air Museum, The Netherlands. Photograph: ©Adrian Sommeling

21 NETHERLANDS OPEN-AIR MUSEUM Arnhem, The Netherlands European Museum of the Year Award 2005 Mikhail Gnedovsky

There is a photograph in my archive taken at the European Museum of the Year Award Ceremony in Brussels in 2005. It captured Jan Vaessen, director of the Dutch Open-Air Museum, holding the EMYA trophy, Mother and Child – Egg Form by Henry Moore, which he had just received. He is looking at it in absolute f­ascination: it is clear he had not expected to receive the award. In the background, there is a smiling face of Adelheid Ponsioen, the museum’s deputy director, and two more people: Ann Nicholls, who had been EMYA administrator since its establishment in 1977, and the late Queen Fabiola of Belgium, the EMYA patron. Approximately one year before the ceremony, when I visited the Open-Air Museum as an EMYA judge, Jan Vaessen told me how he came, as a young director, to the museum in the early 1990s, to find the institution in the process of transition from a state-run museum to a foundation. Back then, the museum’s employees protested against such a conversion, marching with slogans along the lines of ‘Don’t kill the museum’ – but they did not stop the reform. It took about 15 years for the museum and its director to turn the new status into an advantage and proceed from the initial deep frustration caused by the changes to winning the European Museum of the Year Award. The Netherlands Open-Air Museum was established in Arnhem in 1912 and opened to the public in 1918. It followed the model of the Swedish Skansen, the first museum of this type, which had opened in 1891. Such museums were created in many European countries at that time, especially in northern Europe where traditions of wooden building dominated. Open-air museums were arranged as a collection of traditional buildings preserved in situ or, more often, transferred from other places, and interpreted from the ethnological point of

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view, as manifestations of a peasant lifestyle. In other words, these museums were trying to preserve traditional landscapes – mainly rural but sometimes also urban, vanishing under the impact of industrial development – often with a nostalgic tinge reflecting a romanticised interpretation of the disappearing vernacular ways of life. From the very start, these museums’ methodology involved showing not only buildings but also household utensils, clothes and tools, used in everyday life, as well as preserving the traditional crafts and re-enacting rituals and rites for or with the visitors. Thus, open-air museums had been engaged in preserving intangible heritage long before this notion was introduced by UNESCO. The Netherlands Open-Air Museum in Arnhem was no exception. The Skansen model, on which the Arnhem museum was based, has proved to be a continuing influence. One hundred years after its introduction, it was still dominating the open-air museums sector. The overall appearance and style of those museums remained very much the same, representing an idyll where happy peasants in their holiday clothes were engaged in crafts or dancing and singing all day long. If there was any conflict there, it was not represented in the display. Rather, it was inherent in the visitor’s knowledge that this rustic lost paradise contrasted sharply with the urban industrial culture that replaced it. However, with the arrival of the twenty-first century, it became difficult to ignore the changes that occurred in the countryside during the previous 100 years. The twentieth century may have bypassed the open-air museums but it has certainly intruded upon the life of real villages. The Open-Air Museum in Arnhem took a pioneering role in bridging this gap and venturing into the realm of recent – and more realistic and honest – history. As it is usually the case in open-air museums, the new strategy manifested itself in expanding the territory and adding new buildings to the display. One such project was installing the Moluccan Barracks from Lage Mierde in the museum and telling a controversial story about the Moluccans. In 1951, after Indonesia became independent, 12,500 native people from the Moluccan Islands, soldiers of the Royal Netherlands Indonesian Army (KNIL) and their families, were brought to Holland with a promise that they would be going back, which never happened. For six years, they stayed in specially built military settlements, in barracks, after which they were allowed to merge with the Dutch society. One of the remaining barracks was moved to the museum in 2003. In collaboration with the Dutch Moluccan community, its interior was restored, and an exhibition arranged on the history of the Dutch–Moluccan relationships, from 1602 to the present day, telling the dramatic story of how the Moluccans came to Holland and how they survived in the totally foreign environment. The project presented, with absolute clarity, the story, which – although not completely erased from the country’s recent history – was, nevertheless, far from being common knowledge in The Netherlands.

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Another project offering an insight into recent history was developed in Hoogmade Farm, an early seventeenth-century farm relocated to the museum in 2004. The interior of one of the buildings reflected its most recent use as a house of an urban professional (a lawyer) and his family. Every detail of the interior was preserved as it was in 2000, when the family had moved out of the house. This included the sounds and the former owners’ comments recorded on video. The project proved to be very popular among visitors although the picture of the life of the family, recreated in the house, was very much that of contemporary Dutch life.The majority of the visitors saw their lives as in a mirror there. Or they compared their lives with this household, finding, perhaps, class differences. One could be curious about how visitors’ perception of this exhibit has been changing in the past 20 years. Not only did the museum add new buildings, it also re-interpreted some of the old ones. For example, the Beerta Farm, a prosperous household from the Groningen Region, which previously had been used for showing everyday life of a farmer, was reinvented in 2003 as a place where one of the most dramatic events in the Dutch social history – the strike of farm workers against mechanisation in 1929 – was interpreted. In a huge barn, a one-man-theatreand-multimedia-performance dedicated to these events was presented in collaboration with a theatre company.Thus, twentieth-century social drama, which took place in the rural milieu, has replaced both the economic narrative of the farmer’s everyday life and romanticised image of the vernacular paradise. While adding diversity to the picture of Dutch everyday life, the museum has also tried to provide a framework for an integrated vision of national history and culture. Back in 2000, it was done in HollandRama – a hi-tech installation at the entrance to the museum, inspired by nineteenth-century panoramas and powered by sophisticated engineering mechanisms. It is remarkable that today all its effects, and much more, can be produced with the help of digital technology. The same role – providing holistic interpretation of national history – is played in the museum by the Canon of Dutch History, which mixes digital media with authentic museum objects.

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German Emigration Centre, Germany. Photograph: ©Marlen Mouliou

22 GERMAN EMIGRATION CENTRE Bremerhaven, Germany European Museum of the Year Award 2007 Ann Nicholls

The nineteenth century saw a boom in emigration from Germany with almost 90 percent of emigrants choosing the Americas as their destination. Working people sought a better life following the failed German revolution of 1848, land seizures and unemployment. Antisemitic violence escalated, leading to a growth in numbers of those fleeing persecution. The replacement of sailing ships by steamships made the journey across the Atlantic more feasible and Bremerhaven became a major port of departure, dealing with 7.2 million emigrants during this period. The German Emigration Centre, which opened in 2005, is on the historic site from which emigrants departed, and the nearby lighthouse can be seen in many old photographs. Its purpose-built building of curved concrete and horizontal larch-wood ribs was designed by Andreas Heller, one wing representing a handkerchief waved by those left on the quayside, a symbol of farewell and of hope. The aim of the museum from the beginning was not only to mark the history of emigration but to follow the story through. While documenting the history of German and Eastern European emigrants and refugees between 1830 and 1974 and illustrating the conditions on the ocean crossing in various vessels, the displays also show the arrival of the emigrants and refugees in the United States and follow their lives and that of their descendants to the present day. After its opening the museum was run by a private–public partnership. Visiting the museum in 2006 as a judge, I joined the visitors drawn into the experiences and emotions of the emigrant. From a waiting room the journey began by walking through a large departure area past figures on the quayside and up the gangplank. On arrival I was given an electronic boarding pass or iCard programmed with the complete biography of an emigrant, with which information can be accessed at various points in the exhibition. Visitors were able to see three different ships and various episodes of a journey in third class,

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which is how most poor people travelled. But the journey was also punctuated by peepholes that let you look in to the first class section, an unattainable world of sumptuous banquets and Viennese waltzes. At various points in the exhibition sounds were used to great effect, ranging from that of waves in the toilets and in the ‘Promised Land’ section, where there is also specially commissioned music, and the fast heartbeat heard on arrival at Ellis Island, which reflected the apprehension and uncertainty of the emigrants. This was particularly evocative and gave me some small inkling of the state of mind of those leaving their own country for ever and venturing into the unknown. In the Arrivals Hall in New York, small screens built into a bulkhead showed black and white films of American life and a period-style cinema screened interviews with modern descendants of Bremerhaven emigrants. There was a wealth of documentation in the Gallery of the Seven Million with information from the passenger lists on all the emigrants from the port. In a substantial modern research section, visitors could access international databases and search current New York telephone directories for family surnames. This facility brought the subject into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and will continue to be relevant. From the beginning the average length of stay in the museum was four hours. This led to the managed admission of people in groups to avoid overcrowding, which might otherwise compromise the visitor experience. Education was always a priority for the museum, with programmes for younger children explaining provisions for the journey, the tying of knots and what medications were available on board. Older children discussed the difference between going on holiday and emigrating, why emigration took place and how people adapted to a new country. Adults benefitted from specialised tours as well as taking full advantage of the facility for tracing emigrant ancestors.The museum placed considerable emphasis on finding native speakers as guides for groups of different nationalities. One example of this was a lady who started work as a cleaner but later took tours in Turkish. The museum continues to appeal for passports, photographs, clothing, suitcase and letters to enhance the overall picture of how ordinary people coped in extraordinary circumstances. State-of-the-art technology has been used judiciously throughout the exhibition. More recently, the museum has built its own recording studio, Studio Migration, a place of communication and mediation in which museum visitors, experts and contemporary witnesses meet and exchange ideas on current migration debates and interactive media stations based entirely on the motto ‘Transform fear into c­ uriosity’. It is important to recognise that the museum activities bring the story into the present day. Emigration is a subject of increasing relevance in the twenty-first century, with the ever-greater mobility of working people and the desperate plight of many who are seeking a better

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future. This is a museum that started with the far-sighted concept of continuing the story of emigration from the nineteenth century to the present day but which at the time probably had little idea that its work would become even more relevant. At the time of my visit, I had no hesitation whatsoever in recommending it for the main prize. Since its success in becoming the 2007 European Museum of the Year, the addition in 2012 of a new section adjoining the existing building by a bridge brings a focus on the history of Germany as a country of immigration. This expansion of its remit to include refugees and immigrants to Germany, again with authentic life stories, is of special relevance to the present situation in the country. The museum says that ‘by relating emigration and immigration in the past and present, the German Emigration Centre has become the first migration museum in Germany’.

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Museum of Portimão, Portugal. Photograph: ©Museu de Portimão

23 MUSEUM OF PORTIMÃO Portimão, Portugal Council of Europe Museum Prize 2010 Jouetta van der Ploeg

Treasures by the river Sited in the old ‘La Rose’ and ‘Feu Hermanos’ fish cannery factory, the Museum of Portimão is at the southern end of the grand riverside promenade, overlooking the small harbour and the ruined São Francisco monastery. The museum is funded and managed by the Municipality of Portimão, which responded to community efforts led by a teacher called José Gameiro to create a museum before all physical evidence of the canning industry had been swept away. At the core of many cities, museums are places that contribute to both physical and social design. Their renovation (or construction) can stimulate urban regeneration and bring new life into areas losing their social dynamism and traditional economic base (OECD/ICOM, 2018, p. 21).The Museum of Portimão has successfully increased awareness of local cultural identity in a region very much dominated by mass tourism and has preserved a key feature of the industrial/historical heritage of the Portimão area. It has become a place where social capital is built among people and communities in an area where many traditional places of meeting have disappeared. Testimonies of local history The architectural style of the building is very contemporary, while elements of the old factory structure have been kept intact.The original façade, the ‘beheading’ room, the plat bands (or mouldings) and tiles, the steel beams, the chimney and the cistern are some of its well-preserved elements, testimonies of a local way of life.

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From Stone Age to sardines The museum’s main exhibition, ‘Portimão, Territory and Identity’, offers a historic overview of the journey of local communities, their interaction with the environment, from prehistory until today, highlighting their most significant activities in economic, cultural and social life. There are three available routes: Origin and Fate of a Community; Industrial Life and the Challenges of the Sea; and Deep Waters. The first invites visitors to travel through the most important periods in local history. This route shows how, from the Neolithic until today, the successive inhabitants have profited from the favourable geographical location of the site, in the Portuguese pre-Mediterranean Algarve region, between two rivers and on the seashore. The second route offers a visit into the past, into Portimão’s canning industry. It showcases the life of the workers and how they were called into work by the factory sirens, the arrival and preparation of the fish for canning, the production of the cans in the lithography and finally the promotion of Portimão’s sardines, anchovies, mackerel, and tuna fish to the rest of the world. Stage three of the museum, dedicated to Deep Waters, lets you walk alongside the ancient cistern that fed the steam boilers, the brine tanks and the factory gutters, and discover the Ocean Revival project, an underwater artificial reef comprising four Portuguese Navy warships shipwrecked three miles of the coast of Portimão. City pride The Museum of Portimão is one of the ten most visited museums in Portugal, thanks to its 80,000 annual visits. It has contributed to rebuilding the city’s pride, which had become detached from its fishing roots and was in danger of being overwhelmed by tourism in the second half of the twentieth century. To quote the founding director of the museum José Gameiro: ‘The museum appears as an important cultural asset and as a historical counterpoint against some fast, superficial and erosive lifestyle of mass tourism in a region that represents the continuity of some southern European tourism models’ (Gameiro 2015, p. 36). A permanent observer and central booster The museum’s mission is that of being a permanent observer of Portimão’s cultural and natural heritage and social landscape. It is involved in most of the cultural activities in the town. The impressive documentation centre has extensive information on Portimão and has become the main reference resource in the community. The museum functions as a central booster of its territory’s development and sustainability; an intergenerational bridge for inclusiveness and citizenship. The museum team is – amongst others – responsible for managing the prehistoric Megalithic Monuments of Alcalar, located nine kilometres from the centre of Portimão, and this implies the developing of initiatives allowing visitors a better

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approach to the prehistoric contexts through strong pedagogical activity, based on hands-on activities and experimental archaeology. The Museum of Portimão opened in 2008, the year of the global financial crisis, when the Portuguese economy was badly affected and public funding for museums was drastically reduced. Against this background, the Municipality kept faith with the museum, which became a key player in creating cross-sector partnerships to enable the whole community to cooperate to achieve shared goals. It works together with six stakeholders in its region: cruise tourism, tour operators, hotels, travel agencies, rent-a-car and taxis. Together with these networks, more than 35 partnerships and cooperation agreements have been established. The museum, through its partnerships and its holistic view of the role of heritage, sees tourism as a positive sum game, in which all sides benefit from working together. Knocks on the door As a response to the need for long-term research on intangible heritage, the museum has developed the project ‘The Museum Knocks on the Door of our Cultural Heritage’ within the rural and maritime communities, collecting testimonies and life stories. It thereby actively and successfully promotes face-toface exchanges, disseminates trust and contributes to raising the level of local social capital within and between communities. A most welcoming museum The museum won the Council of Europe Museum Prize in 2010, as a good model for addressing a Europe-wide problem – how to increase awareness of cultural identity in a region dominated by mass tourism. The museum continues to enhance its European engagement, providing a base for the European Museum Forum and the European Museum of the Year Award, housing its administrative office as well as its archive. The Municipality has also sponsored a new award, the Portimão Museum Prize. The main quality the prize celebrates is a general, friendly atmosphere of welcome, so that all visitors, no matter what their background, feel they belong in the museum. Every aspect of the museum – its human qualities and every aspect of its physical environment – should contribute to the feeling of welcome, as do events and activities in and around the museum – a vision fully realised in the Museum of Portimão. References Gameiro, J. (2015). The Golden Triangle of the Museums: Territory, Heritage and Society. Available at: http://network.icom.museum/fileadmin/user_upload/minisites/icr/pdf/Icom_Workshop_ Regional_Museums_as_Generators_of_Development_2015_Baksi_Museum.pdf (Accessed: 4 April 2020). OECD/ICOM (2018).Culture and Local Development:Maximizing the Impact.Available at:https:// icom.museum/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/OECD-ICOM-GUIDE-MUSEUMSAND-CITIES.pdf (Accessed: 24 July 2019).

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Museum of Broken Relationships, Croatia, ©Mare Milin

24 MUSEUM OF BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS Zagreb, Croatia Kenneth Hudson Award 2011 Sirje Helme

A museum of feelings What makes a museum significant, if it does not have a systematised and catalogued collection of works, and what’s more, there is no intention of creating such a collection? If the home for the museum is a building not created by a famous architect, and it employs just two people? I entered such a museum in October 2010, having carefully read the vision of its creators ahead of time. It seemed to be overly optimistic, perhaps too emotional, a bit abstract, and I thought that such an idea could only be a one-off, a project-based undertaking. I went in with several questions about the functioning of the museum, and I left with new questions, questions, I am convinced, that are crucial for the development of the entire field.There was a lot to discuss with Olinka Vištic, one of the museum founders and one of the two employees, when we walked around the small (300 m2) premises. The idea of the museum is simple and relies on an essential human feeling – love. And suffering for love. Millions of books have been written on that theme, plus unforgettable music and art, but there has never been a museum. The Museum of Broken Relationships is thus unique. I was keen to see and hear how the museum was created that focuses on the deepest human feelings and not on artworks expressing them. A museum about emotions and memories? A collection about non-material feelings? We discussed the reasons why such a museum was necessary in the first place, whether it would happen just once or a few times, but not become a museum? Although the museum rented rooms in the Baroque Kulmer Palace in Zagreb, the container with exhibition materials had already travelled to various countries and continents, including Ljubljana, Berlin, Kilkenny, Singapore, San Francisco, Cape Town and Istanbul. Today’s homepage shows that the

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geographical reach has widened even more. I shall tackle three themes, which seemed important then and still do today, prompted by the Museum of Broken Relationships: the individual’s story in history; the museum itself as a syncretic total artwork; the meaning of a museum collection. A museum of people’s stories The Museum of Broken Relationships is a museum of people’s stories. For decades, historians have been interested in individual lives as well as big historical discourses, and museum programmes also increasingly emphasise story-based methods. The concept of this museum radically combines these developments, with no boundaries regulating the interaction. This museum would not exist without people’s fascination and cooperation. More precisely: the museum depends on the public and the material brought to the museum. People’s stories become the museum’s story; one does not exist without the other. Although all museums aim to achieve better contact with the public, this one certainly stands in the more radical side in this. It invites people to bring items and stories, memories of those dear to them, but who no longer are with them. An item acquires a totally new meaning through a story – soft toys from the first encounter, favourite cups for morning coffee, small souvenirs bought on joint journeys.The selection has no pretty/ugly, valuable/non-valuable scale; the only principle being the emotional significance. A tiny bit of matter is suddenly made big thanks to the tales told. The reasons people wish to bring the emotional moments in their lives to a museum vary: sharing one’s feelings, adding value to them by giving them away, or symbolically distancing oneself from memories, de-personalising one’s story into a joint story. Is this too simple a concept? No, because what is crucial is what the museum founders have done with all that material, what is the real substance of their message. It is not a curious glance into private lives; the display solutions avoid cheap curiosity, as viewers are able to perceive a wider human essence that transcends anything personal. People’s stories, their love and tragedy have been partners of big history. However, behaviour and traditions in various cultures differ a great deal, including how and why feelings are expressed, if at all. In order to express people’s emotional sphere and strength, a museum must be excellently designed, arranged and presenting a positive message. This museum certainly has impressive material through which the variation in people’s emotional and social behaviour across regions and cultures can be examined. Its collections offer a basis for research. Through stories about love and loss the museum underlines wider historical, social and cultural themes.

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The museum as a work of art The museum itself as a syncretic artwork is primarily expressed via the superb design of the space, which makes the three components of the museum – the items, the brief description of each object and its owner’s story, and the viewer – into one whole. The way the design supported the content, the display of the material as if it constituted valuable artworks, was a true masterpiece. There was suddenly enough space in the small museum, for the viewers, items and stories. The museum was not founded for presenting sad stories, quite the opposite; it somehow managed to instil positivity. It was not relief and a smile through tears, but understanding and perceiving the human dimension, valuing what may easily get lost in the turmoil of history. The whole museum, including a small coffee corner, had been turned into one emotionally precious space. The nature of museum collections The museum collections, their character and future were topics that inspired wider discussions. The collecting policy could not have been simpler and more liberal. The creators relied on a totally heretical principle – the museum does not collect anything, instead items are brought there, i.e. a collection emerges spontaneously.The tortuous role of acquisition committees and a constant sense of responsibility – after all, we write our history through the collections – were abandoned. Through highly diverse objects, it is always possible to write the history of everyday items or design, but the visual form was not in the least important, an item was just a physical sign of very personal stories. The longstanding assumption that a museum is its collection, was seriously questioned. But not totally. Because instead of material riches, non-material value is being collected, which cannot be admired visually, but instead perceived on the scale of human essence. What is the future of such an approach? The Museum of Broken Relationships is a lab testing various expressions and boundaries of the museum concept. Not all museums must or indeed can do the same – grand old collections should not lose their splendour. Still, the museum’s somewhat extreme approach has created a platform for topics that do not pass by the more academic side of the museum world either. Presenting in practice some essential questions of the role of museums in society, it is potentially a museum Kenneth Hudson would have written about in a new edition of his famous book Museums of Influence (1987). Reference Hudson, K. (1987). Museums of Influence. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.

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Tampere 1918 – Museum of the Finnish Civil War, Finland. ©Saana Säilynoja/Vapriikki Photo Archives

25 TAMPERE 1918 – MUSEUM OF THE FINNISH CIVIL WAR Tampere, Finland Special Commendation 2011 Mikhail Gnedovsky

Vapriikki Museum Centre in Tampere, Finland, is widely known as an example of the successful conversion of a huge former factory building into a space accommodating multiple museum projects. Tampere 1918 was one such undertaking. It developed in partnership with the University of Tampere as a research project, which resulted in a book and a temporary exhibition, which was inaugurated in 2008. However, considering the exhibition’s importance for the city community and Finnish society, as well as its success with the public, it was decided to make it a permanent museum of the Finnish Civil War. The museum’s storyline followed the events of the winter and spring of 1918, when the city of Tampere had become the main battlefield between the Red and White Guards, a conflict in which not only Finns, but also Germans, Russians and Swedes were involved. One hundred thousand people participated as soldiers in the opposing armies. The hostilities took the lives of thousands of people on both sides, as well as among the civilian population. The confrontation of the Reds and Whites has been an issue in Finnish society ever since, as nearly every family has a story of relatives affiliated with one party or the other. There were plenty of original objects in the exhibition, and quite dramatic ones, reflecting the tragic events in Tampere. Back in 1918, while the conflict was still going on, Gabriel Engberg, curator of the Häme Museum Society, went out into the streets from day to day, and collected items left after the battle. There were also a number of professional photographers taking pictures of the hostilities, so a detailed visual account of the 1918 events was preserved for posterity. Also, as the events affected the majority of the population, many documents and artefacts relating to it could be found, later, in family archives. The hostilities continued in the city for four months, and when they were over Gabriel Engberg wanted to make an exhibition showing the legacy of the Civil War right away. However, this project was cancelled because the memory of the

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events was too vivid and the subject too controversial and traumatic. It took 90 years for Finnish society to be ready to deal with this issue. The project was preceded by thorough archive research into the history of 1918. It included studying the collection, identifying the people who took part in the events, and collecting and analysing memoirs. In some cases, the results of the research were quite sensational and were reflected in the exhibition. Thus, a boy aged approximately ten years old who can be clearly seen in a photograph taken on the streets of Tampere in 1918 was found and interviewed; the account of the events given by this already very old man could be seen on a monitor next to the original photograph. The exhibition unfolded in three parts. In the Prologue, the background of the Red and White movements was explained. In the main part, the account of the events of 1918 was given in a succession of themes: The War Breaks out, Battles on the Front Line, Red Tampere, Urban Combat and the End of War. In the Epilogue, issues of the memory of the war were dealt with from the point of view of contemporary Finnish society. How does it feel to be inside a war? This was the main question visitors were supposed to be asking themselves throughout the exhibition. Each object had a story to tell and the whole scenario was designed to make visitors see the events through the eyes of different people. Visitors became a part of the drama – as observers but also as would-be participants in the events. For instance, looking at a photo of an execution by firing squad, the visitors then found themselves actually facing a firing squad, with ten real guns aimed at them. At another point, they could sit in an interrogation room listening to questions fired at them – all taken from real interrogation records. A photograph of a small boy’s dead body lying on a street, a sleigh loaded with corpses – it could be disputable whether such material should be included in the exhibition. However, it definitely challenged the imagination and political identity that a visitor might have. And they easily devalued the propaganda films made by both the Reds and Whites, which were shown nearby. There were many faces of young soldiers, nearly kids, belonging to both armies, in the exhibition. The first thing they did after conscription was to pose for a photograph showing them in their new uniform.The next thing that happened to the majority of them was that they were killed in action. Many original objects collected on the street after the battles were placed in under-the-floor showcases – in the same way in-situ archaeological objects are exhibited in some museums. It was possible to step on the glass panels, although many visitors avoided doing this. The main part of the exhibition telling the story of the war reflected the layout of the city and was designed in black and white. At the same time, the background colours went from snow-white to light grey to dark grey to show the arrival of spring towards the end of the war. Bright colours appeared only in the Epilogue section where attitudes of different generations towards the Civil War were expressed, culminating in materials

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on the reconciliation festivities organised by the museum in the city. Sound played an important part in the exhibition. There were several points – ‘sound showers’ – where one could listen to stories, of a young soldier, of a nurse in a field hospital – taken from memoirs and narrated by contemporary actors. Every half hour a gun was fired in one part of the exhibition and the sound of the shell was heard flying to another part where it ‘destroyed’ a building – the remains of a real ruin, not a fake one, as there was no need for theatre stage sets with such a rich collection. The exhibition was quite explicit in its message to the public: the Finnish Civil War was insanity, a mistake, a useless waste of human lives on both sides. There were no winners in the war, no peace was achieved and no ultimate truth has ever been found in the wake of these events. The nation was divided into two camps for many generations as a result of the war. ‘This was a traumatic experience for the whole nation’, said one of the project curators,‘and we didn’t want to take sides, neither did we want to deny the complexity of the events – we wanted to make visitors accept and respect the tragic moment in history and reconcile with the past’. It was brave on the part of the museum team to go straight to the heart of one of the most difficult issues in their nation’s history. The museum took bold action aimed at healing the historic trauma, which has, for 90 years, influenced the nation’s political life and cast a shadow on Finnish society.

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Madinat al-Zahra Museum, Spain, ©M. Pijuan. Conjunto Arqueológico Madinat al-Zahra

26 MADINAT AL-ZAHRA MUSEUM Cordoba, Spain European Museum of the Year Award 2012 Jette Sandahl

Where power was on display The Madinat al-Zahra was built for the Caliph of al-Andalus as a twin-city to Cordoba, and functioned as his residence, as the capital and centre for administration for Muslim al-Andalus for a short period, 940–1010. It was, in every way, magnificent. Wars left it plundered and abandoned and gradually the city disappeared underground. It is now one of the most important archaeological Islamic sites and the most extensive in Western Europe. In 2018 it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Madinat al-Zahra Museum encompasses the archaeological site and a new museum building that functions as a research centre and conservation facility for restoring the finds and that provides generous galleries for exhibiting important artefacts from the site. Excavations of the Madinat started early in the twentieth century and have been ongoing since then. The site is now partially reconstructed, enough to convey an understanding of the grand complex of beautiful buildings and provide a sense of the colossal work that went into creating a thoroughly planned city – ‘where power was on display’, as the museum says – for 10,000–20,000 people, complete with an infrastructure of roads, bridges and aqueducts. The archaeological site is the protagonist, the museum a supporting character Museologically, the museum has attained a unique unity and balance in claiming that ‘the archaeological site is the protagonist, the museum a supporting character’. Only an estimated ten per cent of the Madinat al-Zahra site is now excavated.The philosophy behind the excavations is to go as slowly as is needed, and

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abstain from excavating what cannot be fully taken care of. There are enough riches for several lifetimes to come, and the point is to recover, understand, restore, interpret and communicate everything meticulously.The museum manages to give a comprehensive understanding of the organic processes of the journey of the finds from the excavation through documentation and conservation to exhibition galleries or back to the site as part of the reconstructions. The new museum was many years in the planning, and it feels like years of museological analysis and planning have paid off. As a visitor and as a colleague one senses the passionate commitment to get everything absolutely right. Nothing in this museum seems left to chance. Everything, down to each frame in a multimedia production, is researched in minute detail. The museum had provided a very detailed brief for the architectural competition, based on a careful analysis and considerations of its functions and future needs, and the building by Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano is an absolute masterpiece, which was awarded the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2010. In order not to rival the site for attention, the building is positioned half-underground; concealed, but to be discovered and explored. Subtly referencing and reinterpreting Islamic architecture, in the use of light, of inner courtyards, of materials, it ingeniously and convincingly provides the museum with what seem perfect conditions of natural light and temperature control in a fairly extreme climate. The processes of documentation and conservation are foregrounded by giving audiences visual access to storage areas and conservation workshops, and the exhibition galleries feel like a logical end point of a long and fulfilling journey of exploration, of following the objects from the site, through the storerooms and workshops to public display – except for those archaeological finds, mostly building elements, that return to the site after restoration. The collections are magnificent as is the site of their origin, containing significant objects of stone, glass, pottery, ceramics and metal. Interestingly, as if drawn home, individual objects and building elements begin to find their way back to the Madinat al-Zahra, from where they went, locally, regionally, and as far as in Northern Africa, when the site began to be looted in the medieval period. The galleries are spacious, generously proportioned, cool and airy. The atmosphere is calm, inviting in depth study and pleasure. Collections are beautifully presented, in a minimalistic exhibition design highlighting individual objects. There is an undramatic balance between the objects, the interpretation and a fully integrated use of interactive digital information systems. It is an intellectual and aesthetic celebration. Our past is plural The Madinat al-Zahra gives important testimony to the fact that ‘our past is plural’, as the museum says. There is a plural, a mixed, heritage from a period when cultural and religious coexistence was possible. Customs moved easily

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across borders, and universal influences passed through this Western Islamic civilization in al-Andalus to and from Europe, to and from the world. Islamic history has not always been easily integrated in the Cordoba context. The site and the museum are ‘filling that gap in history’ now, functioning as ‘a visual memory for the Islamic past’. As a very high-quality museum of Islamic culture and art, the museum attracts – aside from huge numbers of visitors in general – Muslims who will travel from near and afar to see this exceptional heritage site. While the museum sees itself as ‘beyond political and ideological questions’ as such and presents itself simply as an ‘archaeological ensemble’, it is also very aware of its social responsibility, and its important position as a bridge between different cultures in the contemporary landscape of Spain and Europe. Respect for and protection of the patrimonies The richness and depth of the unity of site and museum are reflected in a broad variety of programmes, all informed by basic values of respect for and protection of the heritage. There are educational programmes for schools, but also for university level teaching. There are working camps where people train in archaeology and restoration, but also programmes for children, of ‘becoming an archaeologist’, working a simulated excavation. Thematic Saturday programmes focus on an issue, water, for instance. Renowned specialists and university people come in to give talks. In a recurring photo competition, contemporary photographers interpret the site. The museum is embedded in ‘a web of agreements’, in research networks involving universities and research councils. Epitomising museums at their best The Madinat al-Zahra Museum is one of those museums where one gets drawn in and feels a kinship with people of a totally other time, geography and culture. The ensemble, the whole set-up, is stunning. Rarely does one see a museum that manages to get so many things right at the same time. It epitomises the unities that are the unique characteristic of museums at their best. There is a unity between the archaeological site and the museum, between the functional and the aesthetic, between traditional back-of-house functions of research, excavation, conservation, and traditional front-of-house functions of exhibitions, education and events. There is an awareness of the potential political importance of the site, handled with respectful scientific professionalism. In all aspects of its work this museum talks with restraint and humility, while presenting itself with great authority and understated elegance.

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Glasnevin Cemetery Museum, Ireland. Photograph: ©Glasnevin Cemetery Museum

27 GLASNEVIN CEMETERY MUSEUM Dublin, Ireland Kenneth Hudson Award 2012 Jouetta van der Ploeg

Daniel O’Connell and Glasnevin Cemetery This museum lies within the walls of Glasnevin Cemetery. It offers a fascinating view of Ireland’s Necropolis and the many renowned, but also unknown, figures who are buried in the cemetery and who shaped the country’s history. Glasnevin Cemetery is Ireland’s largest cemetery and was first opened by Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847) in 1832. This Irish statesman created modern Irish nationalism and was seen as the most successful champion of democracy in the Europe of his day. It was established as a place where people of ‘all religions and no religions’ could bury their dead with dignity. The museum very much operates within this spirit of democracy and support for human rights. It functions as an active working memory bank and aims to celebrate life and to bring history to life, through the stories of so many people buried in the cemetery. A living place A visit to Glasnevin Cemetery Museum brings the stories of many of the most important figures in Irish history to life. The museum and cemetery are interrelated. When visiting the Necropolis and seeing lots of beautifully restored gravestones, one is drawn into the museum to explore and discover more of the amazing human narratives of those they commemorate. The Glasnevin Trust very daringly organises different public tours through the cemetery on different topics, for example: ­feminism, Home Rule, political agitation, Irish-Ireland (with its specific cultural and historical context of community identities based on religious affiliations), while the cemetery is still a working one. This means that Glasnevin, although a city of the dead, is full of life.

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Modest and beautiful The museum building is modest in scale and beautifully designed. It is built on the outskirts of the cemetery and on the first floor one has a grand view over the burial grounds. It is a modern building, contrasting nicely with the grand gravestones and monuments of the Victorian graveyard. A true historian’s heaven The Glasnevin Trust has kept meticulous records of every single burial. Those archives are used to tell hundreds of stories of famous as well as common people, by means of film, facsimile and touch screen technology. All the records in the archive are digitised. One can search on profession, cause of death, location of death, and so forth and thereby follow the course of history. A true heaven for every historian, genealogist and the simply curious. The City of the Dead The story begins in the basement with the City of the Dead Gallery. Visitors pass screens displaying the names of every single person interred in the cemetery: a powerful reminder of the passage of time and of one’s own mortality and brief role in history. Personal mementos embedded in the Reflections Wall only add to this experience. Another section highlights aspects of the story of the cemetery, from the first burial (a small child) to grave-digging and bodysnatching.Touch screens are built into the tops of gravestones where visitors can explore the subjects in more detail. A fine item is a facsimile of an Archive register allowing visitors to turn pages of one of the unique records as well as ‘pullout-books’ that present a variety of short historical facts about cemeteries and traditions around death. An interactive Religions Wall allows visitors to investigate the multicultural customs and beliefs of people buried in the cemetery. A place of reconciliation Glasnevin Cemetery has been a sacred site for public commemorations since it opened its gates in 1832. Commemorations in recent years have been dominated by the Decade of Centenaries, remembering events that used to define and divide the different traditions in Ireland; from the passing of the Home Rule Bill in 1912, through the First World War 1914–1918, the 1916 Easter Rising of Irish nationalists against British Rule, the partition of Ireland, the civil war and on to the Irish Free State joining the League of Nations in 1923. This period of reflection has enabled the Irish people to learn about and understand their shared history. As John Green, Chairman of Glasnevin trust said: ‘true reconciliation is based on understanding; reconciliation is a journey where both the head and the heart must travel in the same direction and ultimately end up

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in the same place’ (Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, 2018). Glasnevin as a centre of reconciliation is actively promoted by the Trust through engagement with schools, clubs and various bodies throughout the Island. The Glasnevin Trust is working with Marino Institute and Trinity College on an ambitious programme to assist in the teaching of contentious history. It has built relationships with the Irish, Northern Irish, UK, French and US governments, with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, with the National Graves Association and many others. Welcoming Glasnevin Cemetery Museum is very welcoming, both in staff, building and site. It is a lively place, which is remarkable in a cemetery museum. It is a museum about stories and people. It uses advanced digital media as well as more traditional evocative exhibition design techniques. While visiting, one feels part of history. European dimension Daniel O’Connell and his legacy are a key feature of the museum. His support for human rights was global, and he has been an inspiration for many world leaders, including Barack Obama, Charles de Gaulle and Mohandas Gandhi. His methods of non-violent resistance and protest continue to be a model everywhere. By means of Irish stories, the museum tells the story of Europe as well; stories about communism, capitalism, union leaders, the Spanish flu, the First and Second World War. The museum has continued to show the courage and innovation for which it was given the Kenneth Hudson Award in 2012. In 2016, it unveiled a memorial to mark the hundredth anniversary of the Easter Rising against British rule. Controversially, this lists, in chronological order, not just nationalist heroes, but the names of all those who were killed between 1916 and the end of the Irish Civil War in 1923, whether they were British military, Irish nationalists, police or civilians. Reference Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht (2018). Minister Madigan to represent Government at official State Armistice Day Centenary Commemoration, Glasnevin Cemetery, Sunday 11 November 2018. Available at: www.chg.gov.ie/minister-madiganto-represent-government-at-official-state-armistice-day-centenary-commemoration-glasnevin-cemetery-sunday-11-november-2018/ (Accessed: 1 August 2019).

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 he Archaeological Museum of Ioannina, Greece. Photograph: ©Ephorate of Antiquities of Ioannina/ T Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports/Archaeological Receipts Fund

28 ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM IOANINNA Ioannina, Greece Candidate 2012 Michael Ryan

Ioannina is a small city in north-western Greece in a region that was part of the ancient territory of Epirus. It is the chief town of its region and a popular resort by a large lake on the shore of which the city developed. It has a university and other educational bodies. It also has a wealth of traditional buildings and one noteworthy part of the town is an area devoted to the craft of the silversmith. The collections of the Archaeological Museum of Ioannina reflect the Hellenistic origins of Ioannina and the development of the area from remote prehistoric to recent times. The Roman influence is well-represented in the displays. It was a city of importance in Byzantine times, followed by a period of Ottoman rule that continued into the nineteenth century. Ioannina had a reputation for high culture in the Byzantine period and was one of the principal centres of the modern Greek Enlightenment. In the surrounding district, there are many Palaeolithic sites that have attracted international interest. The region also boasts numerous Bronze and Iron Age settlements and burials. The Hellenistic settlement is well-attested archaeologically and the region has significant monuments of the period. Epirus gave the world Pyrrhus, an ambitious monarch and soldier who, while campaigning in Sicily in the third century bc, won a battle at enormous cost in lives. Its memory lives on in the phrase a ‘Pyrrhic victory’. The Archaeological Museum of Ioannina is housed in a modernist building overlooking a pleasant park. It is an elegant listed building designed by Ares

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Konstantinidis, full of light and well adapted to modern exhibition design. The building, as its name implies, preserves a large collection of artefactual material from the region – extending in date from the Palaeolithic to early modern times, represented by collections illustrating agricultural practices and traditional crafts and economy. The museum’s galleries were redesigned and collections were newly displayed in a manner which is attractive, informative and protective. A great deal of natural light is admitted into the displays, but the artefacts on exhibition are largely unaffected by the light levels, and the light enhances the displays. Large all-glass walls and a couple of atriums draw more light into the galleries, but it is pleasant and not overpowering. The detail of display furnishing is simple and in many places clever touches show that it is not merely a series of rows of artefacts, but a subtle presentation which draws the visitor in. The showcases are of a very high standard of design and construction. Contextual information is provided and sufficient. This is a gift to the visitor – the displays are traditional in many ways but done with elegance and intellectual clarity that allow the collections to speak for themselves. The design makes relatively little use of video material and, at the time of the visit, there were no computer-interactive programmes, but the visitor probably had no need of them – the exhibition was very clear and simple in the best sense. The displays of artefacts are imposing – excellent collections of Stone Age tools, bronze age weapons and tools, and personal ornaments, some of them from burials, together with Hellenistic objets d’art in metal, ceramics and in stone sculpture. The collection of weapons and parts of armour of this period are noteworthy. The collections of the Roman period are likewise rich with pieces of substantial sculpture including architectural fragments.The museum works with the Ioannina University education department to create activities for schoolchildren, and intercultural/ interfaith programmes are promoted in the museum. The museum has a substantial team of experts of high calibre who act as curators and as sites and monuments surveyors, protectors and excavators of the region’s rich archaeological heritage. It housed what was at the time the twelfth Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities of the Hellenic Ministry of T   ourism and Culture. Behind the scenes there is an excellent library, study areas and first-class storage and recording systems. At the time of my visit in 2011, Greece was still in the throes of the worst of the economic collapse and the redevelopment had luckily been completed and the museum reopened in 2009, when the financial problems were at their worst. The museum is certainly one of influence in its region and city.The quality of design and presentation, the clarity of vision and the commitment to high standards of presenting collections of quality set a high bar for similar regional museums elsewhere in

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Greece and beyond. The establishment of a comprehensive regional museum tracing human activity from c. 50,000 bce to early modern times in conjunction with the regional monuments and archaeological service is very welcome. Site museums are of value but this museum transcends that concept with its thorough representation of the past. The simple elegance of its modern building, and the beauty and charm of its setting, add to the attractiveness of this subtle and profoundly interesting museum.

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Museum of Liverpool, United Kingdom. Photograph: ©Liverpool Museum

29 MUSEUM OF LIVERPOOL Liverpool, United Kingdom Council of Europe Museum Prize 2013 José Gameiro

Opened in 2011, Museum of Liverpool is located in a new futuristic, light filled, landmark building, which complements the maritime architecture of this historic city. The museum commands striking views over the docks, the old city centre and the Mersey estuary, once a key port in the trade of the British Empire and of Europe – and still commercially important. This spectacular museum traces the social, economic and political history of a city that is one of the most socially diverse in Britain and which made its wealth originally from sugar and the associated slave trade, from factories and weaving mills of the industrial revolution, and from financial and commodity markets. The growth, heyday and decay of Liverpool can be understood only in the context of two epic stories: the rise and relative decline of the world’s first industrial nation, and the creation and demise of the most extensive empire the world has ever seen. These two phenomena enabled a small trading port to develop into an astonishingly prosperous global city in just a few decades. Subsequently the same city became one of the poorest in Europe. The museum aims to tell this remarkable story of change and its impact on people and place. Liverpool is now being regenerated and is chiefly known for its cultural and creative industries, its music and its football, but is nevertheless also still an industrial and commercial city of note. A museum about us, with us and for everyone! There is a strong sense of community ownership and pride in this museum, which is evident in the public participation in the development of the exhibitions, workshops, meetings and in the policies of the museum. It engages with its city’s past with passion and professionalism, assuming a symbolic value in the delicate process of community integration, aiming to build a bridge of

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mutual understanding among different cultures, diverse communities and current problems. The museum has explicit published policies on social inclusion and democratisation of access and supports superb educational and outreach programmes to attain its goals.Visitors can interact, explore and understand how Liverpool’s population and its creative, industrial, maritime, social and sporting history have shaped the city. These policies represent the very best practice in museums, serving and uniting communities and promoting social equality. The museum is part of the portfolio of museums and galleries that comprise National Museums Liverpool (National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside). It sees itself as a social history museum of the city, demonstrating Liverpool’s unique contribution to the world, showcasing popular culture, while also tackling social, historical and contemporary issues. It achieves this by using collections and narratives in combination with a twenty-first century interpretation. Its aim is to bring emotion and passion to the visitor’s experience. In fact, the museum’s key purpose is to create a better understanding of the Liverpool city region by generating a greater appreciation of its past and a greater sense of connection with its future, encouraging people to go out and explore the city and its cultural and social environment. Welcome to Museum of Liverpool! From the moment one enters the museum – which is free for all (like all UK national museums) – Museum of Liverpool enfolds the visitor in a very welcoming, friendly and informal atmosphere generated by the supervisory staff and the volunteers, who meet, greet and assist visitors, inviting them in to explore all three floors of the exhibition and its public areas. The organisation and distribution of spaces, from the outside to the inside, is very functional, so that they are easily reached, either from its remarkably spacious central lobby, the elevators or the awesome elliptical staircase.The exterior and the interior are brought into relationship through the amazing city views from two huge panoramic windows. The contemporaneity of the building’s architectural forms and solutions is a noteworthy example of integration within the historic Liverpool docks area – the way its spaces are designed is one of the prime elements responsible for its high level of ‘public quality’. The museum’s permanent exhibitions are divided into four main themes: The Great Port, Global City, People’s Republic, and Wondrous Place, located in four large gallery spaces. On the ground floor, the displays look at the city’s urban and technological evolution, both local and national, against the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution, the expansion of the British Empire and how these changes have impacted the city’s economic development. The upper floor explores Liverpool’s particular and strong identity by examining the social history of the city, from the settlement of the area in Neolithic times to more recent migrations, and the various communities and cultures which have

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contributed to the city’s diversity. The museum also features Little Liverpool, a gallery for children under six; History Detectives, an interactive archaeology and history resource centre; a 180-seat theatre for community and audio-visual performances; and meeting facilities. Museum of Liverpool is designed to be updated – to enable it to respond and seize new opportunities to encourage contemporary reflection, always seeking to motivate its visitors and to arouse their curiosity in an emotional, intelligent, interesting and playful way. Its ‘memory walks’ deserve a special mention, as does the work developed by the ‘House of Memories’, a museum-led dementia awareness programme that offers training and museum-based activities for people affected by dementia. Serving communities, promoting equality, fostering citizenship The great diversity of real-life objects is displayed in a visually appealing atmosphere. Beyond this, interactivity is encouraged through various multimedia techniques, projections and touchscreens, providing visitors with a well realised and surprising reconstruction of everyday life, which includes oral history testimonies, through the use of sound and vision technologies. The relationship with contemporary artists and with the city’s different communities is one of the hallmarks of this museum and is reflected in its long-term and temporary exhibitions. Museum of Liverpool is a delight to visit as a result of community consultation on a large scale, intellectual depth, a highly professional team, and an excellent (often idiosyncratic) creative presentation. For the way it represented the very best policies and practices in museums serving and uniting communities and promoting social equality and citizenship, Museum of Liverpool was awarded the 2013 Council of Europe Museum Prize.

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National Maritime Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Photograph: ©Twycer

30 NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM Amsterdam, The Netherlands Special Commendation 2013 Jahangir Selimkhanov

This is an exemplary museum. Here we can learn about the combination of various museology approaches, creating a cheerful atmosphere, the use of attractive design (it’s a sort of anthology of modern exhibition design solutions) and seamless management. The National Maritime Museum is an old cultural institution with a long history and rich resources: three historical vessels at the jetty outside the museum; stunning collections of everything relating to the sea, both as a natural phenomenon and a focus of human activity, including seafaring, navigation, ship building, sea voyages, sea battles, fishing, harbours and many more themes; and a library with 60,000 books (some of them 500 years old). At the same time, this is a flexible museum open to creativity and innovation in museological interpretation, to exploring storytelling beyond the physical exhibits, to approaching and building trust with various audiences, to creating rich and exciting visitor experiences. It is housed in a seventeenth century building, in a superb location in one of the central districts of Amsterdam. The reconstruction of the museum is a part of a long-term city regeneration strategy, which brings new cultural attractions into and around the historic downtown area, including the Muziekgebouw/ Bimhuis Jazz Centre, the NEMO Science Centre and the Open Library. The museum overlooks the harbour, so that its displays are naturally projected into the waterfront. Its 110 m2 courtyard has been given a spectacular glass roof, providing a friendly communal plaza where visitors are welcomed by guides, who help orientate them in the building and among the numerous exhibitions available.

146  Jahangir Selimkhanov

The museum’s collection and narratives are predominantly related to The Netherlands, and particularly to its ‘golden age’ reflecting its rise as the leading seapower of those times, bringing prosperity, technical progress and flourishing arts to the Republic of the Seven United Lowlands. Immersion in the period is provided through staged/costumed short video stories narrated by actors, representing people from different social strata, and hence the outlook to history through ‘les structures du quotidien’, to quote the title of the famous book by Fernand Braudel. The accent on praising the glorious past is quite conventional for a national heritage museum, but the curators deal honestly with the dark sides of otherwise positive processes of expanding the horizons by sailing – for example, the issues of conquests, colonies, slavery or the adverse impacts of whaling. The National Maritime Museum takes a well-balanced approach towards the interests of various categories of visitors, thus providing meticulous displays of precious collections along with edutainment trails and advanced electronic media-savvy presentations; in 2012 when I visited this was a staged video/light/ sound experience, which was recently replaced with a Virtual Reality time trip ‘Dare to Discover – a VR journey’. Design solutions in the museum are up-todate and elegant, which is another source of national pride in The Netherlands – a country of brilliant designers – and of additional excitement for a visitor; yet for a more conservative taste it seems sometimes to dominate over the content. One dilemma museums have to cope with is how to balance ‘permanent displays’, which can last for decades and temporary exhibitions that run for a few months. For a growing number of museums (especially those devoted to contemporary art and design), it is resolved by re-designing complete displays on a regular basis and constantly re-interpreting the collections.The Dutch National Maritime Museum proposes a compromise: it devotes one third of its space to medium-term exhibitions (lasting for a few years), so that the museum is not changed all at once, and different thematic units are gradually replaced over time. These exhibitions are often a response to the demand for new topics and interpretations.They will ensure that relatively infrequent visitors see something new, while temporary exhibitions will give frequent visitors an incentive to return – and at the same time enable a stable continuity in setting up and running the exhibitions. In such a fashion the museum positions itself as an everchanging, evolving, living organism able to react to challenges and focus on

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particular problems, topics and interpretation approaches. An eloquent example of compelling people to think and act, is the Rising Tide temporary exhibition currently on display in the museum with photos by Kadir van Lohuizen on the consequences of climate crisis for the rising sea levels across the world – a timely wakeup call from the museum to think again about complex relations between humanity and the sea.

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The Museum of Innocence, Turkey. Photograph: ©Marlen Mouliou

31 THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE Istanbul, Turkey European Museum of the Year Award 2014 Jette Sandahl

A fictional story transcribed into a factual museum of the city The Museum of Innocence can be seen simply as a small museum of Istanbul life in the second half of the twentieth century. Underneath this surface is, however, a three-dimensional, object-based version of the fictional reality of Orhan Pamuk’s novel of the same name.1 The museum charts the collective, national and international movements of a specific time in history through exploring in meticulous detail the personal stories of fictionalised characters. ‘The museum is not an illustration of the novel, and the novel is not an explanation of the museum,’ says Orhan Pamuk. Who has not been obsessed, consumed by love? On every dimension one can think of, The Museum of Innocence is a unique creation. It is a puzzling, intriguing and deeply satisfying experience. Embedded in the dense fabric of urban life and extended families, the narrative of Kemal’s love for Füsun provides the plot and backbone of the museum and takes the audience through everyday Istanbul life and the history of the last quarter of the twentieth century. Seventy-four cases provide different, imaginative entries into this narrative. The objects are selected, staged and interpreted through the rich, creative and knowledgeable mind of a writer, whose genius emerges not least in the succinct titles for each case and each chapter of the story, ranging from the brief ‘Sometimes’ to the intricate ‘On Being Unable to Stand Up and Leave’ or ‘An Indignant and Broken Heart is of No Use to Anyone’. The unifying vision of Orhan Pamuk holds together, seamlessly, the heterogeneity and eclecticism of the collection, where everyday objects from neighbourhood second-hand stores blend with contemporary artworks, commissioned to unfold specific themes of the narrative.

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Through the typical, familiar everyday objects, as a visitor one feels an immediate identification with the tortured love story. Who will not recognise and identify with the lover Kemal? Or with Füsun, the elusive object of his desire? Or with both? Who has not been consumed and enslaved by love, been disappointed and devastated by love, been obsessed, unable to let love and the beloved go? And once embedded within this emotional identification, one’s mind is open, prepared to take in the complexities of its context, the subtext of radical social and cultural criticism, the relentless exposure of male power and class privilege, the conflicts between religious and secular world views, the ambiguous clashes between local tradition and European influences? However, while these almost stereotypical storylines run tangibly through the museum, there are no easy conclusions to the, in every possible way, illicit and illegitimate love stories. The deeply subversive cultural and political criticism never denies or defies the complexities of life as it is lived, and emerges through the multi-layered meanings of innocence and of multiple losses of innocence. Paraphrasing museum languages The museum is housed in a small nineteenth-century Ottoman-era townhouse in a back street of historic Istanbul. In its domestic, somewhat cramped scale, the building situates the intimate and claustrophobic emotional intensity of the narrative. The re-constructed or paraphrased exhibition language reminds one of both traditional cabinets of curiosity and the conventional, clichéd displays of old-fashioned city museums. The new art pieces tend to stay within the same fictional, narrative discourse as the cultural historic objects. An outstanding example of the art works is the large installation ‘4,213 Cigarette Stubs’ in the entryway, which introduces visitors to the museum, its main themes and characters. Another brilliant example is the map showing the areas of the city that became taboo for the protagonist, ‘The Streets that Reminded Me of Her’, and the equally memorable ‘An Anatomical Chart of Love Pains’. Multimedia, showing moving images from the relevant period, are integrated elements in a number of the cases. Soundtracks, featuring period music and typical soundscapes, provide a background for the visual experience. An enchanting audio guide by Orhan Pamuk, in Turkish and English, adds depth to the written information and interpretation. The almost encyclopaedic catalogue, The Innocence of Objects, provides an in-depth context for the thinking and collecting processes behind the museum. Equidistant from the East and the West The Museum of Innocence holds a watch, showing on one face the old Ottoman time, and on the other European time. In the process of creating the museum, this came to be called the East-West watch, a metaphor for the museum’s positioning itself equidistant from the East and the West. The love story at the core of the museum is deeply subversive in its local setting and context. Is the suffering and lifelong pain of the protagonist enough

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to lend legitimacy to exploring the mores surrounding people’s most intimate, sexual and personal relationships? The museum sits ambiguously in its flagrant defiance of local silences and traditions as its creator does within his nation. Aftershocks For a museum professional The Museum of Innocence is a demanding experience, as unsettling and thought provoking as it is satisfying and amusing. Despite my prior scepticism, I have rarely been more intrigued by a museum visit or felt more profound aftershocks. It is, clearly, to be taken seriously for its subversive social and political content and critique, but should be taken equally seriously for the ways in which it provokes and facilitates a process of museological selfreflection and examination of basic paradigms. In its emotional density the museum exhibits an unsurpassed mastery in letting objects and material culture disclose their metaphoric, symbolic and psychological meanings. Are these objects, clustered around fictional characters, less real than the objects collected in more conventional museums? Does this museum differ categorically from the fictionalisation of history and heritage prevalent in museum presentation and interpretation in general? Does the fictional character Kemal’s obsessive collecting differ categorically from the way museums attempt to capture a person, an epoch, a city, through material objects? Where is the line between collecting, obsession and fetishism? Is it possible to get as up-close-andpersonal in documenting a real character in real time? Could a ‘real’ museum deal with sexual politics in this depth, with this nuance? What does interdisciplinarity mean? What is interpretation? What does quality mean? The Museum of Innocence explores in great depth the psychological meaning of the collecting process and of objects as condensed emotions and as carriers of memories and cultures, which has been a conscious mode, method or undercurrent in only some few European museums. As more museums begin to explore these emotional and personal realms, there is much to be learned from the psychological complexity of The Museum of Innocence and as such it should become highly influential within a museological discourse. Endnote 1 This portrait is written solely on the basis of my judging visit to the Museum of Innocence. I abstained from reading the book The Museum of Innocence (2010) before my museum visit, as in the EMYA context the museum should be judged on its qualities as a stand-alone museum. I also in this context resist the temptation to discuss Orhan Pamuk’s interesting manifestoes on future principles and desirable developments for museums in general (Pamuk 2012).

References Pamuk, O. (2010). The Museum of Innocence. NY. Abrams. Pamuk, O. (2012). The Innocence of Objects. NY. Faber and Faber.

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Baksi Museum, Turkey. Photograph: ©Baksi Museum

32 BAKSI MUSEUM Bayburt, Turkey Council of Europe Museum Prize 2014 Jette Sandahl

The sustainability of cultural memory1 As a delightful mirage, the Baksi Museum rises, magically, unexpectedly, on a hillside. It is, however, far from an illusion. The monumental new buildings are solidly anchored to the ground with concrete, local stones and boulders, and with the personal narrative of topographic belonging and love for a territory of its founder, artist Hüsamettin Koçan. The museum is, physically and metaphorically, firmly embedded in its landscape, in the poignant scents of grass, the soundscape of a river, a moon so close that one can kiss it. The Baksi Culture and Art Foundation aims to ‘contribute to the sustainability of cultural memory’ and to re-vitalise village life in a region shattered and emptied by emigration and rapid depopulation. Rooted precariously on the furthest eastern edge of Anatolia, it positions itself at the core of the centre and periphery dichotomy that mars Europe as a whole as well as the individual nations within Europe. While urban centres grow continuously, rural areas depopulate correspondingly, to a level where local cultures are left vulnerable, threatened and depleted. The Baksi Museum bears witness to the essential economic and cultural interdependency between different regions of Europe, and to the slow, complex, conflicted and often painful, cultural métissage. The future of Europe, as well as of contemporary Turkey, depends on negotiating the coexistence of conflicting cultures and ways of life, of different and often contradictory world views and systems of beliefs. Interweaving collections, production and exhibitions Within an attractive and diverse architectural framework, the museum explores the radical potential of a museum that is rooted equally strongly in a commitment to a community, to solid museological principles, and to high artistic aspirations.

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The Baksi Museum provides more than 4,000 m2 of public areas – exhibition halls, workshops, conference facilities, a library, open depots, a museum shop, a café as well as guest houses, all of international standard. The museum collections span a careful selection of contemporary art, supplemented with historic paintings and calligraphies, local ethnological objects, rural tools and crafts products. This eclectic mix and the coexistence of these diverse collections are defining features of the museum and supported by an active collecting process. Production, however, is as important a dimension of the Baksi Museum as is collecting. There is a continuous production of contemporary art, through programmes for young local talents and through a national art intern programme. Established as well as up-and-coming artists from the capital and other major cities come to take part in workshops and exhibitions. In spacious spinning and weaving ateliers local woman reclaim, learn and relearn the skills of producing kilim rugs and the fine ehram textiles. The impeccable, minimalistic aesthetics of the museum provide a structure and clarity around the many different interweaving artistic and social narratives. Objects tell of local land husbandry, of local crafts production and its revival in the manufacturing ateliers of the museum. Exquisite works produced by children reveal a story of talents discovered and then nurtured through artistic higher education. The sounds of busy looms and smiling concentration slowly surface a story of secluded women enticed out of their homes into paid employment and of their daughters’ subsequent entry into the educational system. The art speaks for itself, layer by layer, with sparse interpretation, while the strong social agenda is written between the lines, never as heavy-handed didactic positioning.The commercial enterprises of shop, café and living quarters for visiting artists and other guests envelop the cultural activities seamlessly. A point of cultural interaction and of cultural resistance The Baksi Museum joins the historic with the present, the social with the educational, the financial with the cultural, and merges the creative processes with the goals and methods of cultural democracy. It democratises access to culture and art and pushes the boundaries of the traditional museum concept. It makes contemporary art available in a region where none could be experienced before. But even more importantly, it makes it possible for culturally disenfranchised people to actually create and produce art in a continuum from traditional arts and crafts to its most contemporary forms.The museum sees itself as a point of both cultural interaction and cultural resistance, where the rural meets the urban, and where traditional craft, art and culture meet contemporary art and lifestyles. In this process the dependencies on the urban centres are queried and broken, in terms of both artistic content and production, and in terms of creating viable economic livelihoods in the rural areas.

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Sustainability To fulfil its multiple purposes, the Baksi Museum has invented new models for financing, creating and running a museum. It is a private initiative, now owned and run by a non-profit foundation. The small permanent museum staff, responsible for daily operations, is supplemented by individuals and groups who volunteer their time, expertise and resources. The goal is to eventually attain financial sustainability, through long-term, also public, partnerships and increased profitability from production and commercial operations. The museum as an agent for social change Negating disciplinary boundaries and turning the concepts of centre and periphery, of modernity and tradition inside out, the Baksi Museum breaks new museological ground. It positions the museum as a meeting point, a place for social change, and an important agent in making this local area a better and more sustainable place to live. The social and emotional commitment of the museum permeates and shapes the spaces and the artistic products, in ways so persuasive that the visitor feels included, as if in a shared purpose. It conveys a contagious sense of hope, making one want to join, to stay and be part of this compelling vision. A museological model of hope Is there a recipe for hope? Can a unique and intensely personal vision as the creation of the Baksi Museum serve as a museological model and be emulated or duplicated elsewhere? The Baksi Museum signals new trends and new paradigms in museums. Identifying the diverse components and connections that have merged and blended to make this place so excellent, will help provide not a blueprint, but inspiration, principles, standards and checklists for creating museums which matter to their communities, and which support their communities in finding their own place and voice in larger, complex and interdependent national and international contexts. Endnote 1 A similar version of this text has been published in other contexts, including Baksi: A Museological Model of Hope (Baksi Art and Cultural Foundation) in Regional Museums as Generators of Development, Bayburt, 2015.

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Žanis Lipke Memorial, Latvia. Photograph: ©Ansis Starks/Zanis Lipke Memorial

33 ŽANIS LIPKE MEMORIAL Riga, Latvia Kenneth Hudson Award 2014 Mikhail Gnedovsky

It could have been a novel but it is a museum. Devised in the course of a project involving a range of people, including a politician, a script writer, an architect, a designer, an artist and a composer, Žanis Lipke Memorial tells the story of an ordinary Latvian working-class family, a story that has been elevated to a historic, even Biblical significance due to a combination of challenging circumstances, the personal charisma of Žanis Lipke and the dedication of his friends and relatives. The story is deeply private, but, at the same time, reflects some crucial turns of twentieth-century European history. Žanis Lipke (1900–1987) worked as a stevedore in the port of Riga before the Second World War. He was also a smuggler. There is evidence that he was tried on charges of smuggling in the late 1930s. Everybody described him as an adventurer. When the Second World War started, he was married with a daughter and two sons. The family lived in their own house in Kipsala, a workingclass area in Riga on the west bank of the Daugava River. In June 1940, the Red Army entered Latvia, which was declared a part of the Soviet Union. A year later, when the Soviets were replaced by the Nazis, Žanis’s daughter, Aina, who had fallen in love with a Russian communist, left with the Soviets. As this became known, Žanis had to protect his family from the Nazi administration; so, he sent his elder son, Alfrēds, to serve in the Wehrmacht. He himself went to work at the Luftwaffe warehouses, which were located near the Riga ghetto and used its inmates as the workforce. Žanis was responsible for bringing Jewish workers from the ghetto to the warehouses. He used his smuggling skills (or was it just his adventurous disposition?) to steal the ghetto inmates, one at a time, cheating the Nazi bureaucracy. He then hid these people in different places and later took them to the faraway farmsteads where they stayed until the end of the war. He rescued over 50 people in this way.

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He ran this operation, successfully and smoothly, till the war was over, assisted by several other people. At a certain point, he decided to arrange a hiding place at his own house and dug a bunker under a shed where up to 12 people could stay. His wife, Johanna, was also involved and took care of the people hiding in the bunker. Their younger son, Zigfrīds, was eight years old when the war started. He lived at home with his parents and knew what was going on. He also knew that it should be kept under wraps. When the war ended, Latvia became, again, part of the Soviet Union. The Lipke family continued living in the same house. What Žanis did during the war to rescue the Jews became known and a number of witnesses came forward to confirm it. However, he was not treated as a hero. On the contrary, he was interrogated by the KGB who asked about his elder son Alfrēds’s whereabouts, and about the ‘Jewish gold and diamonds’ he was allegedly hiding somewhere. Alfrēds was in a hospital at the end of the war; later, he emigrated to Australia. It took a lot of effort for Žanis, already an old man, to receive permission from the Soviet authorities to go to Australia to visit his son in the 1970s. Unlike the Soviets, the Israeli government appreciated the feat accomplished by Žanis Lipke, awarding him and his wife the Righteous Among the Nations medal. The people whom he rescued and their descendants wrote to him while he was still alive.The opening of the Žanis Lipke Memorial in 2012 was attended by the president of Israel, Shimon Peres, and president of Latvia, Andris Bērziņš. The third VIP at the opening was the initiator of the museum, Māris Gailis, an entrepreneur who had been prime minister of Latvia in 1994–1995. But this is already another story – the story of how the museum came into existence. In the early 2000s, Māris Gailis was developing the Kipsala area and came across a private house that still belonged to the Lipke family. As a former politician, he was aware that Latvia had a rather poor international reputation in connection with the Holocaust. He could not ignore the place – not only because he found the story behind it fascinating, but also because he understood that it could counterbalance the stories of atrocities carried out in the country during the Second World War. Having decided to pay homage to Žanis Lipke, Māris Gailis established a private foundation to support the project. He also asked Viktors Jansons, a filmmaker and stage designer, to develop an idea for the memorial place. Jansons studied the available material and came up with a museum scenario, which was focused on the visitors’ experience. Based on the scenario, architect Zaiga Gaile, wife of Māris Gailis, designed a building to be erected in close proximity to where the shed with the secret bunker underneath had stood. (The bunker itself had been long filled in and the shed levelled.) On the outside, the building resembles a traditional tarred shed or an overturned boat. It also suggests, not surprisingly, the image of the Noah’s Ark. It has been described, too, as the best hidden museum in Riga, because of its location in a residential district and how it is approached. Entering from a side street, through a nondescript gate, visitors find themselves in a semi-dark corridor

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leading to the main building with its maze-like space where they quickly lose orientation in a series of dimly lit spaces.The route goes up three levels, embracing the pit, which has the dimensions of the original bunker but can only be seen from above. On the way, the story of Žanis Lipke, his family and his rescue operation is told. The meaning of visitors’ every step and every turn has been thoroughly planned, in both the scenario and in the design of the building. On the attic level, the main exhibition gallery has 12 showcases containing small objects, photographs and documents – in four languages: German, Hebrew, Latvian and Russian – that tell the story of the Lipke family, people who helped Žanis and people who were rescued by him. Some objects are exceptionally powerful, such as a sheet of paper discovered, completely by chance, among the younger son’s papers, with a childish drawing of what is, without doubt, the bunker – a proof that the boy knew what was going on. Still, surprisingly little remained from that not very distant past. One cannot help thinking, ‘this faded paper material is all that has been left from the life full of passion, risk and adventure’. A barely perceptible soundtrack adds to the evocative atmosphere of this space. It is only in the final room that visitors see natural light, lots of it, coming through a glass wall. They emerge from the semi-darkness of their journey inside the Memorial into the light. And there they can sit and talk before going out, through the garden, back into the street.

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Rijksmuseum, The Netherlands. Photograph: ©IwanBaan

34 RIJKSMUSEUM Amsterdam, The Netherlands European Museum of the Year 2015 Michael Ryan

A great national museum must house a great collection that reflects on the culture and history of its country and its relations with the wider world. A visitor expects it to be scientific and scholarly, to communicate well with its public, and to be conscientious about its duties to society, informed by civilised values, open-minded and humane. It helps if it is also good-humoured and witty in its dealings with its visitors. Above all, it must embed professionalism in all its activities. It sounds like a tall order, but the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam ticks all these boxes. It negotiates its responsibilities with grace: it manages a good-natured approach to communications without ever being unserious. It is a model of a museum of influence. It is, not surprisingly, one of the most visited museums in the world with a footfall of more than two million visits annually. It maintains an exemplary website with a vast collection of images that are offered in a generous policy for public use. It has a large and expert staff that must be the envy of many museum institutions worldwide. While its governance structure is sound (it has been an autonomous foundation since 1995), it has not fallen into the trap that has caught so many museums that have ‘modernised’ by running down curatorial and conservation staff in favour of various models of outsourcing functions to the detriment of custodial, conservation and communications duties and responsibilities. The new configuration has greatly increased the comfort of the visitor with new café facilities, multilingual guiding, public programmes and a well-used library. In this, as in many other aspects, it is an object of admiration by many museum professionals. The Rijksmuseum traces its origins to the later eighteenth century, which was a time of museum foundation in many western European countries. From an early stage there was a desire to create a ‘national’ museum but there were several false starts. Eventually, there was agreement that there should be a consolidated national museum and it was to be established in Amsterdam. A new building was provided. Its architect, Pierre Cuypers, created a hybrid Medieval-Renaissance building, which

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was not at first popular with the public. (It is no coincidence that the main railway station in Amsterdam echoes the style of the Rijksmuseum as Cuypers designed both.) Like all museum buildings, there were improvisations and alterations over the years, responses to wear and tear and to the increasing understanding of the needs of the museum. In the 1980s, there was a massive programme to introduce modern climate control that involved the construction of false walls to carry the ducting and electronic controls and monitoring systems. At the time, it was a headline in provision for passive conservation. All that has been swept away in a new remodelling of the museum, which reverts to Cuypers’ original plans for the interior. This includes a very advanced system of climate control, which is much more sustainable than traditional air-handling plants and is a discreet presence in the galleries. The collections are now integrated into a display scheme, which includes history and art in a seamless presentation. Large murals of key events in Dutch history that were painted for the original galleries have been exposed and restored. The Rijksmuseum is famous for its renowned collection of paintings by Dutch artists.The collection includes works by Hals, Rembrandt,Vermeer, Steen and many more – created during a brilliant golden age in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and many distinguished works of the eighteenth and nineteenth century are also shown. The collection of portraits, of individuals and groups, still life and images of interiors, make it both a profound aesthetic experience as well as a remarkable series of documents-in-kind of social history. The Rijksmuseum is not merely an art gallery but a museum of history also. It has great depth in its collections of prints and drawings; its decorative arts feature many of the great achievements of designers, cabinet-makers, silver- and goldsmiths, armourers and gunsmiths, porcelain makers and creators of scientific instruments. A distinguished collection of medieval religious decorative art is shown. Much of these displays reflects the great age of Dutch maritime trade and the expansion of colonial power of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was a time of adventurous navigation, exploration and naval prowess, which fueled commerce and inventiveness in financial management and exchange. Trade, industrial enterprises, ship-building and also highly efficient arable farming underpinned the lifestyle of the wealthy so elegantly demonstrated by paintings but also by the exquisitely furnished dolls’ houses in the collections – these are also remarkably detailed documents of social history of the well-to-do. It was also a time of well-found charitable institutions and, though a very hierarchical society, it was amongst the more humane in early modern Europe. The Netherlands became a haven for refugees from religious persecution and, partly as a consequence, scientific, mathematical, legal and philosophical thinking flowered. The Rijksmuseum collections are the consequence of all these processes. This was also the time when the Dutch became an imperial power in the Americas and south Asia. It was one of the most extraordinary cases of a small European country taking control over vast territories in other parts of the world and deriving from them vast wealth beyond the capacity of the homeland to create. Its trading capacity was remarkable. This aspect is not strongly represented in the paintings. However, the Rijksmuseum did not during those times amass an Asian art

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collection. Its modest Asian holdings – the collection began in the 1950s – are now displayed in a dedicated pavilion. Obviously, Asian crafts were imported into The Netherlands through the trade of the Dutch East India Company and the example of Chinese porcelain gave rise to a copy industry in Delft, which exported its signature blue, and white ceramics widely in Western Europe and which appear also in many paintings of domestic interiors. Museums are like icebergs – much of their activities are invisible to the visitor. The professionalism of collections management, research, conservation, design and display are not often open to the public to explore. However, the Rijksmuseum website is one of the best in the wider museum world at providing open online public access to the collections and encouraging the use of its images. Its public programmes are excellent, and it has an exceptional education department that reaches out to every schoolchild in the country. In the adjacent Drawing Academy building, it has splendid education facilities including places for creating videos and stage sets in which children can recreate episodes in Dutch history. It has imaginative programmes for older students preparing to move from school to higher education. One of its programmes, which includes adults, is both brave and compassionate: it is an occasional evening viewing for terminally ill patients who have expressed a wish to visit the museum, perhaps in some cases for the first time.

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 uCEM – Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations, France. Photograph: ©Jose M Gameiro

35 MuCEM – MUSEUM OF EUROPEAN AND MEDITERRANEAN CIVILISATIONS Marseille, France Council of Europe Museum Prize 2015 José Gameiro

Mediterranean civilisations are so close! One of the major trading places and a strategic Mediterranean port of the ancient world, Marseille (Massalia), the second largest city of France, has always played a significant role as one of the main gateways into France and as a cosmopolitan, vibrant and cultural mosaic. Because of its European and Mediterranean social and historical roots, and especially due to the specific context of Marseille as European Capital of Culture 2013, MuCEM – Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations – emerged as a great new French National Museum. Following a decision taken in 2000, MuCEM is the first national museum of France which was moved from Paris to a provincial town, incorporating the collections of two closed national museums, the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires of Georges Henri Rivière and the Musée de l‘Homme (ethnological collections) at the Trocadéro. Thus, it represents the aim of transforming two old museum concepts into a new museum institution, expressing new meanings and meeting contemporary needs. In this perspective it is also itself a sort of a symbolic migrant museum. Yet, beyond its significant and central core mission as a museum – to deal with and explore the complexity of Europe and the Mediterranean world, in its intercultural plurality, differences and visions – we should also like to highlight its immediate transformation into an outstanding urban regeneration solution and landmark for the city and the region. A social, cultural and citizenship meeting point In fact, one of its relevant and totally fulfilled aspirations, the relationship with its surrounding environment, is seen with the profound regeneration of the

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former port pier, which is the perfect link with the old and inaccessible neighbouring areas, such as ‘Le Panier’. MuCEM comprises two main buildings. The old Fort Saint-Jean, from the twelfth century, destroyed during Second World War, was completely refurbished into an open public space with the attractive Migrations Garden, consisting of many different Mediterranean plants. The other MuCEM space was the new J4 building, a huge cubic construction on the former Marseille port pier, covered by a fine latticework of a concrete and steel mixture, inspired by the transparency and lightness effects of the 'mashrabiya', a much used element of traditional Arabic architecture, which immediately became one of three must-see city locations. At the new harbour, a continuous passage formed by two elegant pedestrian footbridges connect MuCEM’s two buildings to the old city, allowing a ground-breaking appropriation of a new urban walk by its community and visitors. The birth of citizenship in the Mediterranean cities is addressed in the permanent exhibition, which forces us to reflect on, and be confronted with, the different perspectives that have been with and among us from the birth of Europe to today’s reality, along with the tensions and social issues traversing the continent in the contemporary era. Its concept and its cultural and social programmes show how a museum can, in an innovative way and beyond its scientific and historical functions, extend its scope to the citizen, to urban and social dimensions, when choosing society and civilisational diversity as the main protagonist of its narratives and activities. Openness, attractiveness and inclusiveness MuCEM aims to attract the widest possible public by a policy of open spaces in a vast museum area. Most of the museum grounds and some of its programmes like cinema, conferences, theatre, music, live performances and awareness-raising initiatives intended for every audience, are staged here, many of them free of charge. MuCEM provides a complete overview of the Mediterranean: a permanent exhibition on the ground floor retraces the history of the Mediterranean, while on the first floor, two annual exhibitions are dedicated to civilisations, cities and the people who made the Mediterranean what it is today. Its collections are composed of a million works and objects reflecting the civilisations and traditions of Europe and the Middle East, which are part of the Mediterranean story. The vaults of the twelfth century Fort Saint-Jean also house exhibitions and its gardens offer a stunning panorama of the city and a view of the sea. This open space aims to lower the threshold of entry to the museum as a cultural institution. MuCEM combines four essential aspects. It represents a high regeneration value for the urban area of Marseille, generating deep cooperation with the community, transmitting to its neighbours and all the citizens of the city a

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strong sense of collective and popular appropriation of this part of the city. Second, it continuously promotes a great feeling of inclusiveness through a sustained social, cultural and historic commitment. This has been developed and established through its exhibitions and activities, targeting all kinds of publics, reinforced by a persistent policy of interchange of professionals, artists and technicians from countries over the whole Mediterranean and Europe. Third, a very high public quality is expressed in the attractiveness of its spaces, gardens, terraces, events, and meetings, and also present in the way the narratives are so well designed and displayed, motivating the interest of different visitors. And fourth, is the fact that a wide range of differing viewpoints and historical trajectories are expressed, based on the fact that it sees itself as a museum not of Civilisation, but of civilisations, taking into account their uniqueness as well as their commonalities. By creating and encouraging dialogue, MuCEM hopes to decentralise viewpoints and to change perspectives. For this reason, it intends to lead strong cooperative projects, based on a reciprocal approach, with museums and institutions in the Mediterranean and Europe. Its singularity is to trace, analyse and illuminate, in the same spirit and the same place, the ancient foundations of this exceptional basis of civilisations and the tensions traversing it until the contemporary era. Its aim is to promote the understanding that Mediterranean cultural heritage is the shared source of many civilisations. It highlights the importance of Marseille in this context, and establishes the museum as a place of dialogue about the challenges of the past and the present and as a bridge to the foundations of the Mediterranean world of tomorrow. The way the museum and its territory are planned, organised and democratised, sharing the contemporary use of its spaces with the city and offering the fruition of its initiatives to the visitors, turns it into a new twenty-first century Agora, an outstanding urban solution and a landmark for the city and the region. In 2015, MuCEM was distinguished with the Council of Europe Museum Prize highlighting its success in expressing the intermingling of European and Mediterranean civilisation and in inspiring improved interconnection, respect and understanding between peoples.

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 he International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, Switzerland. Photograph: ©Alain Germond, T Neuchâtel.

36 THE INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS AND RED CRESCENT MUSEUM Geneva, Switzerland The Kenneth Hudson Award 2015 Jahangir Selimkhanov

This surprising, stunning, thought-provoking and hopeful museum has found a perfect balance between clearly articulated values and messages; as sharp and immediate as political slogans, they shimmer with a multitude of meaningful nuances worthy of an outstanding work of art.The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum is one possible answer to the question of what a model museum might look like today. Instead of a chronological or taxonomic division of all the materials, three broadly interpreted topics have been chosen: Reducing Natural Risks; Defending Human Dignity; and Restoring Family Links. Three different architects/designers, from Asia, Latin America and Africa, were commissioned, so that each theme has a distinctive visual and even textural/tactile feel. The scope of the newly re-designed exhibition is to be simultaneously sensuous and sensitive. It strongly appeals to the emotive mechanisms of perception and communicates strong moral values – fairness, compassion, perseverance. It is significant that the three famous designers invited to visualise the three major topics of the permanent exhibition are not simply ‘stars’ – all three are famous for their contribution to solving global humanitarian problems: Shigeru Ban received the Pritzker Prize for disaster relief architectural projects made of tubular cardboard; Gringo Cardia established an NGO for training students from underprivileged areas in technical theatre arts; and Diébédo Francis Kéré has long been developing sustainable architectural projects for Gando, his native village in Burkina Faso. The enormous collection of the IRCRC constitutes an invisible back-up for a bold and expressive museum statement that combines unique documents (like the first Geneva Convention of 1864 or the archive of the International Prisoners of War Agency, whose six million index cards provided the basis for tracing two million prisoners) with craft articles made by prisoners. In fact,

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what any corporate museum would be proud of is a sort of encapsulated ‘annual report’ of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent activities across the globe, presented in a separate space, called ‘On the spot’.The long chronological row – year by year, from 1863 up to the present – on interactive screens speaks for itself! The use of videos and games is as precisely targeted as acupuncture. The number of monitors is not excessive, and is appropriate to the place, like the serious game developed by the London based collective ‘Blast Theory’ on practising rapid reaction and solution-making for rescuing people in anticipation of hurricanes or amusingly ‘silly’ optical theatre pieces by French comedian Pierrick Sorin. The museum is full of bright ideas regarding the selection of topics, objects, design solutions and interpretation strategies. One of the most striking is how they start the museum visit with a room of 12 witnesses silently gazing at you from a video installation. Further on in the exhibition you meet them again and get to hear their stories. The building, from the 1980s, has been carefully re-considered and extended to enhance the comfortable conditions both for the visitors and the staff and to create new facilities. During my visit I saw a temporary exhibition called ‘Trop Humane’ (‘Too Human’). With contemporary works by various artists including stars like Louise Bourgeois and the Chapman brothers, this was both relevant and artistically ambitious. Both permanent and temporary exhibitions are supported by educational programmes, talks and lectures. All facilities are restrained looking, but of a superb quality. Noteworthy are Humanitarium (the conference centre) and the spacious, restaurant, which has a panoramic view and serves a selection of wholesome, organic food, as well as ethnic specialities, prepared by volunteers. The museum is well-attended by various age groups, as well as Red Cross staff and activists from around the world, and the museum’s collection is expanding rapidly through new acquisitions and donations. It has established a wide network of sponsors and supporters, as well as a group of more than 50 volunteers from various social and cultural backgrounds (including refugee immigrants) who give guided tours in ten languages. An important detail is that volunteers are not a supplement to permanent staff guides; they are the only people doing this work in the museum. For more than 20 years the museum was led by Roger Mayou, an outstanding specialist with a broad view over a spectrum of global issues and refined artistic sense, honed by his professional career as an art historian. He was the initiator of a complete transformation of the permanent exhibition and establishing a Visitor Centre area for the museum. Pascal Hufschmid, an experienced mid-career museum professional, also with educational background in art history, has now taken over the position of director.

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The museum proudly emphasises that the operations of the museum and also the huge amount spent on its renovation and re-conceptualisation are not financed from IRCRC budget, but from special donations. The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum has overcome the boundaries of a typical ‘corporate’ museum and re-composed its vast and constantly growing collection into an emotionally touching and engaging story about compassion and timely help to those in need, about hope and perseverance in finding lost relatives or restoring someone’s trampled dignity. Documentary accounts of witnesses are given voice in an ambiance created by masterly designers of different cultural backgrounds. This bold manifestation of true cultural diversity and profound humanitarian values would have gladdened the heart of Kenneth Hudson, a conscientious objector and ambulance driver in the Second World War with a great appreciation of brave museums. The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum was a worthy winner of the award named after him.

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The Mary Rose Museum, United Kingdom. Photograph: ©Hufton+Crow

37 THE MARY ROSE MUSEUM Portsmouth, United Kingdom Special Commendation 2015 Michael Ryan

The Mary Rose was an English warship built at the beginning of the sixteenth century. After 33 years of war service, in 1536 it was greatly modified in a refit amounting almost to a rebuilding. On 19 July 1545, while engaging a French fleet, it suddenly sank in the Solent with great loss of life. The ship may have been changing course when it heeled over and water poured through the open lower-tier gun ports. There were very few survivors among the c.400 mariners, gunners and soldiers on board. The wreck was discovered in the nineteenth century when divers recovered material from the site. It was rediscovered in 1971 and following a decade of archaeological excavation and recording, in 1982 a substantial portion of the hull was raised – a remarkable feat of engineering – and placed in a dry dock close to the historic warship, Victory. The dry dock was roofed for the very long process of conservation by means of impregnation of the timbers with a chemical wax (polyethylene glycol) that replaced the water, which had saturated and preserved the wood on the seabed. The public were admitted to see the work of conservation in progress. A range of the finds from the wreck was also displayed beside the work of preservation. In 2009, the dock was closed to enable the construction of the museum to take place. The museum opened in 2013. At first sight the building is a bit like an alien mother ship with its unusual ovoid shape. While there has been some criticism of the design, most people who visit are happy with the building, as is this writer. Its simple lines make it fit its surroundings far better than any block-shaped or historical pastiche building. It enhances its surroundings and its shape is carefully designed to hold the principal exhibit – the very large starboard side of the ship’s hull.This allows the visitor to see the structure of the ship in cross-section with views of the decks and of cabins and specialised spaces. The opposite side reflects this structure

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with multiple floors – the same number as the decks of the warship – exhibiting some of the many finds made during the excavations. These displays are imaginatively and elegantly designed with a strong emphasis on explanations of the finds, some of which are replicated in models in order to demonstrate how the originals were used. There were many blocks and rope and cordage, which cast some new light on the rigging and perhaps on the sailing qualities of the Mary Rose, which one expert likened to ‘a wet haystack’. A great many weapons were found. Amongst the most numerous were bow staves.There are clear indications in some of the skeletal remains of a shoulder condition characteristic of those who spent a great deal of time practising archery and holding the bow with the great strength needed to draw back the string to propel the arrow with lethal force. The rate of fire and the accuracy of skilled archers made them more than a match for firearms, which were also carried on the Mary Rose and its opposing ships. There are short films, which, for example, demonstrate archery and the loading and firing of the cannons recovered.They are exemplary in their clarity and simplicity. The evidence has enabled a high level of detail to be recorded and analysed for some of the cabins – that of the pilot, the surgeon, some of unidentified officers of higher status – all deduced from the artefacts found in them. The ship was a warship and so there is a strong emphasis on weapons and fighting, but a great many personal possessions have also been found. In total, 179 skeletons were recovered – less than half the number of its regular crew, which is calculated at about 400. In certain circumstances the ship carried extra contingents of soldiers for particular purposes – such as landing troops to attack on-shore positions – when there may have been as many as about 700 aboard. The studies of the human remains have begun to yield valuable demographic information about the composition of the crew. Some showed signs of poor nourishment in childhood while the final results of a programme of stable isotope analysis announced in spring 2019 have confirmed that some crewmembers were not English: there is evidence that people of Mediterranean and African origin had served on the Mary Rose. The same sort of analysis at molecular level has also been used to investigate the provisioning of the ship – the science has shown that the codfish preserved for the crews’ rations derived from fisheries as far away as Iceland and Newfoundland. This is a remarkable illustration of the globalisation of trade in the sixteenth century. It is in the application of scientific and technological analysis and meticulous historical research and conservation that this museum excels, giving back to those lost in the disaster something of their individuality and some plausible hints at biography, however sketchy. More than that, the commitment to science places the museum at the heart of a network of collaborators in universities and other institutes of advanced research but also one that brings the insights of material and environmental science, anthropology, marine engineering, seamanship, craftsmanship and first-rate historical research, quickly to the visitor and to wider audiences through television documentaries.The interpretation of

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the excavation results changes constantly with the application of newer scientific techniques of analysis. Exposition at levels appropriate to young and adult audiences, including experts, is excellent and the scientific work combined with outreach to the visitor makes this a paradigm of what a serious, science-based museum should be. It is a trait of the Mary Rose Museum that the human dimension of all of this new knowledge is never omitted – in that the museum is well-nigh pitch-perfect. The quality of the design of the exhibitions of artefacts is high but the greatest exhibit is the large part of the ship itself and it is a privilege and a pleasure to have access to such a sight. People of all ages are catered for and information is carefully targeted. There are volunteer guides in the galleries who will talk to visitors and answer questions, often showing artefacts that have been taken out for the purpose. It is the intense focus on a single group of people whose remains, along with the tools of their professions and crafts, were preserved in the tragic time capsule that makes this museum an enthralling experience.

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Sasso San Gottardo Museum, Switzerland. Photograph: ©Fondazione Sasso San Gottardo

38 SASSO SAN GOTTARDO MUSEUM Gotthard, Switzerland Candidate 2015 Jahangir Selimkhanov

A military fortification from the period of the Second World War hidden under the rocks has been turned into a museum with a double purpose – to serve as a living illustration to the military history of the twentieth century and to raise debates on many current global issues – energy, water, mobility, climate change, (non-military) security, gold (as an embodiment of wealth).The fortress, which was constructed as an antidote to a possible invasion from Italy when ruled by Mussolini’s regime, remained intact, with military personnel stationed underground, up until the end of the Cold War. It is cold, wet, sober-blooded, reality-into-your-face in the historical part, and surprising, instructive, smart, inspiring, visionary in the themed section.This contrast works well, as in a good piece of theatre. After having walked two kilometres through dark tunnels, you start to think differently about the meaning of many basic ‘earthly’ notions. The location of the museum in the St Gottardo Pass in the Alps makes it available for visits only in the period from June to mid-October. Moreover, it is situated a great distance from even the closest towns – Airolo and Andermatt – so that a visit there has to be planned in advance. Nevertheless, there is a steady growth in the numbers of visiting groups, and it remains in the centre of public attention in Switzerland. The reconstruction and maintenance of an enormous underground space consisting of long tunnels, passages, caves, niches and lifts cost significant amounts of money. Technical management of an underground area spread over a vast territory and out of reach for the winter period is a complex task. However, all is done so smoothly and precisely that the visitor doesn’t notice all this effort. The museum sets up an immediate dialogue with diverse audiences from far and near, by re-considering the past and projecting into the future. This thoughtful attitude, very serious and at the same time not alienating for visitors

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who are not well-informed about the sophisticated topics of defence, sustainable development, democracy, human rights, global economic order, is strongly supported by research findings from various sources. The issue of sustainability is woven through most of the museum’s thematic zones – Climate, Mobility and Living Space, Water, Energy, Security. Three examples of consumer goods appear regularly in the exhibitions: a mobile phone, a pair of jeans and an apple. These key objects are examined in each zone in terms of their relation (scientifically demonstrated with measurements and figures) to energy and water consumption for planting or manufacturing, to their recyclability and cost of freight transport. By comparing the figures, the visitor can come to his/her own conclusions. In the heart of a mountain, the museum positions itself in the centre of Europe and in the centre of Switzerland, on the crossroads of languages, cultures and traditions. It tells the honest story of hostility, defence and suspicion, which were at the heart of European history in the twentieth century. The museum derives lessons from both its historical and thematic exhibitions, addressing important current issues that shape the future of the humankind. How is it possible to secure yourself by building fortresses in an interrelated, interconnected world when military insecurity is acerbated by total surveillance in public spaces, electronic thefts from bank accounts and hacker attacks on corporate servers? Are we really aware of the scarcity of potable water on the Earth and what we need to do to prevent fighting for this ‘future oil’? The museum presents precise research data in an imaginative, dreamlike scenography, using simultaneous non-linear multimedia storytelling as a contemporary way of conveying complex narratives. Collections are not the main point in this museum: instead, it is based on strong interpretation. Nevertheless, the artillery guns and service equipment, maps, documents, as well as an ammunition depot containing all kind of weaponry, uniforms, tools and utensils, give the feeling of touching reality. In the meantime, the objects collected in the thematic area are used to visualise the theme, and scarcely have their own value. The design executed by renowned architects Barbara Holzer and Tristan Kobler is simply superb – guided tours for design students and design-conscious crowds are recommended, so they can observe spellbinding solutions at every corner, in any small detail. The artistic quality of video projections, installations, lighting, and of the specially commissioned electronic music/sound ambience brings this museum (like another Swiss applicant for EMYA – the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva) into the domain between curated art exhibition, theatre scenography and museum exposition. A brilliantly working case of PPP (public–private partnership), The Sasso San Gottardo Foundation gets one-third of its large budget from the Swiss government and four cantons of Switzerland, as it is located exactly where all four meet, while the other two-thirds are from more than 70 companies and

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private sponsors, including major firms like Swiss Telecom, SBB, Credit Suisse Bank, Swiss Post and Securitas. This turns the museum into a sort of a newly constructed expression of national pride (the position which usually is associated with ancient and old ­heritage monuments). Sasso San Gottardo Museum is a constellation of many bright ideas, really a model museum that has found a modality to turn observation of one ‘rank and file’ element of the local and European history into an invitation to think about our common global future. By and large, this combination of the particular and the universal manifested in the form of a museum was an outstanding idea. The director of the museum, Alfred Markwalder, is a strong character, one of the potential heroes in an eventual book about people obsessed with their idea of creating a museum and who managed to make their dream true. The idea of keeping the secret fortress alive and open to the public through establishing a museum first arose in 1998; the first business plans were developed in 2001; fundraising activities started in 2003; and a foundation was established in 2005. In all, up to the opening ceremony in presence of the President of the National Council of Swiss Parliament in 2012, the project took 14 years of struggle. The museum engages with important issues that unite people the world over, despite differences, ambitions, competition, conflicts and wars. Attracted by simple curiosity to observe a space that was for decades a top military secret, many people don’t imagine that they will be exposed to fascinating information about topics that they might skip while scrolling down a news line. Even though it didn’t get an award, I think Sasso San Gottardo represents a brilliant example of inviting museum visitors to a serious reflection on real global issues by capturing their attention and by giving access to once a totally hidden military object. As you reach fresh alpine air after spending hours in gloomy caves and tunnels, a feeling of escape from dark and hostile pasts is inevitably trumpeting inside you, but it does not come alone: anxieties and concerns about our fragile common future will accompany anyone who has passed through this extraordinary experience.

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European Solidarity Centre, Poland. Photograph: ©Renata Dąbrowska/European  Solidarity Centre

39 EUROPEAN SOLIDARITY CENTRE Gdan´sk, Poland Council of Europe Museum Prize 2016 Jette Sandahl

‘Learn from history, and decide upon the future’ The European Solidarity Centre defines itself as ‘a public meeting space for citizens who feel responsible for the development of democracy: a place where solidarity and citizenship are put into practice’. It is a museum embedded in a larger context of an educational, research and academic centre, an archive, a library and multimedia library, a conference centre and home to a number of NGOs, situated in a symbolically significant neighbourhood, the site of the origin of the Solidarity movement. From the wonderfully landscaped roof garden, visitors get a tangible sense of the museum’s manifold roots. On one side, one sees the gigantic, but waning ship building industry; on another, a density of church spires and the powerful presence of the Catholic church; and on a third side a huge expanse of wasteland, the stranded vision of a gigantic shopping mall meant to cater to the cruise tourists. The scale of the heavy, rusted steel-clad museum building is almost as monumental as the Monument to Fallen Shipyard Workers in front of it. Both, of course, reflect the huge impact of the social and political movement originating right here, and are poetically juxtaposed by the low, humble, almost invisible and seemingly insignificant entrance building to the museum, the former workers’ entrance, Lenin Shipyard’s Gate 2, familiar to everyone in Gdan´sk. Solidarity The permanent exhibition of the European Solidarity Centre carries the story of the Solidarity movement – and in broader terms the history of the social,

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cultural and political opposition and resistance movements that led to the dissolution of the Soviet bloc. It is an evocative and enticing narrative, dense with information and charged with emotional content. The story line is exciting – not least for being actually true. One is rarely in museums presented with ‘ordinary people’, workers in their work environment, working class intellectuals or working class heroes. Here, they emerge, up close and personal, as individual and collective agents in a significant historical moment. This personal agency, this empowerment, the solidarity between otherwise rather powerless people, uniquely define this museum rather than any abstract ideology. Behind the exhibitions lies an unusually rich collection documenting social resistance. The large industrial objects in particular convey how knowledge of the infrastructures of their vast workplace was essential for the striking workers – from the large map of the whole shipyard area to the bobcat from which speeches were made by people like Lech Walesa. The collections speak of the creativity, imagination and self-confidence of an opposition movement that was aware of its important historical moment, and aware of the need to document its social and political currents and undercurrents with a perspective for the future. Photographs, recordings, archival material and key symbolic objects of high narrative quality were secured and preserved. In the exhibitions there is an original, seamless integration between innovative multimedia, large-scale projections, wonderful photographs and significant objects of an immediately recognizable symbolic value, which transcends their particular time and place. The large plywood panels, for instance, on which striking workers wrote their demands are among the most meaningful objects I have seen in any museum. After the strike they were collected and moved to the Solidarity headquarters, and in 1981 donated to the Maritime Museum. The museum made copies and kept the originals safely in the museum storage, so that when martial law was introduced, it was the copy panels from the exhibition that were confiscated and destroyed by the Security Services. The originals were then removed by museum staff and hidden for protection. In 1996 they were returned to the museum, and in 2014 these original panels were deposited with the Solidarity Museum. Another object that encapsulates the essence of a period is a bullet-ridden leather jacket that had belonged to a 20-year-old shipyard worker who was killed in December 1970 in Gdynia. It was given to the Solidarity Museum by his mother. In the pockets was, among other things, a blood donor’s card, carrying the motto: ‘Donating blood is the highest act of humanitarianism, telling of great social solidarity.’ The permanent displays are supplemented by a special children’s section, special exhibitions, research and publications, educational programmes, local, national and international networks, and a very rich event programme.

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A meeting place for exploring what an open democratic society means Paradoxically, it is rare to see a museum proclaim the translation of its knowledge of history into a direct commitment to the cultural, social and political situation of the present time and the future to be formally part of its mission and purpose. In doing so, the European Solidarity Centre stretches the institutional concept and model of what a museum is. It is both a museum focused on the history of the social and political resistance of the Solidarity Movement, and it is a centre for dialogue regarding the contemporary world. It is ‘a place where history meets the future’, a meeting-place for citizens who want to explore what an open democratic society means, how to create equal opportunities and social justice within a free market system, and how to promote the concept of freedom and solidarity within authoritarian states. The museum supports and inspires new civic initiatives and facilitates networking between people who are committed to democratic values. It is an academic research institution with an extensive interdisciplinary publishing programme, and an educational institution, fostering civic attitudes and the value of cooperation, open-mindedness and respect. It hosts public debates, conferences, lectures, workshops, rallies and cultural events such as concerts, theatre performances and film screenings. Special programmes are directed towards involving particularly local leaders, local council members, neighbours, friends, former workers from the Gdan´sk Shipyard, local residents and community organisations as well as people who have migrated to Gdan´sk.Volunteers are integrated into all aspects of the museum’s activities. A museum driven and governed by its mission and its values The powerful and evocative concept of solidarity (solidarity with a small ‘s’, as the museum says) of the twentieth century’s social and political movements has been almost completely disappeared from the cultural, social and political realm of the neo-liberal early twenty-first century. Its huge social and humanitarian potential permeates the European Solidarity Centre. I visited the museum during the dramatic period in 2015 when refugees were migrating in large groups by foot up through Europe. The European Solidarity Centre is the only museum I know of that was actively involved in protests and demonstrations against the closed borders, the hostility, contempt and general ill will with which the refugees were met. While this kind of commitment and activism clearly matches and befits the museum’s values and mission, in the current political environment in Europe, the translation of historic documentation into interventions in contemporary conflicts and into acts of solidarity with those currently ­disenfranchised is, of course, contested, and is presenting a continuous, huge challenge for the European Solidarity Centre, as other public cultural institutions, other museums and committed museum directors across the world have learned the hard way.

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Odderøya Museum Harbour, Norway. Photograph: ©Arve Lindvig/Vest-Agder-museet

40 ODDERØYA MUSEUM HARBOUR Kristiansand, Norway Candidate 2016 Jahangir Selimkhanov

Among the museums discussed in this book this one possesses quite distinctive features: its open-air exhibition is available for visitors only during the eight weeks of a short northern summer – from mid-June to mid-August – and the exhibition itself has only a very few items belonging to the museum itself; all the rest are sourced from local private collections! Museum Harbour is one of 11 ‘museum stations’ of various kinds and themes, scattered throughout the county of Vest-Agder, the southernmost region of Norway, of which Kristiansand is the main city. Odderøya used to be a centre of motorboat production, which was a source of local pride. There were dozens of small and medium manufacturers supplying local and overseas markets until this activity declined due to much cheaper production in South-East Asia. Leisure tourism is now a major industry – the area surrounding Kristiansand is considered to be an ideal resort for sailing and salmon fishing as it has the warmest climate of this northern country – I even observed people sunbathing on the seashore at the end of September! The museum is a small establishment with a modest permanent collection and active community connections, as well as a huge database on fibreglass/plastic motorboats produced locally. Its ambition is to consider the current museum harbour as the first phase of establishing a fully fledged maritime museum covering both the glorious and dark sides of the past of this coastal area. For now, the museum harbour in Odderøya serves the needs of the local community, supporting their pride in belonging to the place and reviving people’s memories, as well as catering for the interests of motorboat enthusiasts from across the country and curious tourists sailing in the area. The experience offered is immediate, hands-on, friendly, engaging, welcoming participation – ‘slow fun’, as the museum itself puts it.The unusual approach

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to ownership, acquisition and display of objects takes this institution to the edge of the conventional notion of ‘museum’. The initiative is boldly experimental, as it doesn’t rely on acquiring and maintaining objects, but instead explores a way of shared/distributed ownership and of coordinating multiple efforts and activities beyond its immediate control. The museum concentrates its activities on building up a display of motorboats, both from its own and private collections. Hence the specific value of the museum’s work is the extensive database of the producing companies, models, boat designers, constructors, engineers and current owners of rare models, and this information source is well-known and demanded among the people interested in motorboat sailing. The loss of the motorboat industry left a pinch of nostalgia and the museum fulfils an important mission in collecting and transferring knowledge and memory which are in danger of vanishing and brings local skills and personal stories into the core museum product. Community participation is a keystone of the whole concept. The very idea of starting a museum harbour has grown from the strong demand for collecting, presenting and circulating the local history of plastic motorboat manufacturing, as well as reviving the related skills today. The newly erected building represents a non-intrusive addition to the landscape – it is simple, unassuming, spacious, filled with light. The workshops for moulding the boats and repairing the boat engines are not hidden somewhere outside or in a basement; the main multipurpose hall was extended to accommodate them, and a skilled museum staff person himself runs this workshop! The boats on ‘display’ (actually – floating!) are all in good condition, moored on the pier with uniform stands containing extended information about their particular features. Another sensitive layer of nostalgia is related to memories of summer leisure habits of the past which were closely associated with sailing on these motorboats. As a matter of principle, the museum does not stress mediated or virtual experiences, so that the use of digital media is mostly related to archiving large quantities of information. The clubhouse enables motorboat collectors and enthusiasts to consult archived data on the models and types of boats and on the restoration of rare survivals. It also provides tent storage facilities for the winter period for the privately owned boats. The museum puts on regular activities for children and teenagers. An annual event attracting a large number of visitors is the regatta of old plastic boats, which aims to encouraged people to care for and maintain their vessels and to create a meeting place for those who share this kind of special interest. Other attractive entertainments include a seaweed festival and occasional private tours on plastic boats. The museum gets support from various state and municipal sources. However, its most important resource is the network of social connections it has established. This is the source of hard-to-find information, from interviews with veterans of the industry and donations of old brochures, moulds, sketches and

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other documents. The very idea of creating a space that is driven by voluntary participation makes this undertaking alive and forward-looking. The good atmosphere in the museum is generated through the coordinated and friendly relations within the team which runs it. This is, at least in part, thanks to the mild and balanced management style of the director. Among the staff there is specialist (of German origin but who loves Norway) with a scholarly perspective who has organized a number of major thematic exhibitions, including some on controversial topics, all with a strong participatory element. One was devoted to exploring one’s own body (which still is quite taboo in this conservative religious community) and another explored faith and religion in the lives of local citizens today. A project they were working on when I visited was another taboo subject, that of poverty which, perhaps surprisingly in a country with one of the highest GDPs in the world, affects ten per cent of the region’s residents. This has since come to fruition in an exhibition and a book.

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Benfica FC Museum, Portugal. Photograph: ©João Freitas/Benfica FC Museum

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FC Porto Museum, Portugal. Photograph: ©Afonso Nunes/Museu FC Porto

41 BENFICA FC MUSEUM AND FC PORTO MUSEUM Lisbon, Porto, Portugal Candidates 2016 Jahangir Selimkhanov

Nowadays, when any abstract, ephemeral, intangible subject or theme can be turned into a vibrant and captivating museum, it is already an established practice that sport, essentially a dynamic and transient phenomenon, is being interpreted in museums, beyond their initial function of serving as ‘Halls of Fame’. And yes, it would be no surprise to see rows of trophies and medals, countless photos and records (chronicles) of records (greatest achievements), but, for me, there would be a lot of curiosity to see how the story is told. Porto FC, Porto, and Benfica, Lisbon – two leading football clubs of Portugal, eternal rivals on the football field – met in the battle for the 2016 European Museum of the Year Award. By pure coincidence, independently of each other, both came to the decision to submit applications on behalf of their recently opened museums. Judging the same kind of museum, and especially in the same country, was a challenging and compelling task, as making direct comparisons was inevitable in this unique case. Hence the double portrait of these excellent museums, each demonstrating a rigorous approach to studying and exploring the facts and collections, creating a playful and refreshing atmosphere for visitors, whose opinions about the club and their players are evidently welcomed. I hope this ­symbolic act will bring about at least a temporary reconciliation between the fans of these rival clubs! Many of the display approaches adopted by both museums were similar – for example, each has a section that gives visitors the opportunity to pick an imaginary team from the club’s entire history, reflecting the shared culture of the world of ­football-themed virtual gaming. And each has some unique strong points. For example, FC Porto’s strength is its use of contemporary art and design pieces throughout the museum and the stadium, and of animators in the roles of football players, not as a special theatrical session, but as the re-created

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ambiance of football game in motion. Benfica stands out for its first-class restoration and conservation facilities and the glass tower of trophies running through three floors of the museum. However, in the final counting of the ‘scored goals’, the result is a draw. Porto FC museum is masterly in exploring the slogan ‘Invincible’, the blue and white brand colours and images of the dragon and the star for increasing the loyalty to the club and its values. The idea of the invincibility of Porto as a city and as a football club is consistently developed – the citizens of Porto are proud to stress that their city has never surrendered to occupation by foreign forces and this idea is extended to the marketing of the club. Benfica’s marketing efforts are no less sophisticated and successful. The eagle is the powerful symbol of this football team, and Benfica museum visitors can see a couple of real eagles, ‘cult’ birds trained to fly over the stadium before each match. The building of Porto FC Museum is impressively spacious, convenient, well-equipped and outstandingly designed. It is a part of the famous Estádio do Dragão stadium, so fans can visit the museum on match days. A separate building adjacent to the Benfica stadium has the necessary facilities to accommodate its enormous exhibition on three floors, while the club’s cafés and shops are in the area around the stadium, hence they don’t burden the museum’s administration, which anyway gets the funding from the club and doesn’t need to think about additional income from merchandise, catering and retail services. The history of these organisations is deeply linked to the history of their respective cities and the social activities that grew up around the clubs – from voluntary charity work to reading clubs for working class people – which refers to the transformative power of the passion called ‘football’. Porto FC Museum organises well-attended walking tours through the city, featuring memorable places linked to the club’s history, led by a popular TV presenter. The central figure in the displays is the club’s greatly admired president Jorge Pinta da Costa, a living legend, who has led the club to memorable victories for more than 30 years. Benfica pays special attention to an iconic public figure – the legendary striker Eusébio, sometimes called ‘the best football player ever’ and ‘black panther’. In a special corner devoted to him and his specialty shot, interviews are staged with a holographic image of him. In more recent times, as a result of short-term contracts, the players change clubs more often, so they don’t associate themselves emotionally with a particular team and don’t feel any moral obligation to contribute to the museum’s work. Current players therefore don’t appear as the heroes of the narrative, and the glory they get for the club is becoming rather impersonal. Both football clubs are real media empires with their own publishing facilities, TV channels, merchandising lines, active social media presence and very professional marketing strategies. Some broadcasts are organized directly from the Porto FC Museum, and that adds to the growth of attendance figures. In both museums, many digital displays, tables and indicators allow visitors to

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search information about previous games, players, coaches throughout the history of the clubs. The ambition of the museums to achieve excellence is apparent in everything they do. All possible technical means are available in both museums, including multi-screen displays, OLED-screens, holographic videos and interactive touchscreens. In addition to many other applications, in Benfica Museum there is a special station with a moving platform and a surround screen ‘environment’, which is meant to immerse the visitor in the emotional tornado of the tribunes during a match. It was proudly underlined that this multi-screen installation was the largest in Europe to that date. The fact that football clubs decided to invest quite substantially in their museum ventures in itself could be a sign of the increasing role of museums in articulating and delivering messages to the public. At the same time, it shows the clubs’ interest in promoting their history and culture, and the spirit of solidarity and tolerance among their vast audiences, including people who may never before have visited any museum. They manage to re-create the festive and playful atmosphere of energetic striving, joy and fun that attracts so many people to watch football games. In Benfica there is a special corner in the hall with faces of the club volunteers and supporters popping up on the installation (made of tablet-size screens) aimed at celebrating the active involvement of various groups of volunteers in its activities. The potential for violence and hooliganism among fans is a matter of concern for the museums and they do their best to inspire respect to the opposing club by exhibiting materials about it before the game and stressing moments in history when both were involved in joint actions. As a person rather indifferent to football and with zero erudition in this field, I was curious to see how interesting it would be for me to spend several hours in these temples of football worship. I cannot confess that I was converted to this ‘religion’, but from then on, I have a better understanding, through the lens of museology, of how sport could become a source of pride and endurance for large crowds of fans.

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Yaroslavl Art Museum, Russia. Photograph: ©Michael Ryan

42 YAROSLAVL ART MUSEUM Yaroslavl, Russia Candidate 2016 Michael Ryan

Yaroslavl is an ancient city of great importance in Russian history. During the twentieth century, it became an industrial centre.Yaroslavl contains a number of distinguished historic buildings, a great fortified monastery (also a museum but not part of the Yaroslavl Art Museum family – it, too, is very well worth a visit) and numerous churches of historical and architectural importance. In addition to the ancient core, Yaroslavl has interesting and imposing early nineteenthcentury streetscapes, a fine embankment overlooking the River Volga where the main galleries of the art museum are housed in the former Governor’s Palace. The city was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000. The exemplary Yaroslavl Art Museum is a group of buildings within the historical city. In addition to the Governor’s Palace, the seventeenth-century Municipal Palace is dedicated to the display of icons and quirky special exhibitions, and the former Sorokina Mansion, newly restored, is now showing foreign art. The principal art exhibitions are shown in the Governor’s Palace. The restoration of the buildings enabled the museum to open much more of its collections to the public and to do so in significantly more sympathetic lighting conditions. This has proved hugely popular, and gallery talks are always well attended. Its exhibitions are very well presented. The collections are large and are extensively recorded on a digital catalogue. The important collection of drawings, primarily Russian, eighteenth century to contemporary, with some West European, is the largest part. Russian paintings (not counting icons) of eighteenth to twentieth century are also important, and as well as permanent exhibitions they are a source of significant temporary displays. ‘Permanent’ is not quite the correct word, because much of the material is

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rotated through exhibitions that change every three months for sound conservation reasons. It is a policy that also provides a continuous turn-over of things to see and hence good reason for repeat visits. Coins, furniture, prints and books comprise the balance of the collection. The holdings are understandably strong in Russian material which makes it of exceptional interest to the non-Russian visitor. Its depth allows the museum to generate travelling exhibitions, which have been shown in Eastern Europe, regional centres in the Russian Federation and further afield in the United States. The icon collection is strong and contains a number of great masterpieces and a small number of which pre-date the Mongol incursions. Many icons in store are awaiting conservation, but they are kept in good conditions of passive care. Costume, including liturgical vestments, constitutes a small but important proportion of the collections. Exhibitions of contemporary material suggest that new areas of acquisition are under constant consideration. The museum was founded in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution and played a very important role in rescuing works of art, especially of religious art, which might otherwise have been lost in the turmoil. Yaroslavl is justifiably proud of the collections of provincial portraiture, of Russian modernist paintings and of nineteenth- and twentieth-century landscapes, icons and extensive collections of prints and drawings. There are also fine displays of works of the Russian avant-garde together with contemporary paintings, prints, and drawings that are a revelation. Quite apart from their aesthetic value, the paintings and drawings are a rich resource for social history.The log house of the sculptor Alexander Opekushin located in a village about 40 kilometres from the city is part of the museum where classes for schoolchildren are held.The museum also shares responsibility for the famous icon displayed in the beautiful Tolga Convent outside the city. There is an elegant garden at the Governor’s Palace which, in addition to planting inspired by Japanese traditions, also displays sculpture. The various sites of the Yaroslavl Art Museum are an important component of the cultural life of the city. Cruise vessels on the Volga stop at Yaroslavl, and the Museum in the Governor’s Palace recreates for the tourists the experience of a nineteenth-century ball with a fine small orchestra. Dance partners, who are all language students from the university, make the visitors feel at home; the experience, which is very well managed, can be enjoyed in six languages. The museum organises special programmes for children including concerts, often with especially composed music inspired by fairy tales, as well as programmes tailored to the needs of schools. Offerings for adults include concerts presented in co-operation with the Yaroslavl Orchestra and with a chamber music ensemble which performs regularly in the museum. During the summer months, performances of Russian hymns and folk songs by an ensemble of male singers are

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given in the Municipal Palace. These are of high quality, and the harmonies of the Orthodox Church tradition are unforgettable. Strategic relationships with federal institutions enable Yaroslavl to receive loans from major museums such as the Hermitage and in turn to contribute to their exhibitions.They draw widely on scientific and other scholarly expertise within Russia. Yaroslavl has been recognized by the Federal Government as setting and achieving high standards of collections’ recording. In the permanent exhibitions, information is in Russian and English (likewise in its audio-guide) and in Russian only in special exhibitions. Web presence is modest, but clear and easy to follow with a useful archive of previous exhibitions. Exhibits are constantly rotated, normally on a three-month cycle. This is a museum to watch.

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 émorial ACTe, Caribbean Centre of Expressions and Memory of the Slave Trade and Slavery, M France. Photograph: ©MACTe and G. Aricique

43 MÉMORIAL ACTe, CARIBBEAN CENTRE OF EXPRESSIONS AND MEMORY OF THE SLAVE TRADE AND SLAVERY Guadeloupe, France Council of Europe Museum Prize 2017 Jette Sandahl A place of living memory In the place where slave trade ships landed with their human cargo in the harbour of Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe now stand the magnificent and exquisite buildings of Mémorial ACTe, Caribbean Centre of Expressions and Memory of the Slave Trade and Slavery. Over many years there has been a local quest for a monument to this long, abhorrent period in human history. With the creation of the MACTe, this memorial has become not just a living, dynamic place for memory of the slave trade and slavery, but also a commemoration of human resilience and of the unique creole cultures that have evolved in this region. In the MACTe, as a place of living memory, ‘the act of remembrance becomes a commitment to prospective action in the production of a new society’. The grand scale of the site, the park and the beautiful museum buildings is surprising when experienced against the background of the small and sparsely populated islands of Guadeloupe. However, the scale matches both the gravity of the subject matter and the level of ambition of this international centre for research, documentation and dialogue on the history of slavery and its consequences and manifestations today.The MACTe consists of several different parts that come together as a unified whole. An elegant architectural language, rich in metaphors and historic references, ties together a memorial park, permanent galleries and temporary exhibitions, a genealogical resource centre, a media and research library and performing arts and conference facilities. In its visual beauty, artistic excellence and intellectual precision, the museum speaks with authority of slavery as a shared history between the European, the African and the American continents, when the European transatlantic slave trade developed the previously existing slavery on an industrial scale and an unprecedented level of cruelty and exploitation.The museum conveys a sense of

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grief, a validation of the atrocity of the experience of slavery and the slave trade, but more than anything, the dignity of having survived. The large emotions elicited by the displays, the hurt, the anger, fear, distrust, resilience, humour and joy, are carefully balanced. Importantly, overall, the museum situates its audiences firmly in the present rather than in the past, with a sense of responsibility for the present and the future. The act of remembrance as a tool to help build a new society The museum defines its purpose as contributing to ‘creating a collective memory of slavery and healing the abominable wounds associated with slavery, through examining the history of the slave trade, promoting tolerance and diversity’. Tying together the fraught histories of the European, the African and the American continents, the museum explores the power structures, the ethics and contradictory value systems that made the extreme de-humanisation of human beings possible – especially revelatory and poignant in the context of Guadeloupe where slavery was abolished in 1794, re-instated in 1802 and reabolished in 1848, mirroring the political movements and struggles for power in France. While the transatlantic slave trade and slavery define the core of the museum’s content, its scope is broader, as it addresses racism, social exclusion, inequality, discrimination and infringement of human rights in their contemporary, global forms. A new inter- and transdisciplinarity The museum stands out not just for its subject matter, but also for its consistently interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach to research, collecting and exhibitions. The MACTe’s collections have been built from scratch over the period since the project’s initiation. It has been a priority to acquire original objects that address the contested content – not a fully representative collection, but objects powerful enough to act as significant anchors for the narrative. Collections span archaeology and history, anthropology, historic and contemporary paintings, sculptures and other works of art, historical books and publications, manuscripts, prints and engravings, and historic photographs. The narrative framework for the permanent galleries is largely chronological, ending with contemporary forms of trafficking and slavery. The design and exhibition languages are diverse and varied, convincingly combining historic objects, large-scale immersive, scenographic elements, large-scale media and art. The outstanding, powerful and meaningful works of contemporary art imbue the galleries with a breath-taking beauty that heightens one’s sensibility and receptiveness to understanding both the horrors of the subject matter and the

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sense of hope, resilience and survival. Dense information is provided through digital kiosks and audio-guides in the galleries.The media centre and the genealogical resource centre provide ways of making additional information accessible, facilitating and empowering people doing their own research on topics of special interest to them. Democratisation of culture As ‘a tool for local development for culture and democratisation of culture’ the MACTe runs a rich programme of activities of education, performing arts, conferences, dialogues and debates. Generous opening hours into the evenings support the unique combination of museum exhibitions, performing arts and cultural meeting place. As part of efforts towards urban renewal, the museum was built in one of Guadeloupe’s most economically disadvantaged and socially deprived areas. Particular initiatives aim to form relationships within this immediate neighbourhood and to encourage its residents to participate in the museum. Another social responsibility strategy is recruiting staff from socially and educationally deprived areas, and providing them with the necessary continuous training to enhance their professional skills. Bold, unflinching and gracious The MACTe deals with contentious issues that in most contexts have been and still are muted, silenced and tabooed, and deals with them with both emotional grace and intellectual courage. It gives a bold and unflinching, but extremely generous presentation of the historic and current repercussions of the slave trade and slavery. The museum has the scale and potential to become, over time, an important intellectual Caribbean gathering point for research and further exploration on the themes of slavery, the slave trade and human rights, as well as for the museological communication of this kind of contentious content. Dealing with the slave trade and with slavery should, obviously, not be solely the responsibility of the people enslaved. And yet, only very few European museums deal in any depth with the issue of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, despite the fact that most European countries, directly or indirectly, were involved in or benefitted from the wealth amassed through the transatlantic trade. The MACTe has the potential and expertise to become a pivot point, providing both inspiration and guidance to European museums in unearthing and addressing these issues in research and communication. From the perspective of a white European visitor like me, the museum provokes and inspires the reflections and self-reflections one has to have in the twenty-first century on the terms of accountability and responsibility relative to these issues, and for a museum professional it provides a multitude of roadmaps into the fraught mazes of de-colonisation.

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 useum of the First President of Russia Boris Yeltsin, Russia. Photograph: ©Presidential Center of M Boris Yeltsin,Yekaterinburg, Russia

44 MUSEUM OF THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA BORIS YELTSIN Yekaterinburg, Russia The Kenneth Hudson Award 2017 Jahangir Selimkhanov

Clearly articulated and imaginatively presented, this museum tells the story of the rise of democratic trends in late-Soviet/post-Soviet Russia through a museum ‘biopic’ of a pivotal political figure. As is to be expected in dealing with recent history, the interpretation cannot be absolutely non-partisan or to please everyone. Nevertheless, the Yeltsin Museum manages to maintain a balance between serving as a memorial to the person of great significance, providing a chronicle of the most dramatic period in the lives of current generations, and promoting the key concept of ‘freedom’. The museum surprises with extraordinary multimedia and impressive exhibition design as well as producing a dynamic programme of public lectures, classes, performances. The museum seems to meet a real societal demand, not only because it touches upon recent history, but because, at the same time, it serves as a reminder of the thorny path of democracy in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Empire, and also celebrates the personal responsibility taken and the courage shown by people like Boris Yeltsin. There is one meaningful, even symbolic, detail: the names of three victims of street fighting during the coup d’état of August 1991 are boldly presented in the exhibition, with photographs of these ‘ordinary’ guys and their families’ letters to Yeltsin in the chest of drawers in the reconstruction of his private apartment. The museum represents an excellent example of how the events of recent political history can be turned into an exciting and intriguing epic story, which, is on one hand, scrupulously documented, and, on the other, artistically compelling. The cornerstones of the universal ideals of democracy and freedom are properly accentuated in the permanent exhibition. Moreover, the hints hidden in some facts indirectly lead the visitor to draw personal conclusions – like Yeltsin’s note on the necessity of the timely transfer of power, or the link

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between the arrival in government of the young crew of reformist economists and the graphs/figures showing economic growth a few years later. In terms of post-Yeltsin developments in Russia, locating these statements in the recent past may imply that democracy is already triumphant in this country, but it might also serve as a strong encouragement for those who believe that democratic values require constant re-assessment by society. This brave and powerful museum fosters remembrance, gratitude and contemplation, simultaneously giving hope to many people in Russia who contributed to establishing democracy in the 1990s. The building is very spacious, with convenient access to facilities and a friendly, relaxed atmosphere. The outdoor light show on the media façade not only creates superb visibility for the museum but becomes a strong visual accent for the whole area of the riverside promenade. It is apparent that enormous work was done to collect a great range of materials from many sources – the traditional ‘cult’ stuff like presidential cars and the official gifts to the president are represented here, along with letters from ordinary people and staple consumer goods from the 1990s which have become for the Soviet people a positive sign of the opening of Russia to the world. The famous Russian screenwriter Pavel Lungin formulated a storyline for the museum, focused on seven days that marked turning points in the political career of Boris Yeltsin and consequently for millions of Russian citizens: We Are Waiting for Change; August Coup d’État; Unpopular Measures; Birth of the Constitution; Vote or Lose (including the Chechen war); Presidential Marathon (including his health problems); and Farewell to the Kremlin. This linear journey through time is preceded by an account of the troubled ups and downs of significant events in the country during the period, setting the stage for the appearance of the protagonist – this is the large introductory area of the museum exhibition entitled ‘Labyrinth’. The passing of historical time ‘freezes’ in the Hall of Freedom, which is staged as a heavenly, metaphysical point of achieved aspiration. It is also, however, suited for honest talks and the contemplation of common values and social well-being. The international museum design company Ralph Appelbaum Associates created immersive interiors and impressive sets and props for story-telling – among them the Convention Hall of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the living room in the Yeltsins’ apartment, a grocery shop, a TV commentator’s booth, the President’s office in the Kremlin. These are scrupulously supported by myriads of documents, photographs, excerpts from speeches, television interviews, music videos, films, including amateur documentary materials. Interpretations in some cases may look one-sided, but this is inevitable in a museum that focuses on the exceptional role of one person. Even though this can seem overdone (so that his life story appears as a sort of heroic saga), the script of the visitor’s journey is nevertheless clearly structured and boldly staged.

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New media are represented in the museum in abundance – in the Labyrinth section numerous screens and sound zones are skilfully applied to create a wacky, noisy, high-speed environment. Some multimedia stations deserve separate praise, especially the introductory animation film about the history of democracy in Russia resembling the aesthetics of computer games popular among younger visitors, as well as the video with the text of the new Russian Constitution read out by different voices – of famous Russian media personalities including writers, television journalists, actors and singers. The museum is well attended. The spacious conference facility, bookshop and attractive café are almost always crowded. The museum staff use various means to attract different social groups and ages – from film screenings, special interest guided tours, quiz game trails, scholarly lectures and book launches to culinary classes for toddlers. It also mounts superbly curated, very representative temporary exhibitions – the one I caught during my visit to Yekaterinburg was about non-conformist visual art (mostly Russian) of the period from 1960 to 2000, reflecting the serious work carried out beyond the core exhibition project. The Museum of the First President of Russia Boris Yeltsin has become an important force for keeping alive the memories of the recent past as a guiding landmark in nurturing new generations in the spirit of democratic values. In a recent series of events in the museum to commemorate 25 years since the start of first war in Chechnya, this difficult moment in the biography of Yeltsin and in contemporary history of Russia was subject to unbiased and honest analysis, representing different points of view, including children’s diaries and drawings. The evolving content of education and outreach programmes and events in the longer run will clarify for the museum itself its fine line in serving the ideals of political pluralism, independent economic development, freedom of expression and responsible citizenship.

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The Old Town Museum, Denmark. Photograph: ©Thorsten Overgaard

45 THE OLD TOWN MUSEUM Aarhus, Denmark Special Commendation 2017 Jouetta van der Ploeg

Urban history Den Gamle By (The Old Town) is a national open-air museum that explores urban history and culture in Denmark through three centuries. The museum consists of 85 historic houses relocated from all over the country. It applied for the European Museum of the Year Award for 2017 with the creation of a whole new town district (Daily Life in Welfare Denmark), focusing on the postwar period. There is an entire neighbourhood with 1974 as the key-year, with apartments, shops, even a gynaecological clinic and a jazz bar. The underground hands-on exhibition Aarhus Story opened in 2017. Moreover, the museum has purchased and documented homes, shops, cityscapes and sounds from the year 2014 in order to create a modern district. The buildings are not re-erected yet. This will happen in connection with the building of a new main entrance, and both parts are due to open in 2021/22. Bringing the 1970s to life The 1970s neighbourhood reflects a Danish town based on the year 1974. Society changed radically in the 1970s, when many Danes wanted to be liberated from the norms of traditional life. People started to live together in communes. Women became more independent and many lived on their own. The purpose of the reconstruction of the district was not primarily the preservation of old buildings, but the opportunity to tell stories of urbanisation, of daily life, living conditions and domestic interior design styles in Denmark during the seventies – and the decades before. One can visit homes that represent the life of a single mother, a nuclear family, a middle-class working couple, a commune and six Turkish immigrant workers, amongst others. The interiors are narratives

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with a defined purpose and a specific perspective. Each interior tells a different story, presenting people of contrasting social and cultural backgrounds. This huge project started with Poul’s Radio and TV shop, which was rebuilt in collaboration with the original owner and a team of young enthusiasts.This is not a shop that is two dimensional, but lives, as it is an exact copy of the original, including style elements from previous decades. They are not idealised period sets, but show how people accumulated possessions and illustrate change over time. The same holds true for every other reconstructed home, building, shop, bar, all being based on real people´s stories and objects representing daily life. Open-mindedness and critical engagement The museum shows an absolute willingness and open-mindedness to embrace and facilitate initiatives from Aarhus inhabitants. The Old Town documented and collected the life and ‘shed’ of a homeless person on his request and offered him a temporary home in one of the museum’s backyards (winter and spring 2012/2013). In 2014–2015, this project was followed up by community engagement in a large run-down immigrant area to help people to set up their own museum. In March 2016 the museum opened a Somali house on the initiative of six Somali women. ‘The immigrant’ has become a contemporary European archetype and the presentation of immigration in museums and displays runs the risk of portraying the individuals as either happy, hybrid citizens, or alternatively, of supporting a division between immigrants and the long-settled, with the latter as the implicit norm (McDonald 2008, pp. 56–57). Critical engagement can avoid the either/or scenario, as The Old Town illustrates. Through the process of collecting, shopping and furnishing, the curators worked closely with – in this case – the Somali women, and learned much about their way of life, their thoughts behind the selection of various items and what they represented. At the same time, the museum provided a minority group with a sense of political recognition and a sense that they are part of contemporary Danish society. In time, other immigrant groups will be asked to refurbish this flat. New collecting The Old Town Museum truly reinvented itself, changing from a rather traditional open-air museum to a contemporary institution that wholeheartedly embraces collection development which – according to a more participative paradigm – can be described as ‘new collecting’. That is to say, The Old Town participates as an equal partner within a cultural community and acts as a platform for individuals and groups to collect their own heritage with the intention to give people the opportunity to share their stories, and explore their changing meanings.

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Truthful Danish society, like all others, has its dark side, and a museum should not flinch from such edgy topics. One example is the fact that the Greenlandic population was subject to a series of transgressions during the colonial era. The Old Town, true to its mission to be ‘historically correct instead of being politically correct’, addresses this issue delicately and truthfully in the Student from Greenland room where the story of Helene Thiesen unfolds. Social relevance The Old Town believes that museums, in order to maintain their relevance in society, will have to address some of the big issues of modern society. One of these is the marginalisation of large groups of people.The dementia programme and the programmes for kids and youngsters with mental disabilities are impressive, inclusive and sensitive and have influenced museums all over the world as best practice. Sustainable participation and relevance to contemporary Europe The National Open-Air Museum of Urban History and Culture gives a voice to people in all that it does. It continues to develop animated cultural and civic spaces that provide meaningful and engaging experiences for all visitors, drawing heavily from contemporary material. Sustainable participation requires life-long institutional commitment and asks for an open attitude among museums and museum professionals (Meijer-van-Mensch 2012, p. 151). The Old Town has decided that – in the years to come – it will continue to address relevant topics of contemporary society in an institutional and participatory way. The society the museum engages with is not just Denmark’s, but also Europe’s, including the hardships and vulnerability it is experiencing today. By bringing the 1970s to life and engaging with new Danes in a sustainable participatory way, this museum demonstrates a commitment to truthfulness and critical engagement which is exceptional. References McDonald, S. (2008). Museums Europe – negotiating heritage, Anthropological Journal of European Cultures. 17(2) 56–57. Meijer-van-Mensch, L. (2012). Embracing participatory collecting: a new way of defining professionalism, in J. Battesti (Ed.), Quel reste-t-il du present? Collecter le contemporain dans les musées de société. Bourdeaux. Le Festin.

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Museum of Confluences, France. Photograph: ©Marlen Mouliou

46 MUSEUM OF CONFLUENCES Lyon, France Special Commendation 2017 Karmele Barandiaran

The Museum of Confluences is a museum created in 2014. It is located at the intersection of two rivers, the Rhône and the Saône, and connects new highdensity suburbs where many young people live, with the city centre. With an independent board and management team, the museum is funded mainly by the Metropolis of Lyon and the Rhone Department, and it is the largest and most influential cultural centre in what is the second largest urban area of France. It takes part in the urban and social renewal project of the Confluence District. The museum is an essential factor in the present-day urban regeneration project because it links the different neighbourhoods of Lyon and provides a social and cultural leisure space for the inhabitants of the city and the region. The modern and spectacular building of 21,500 m2 was designed by the Austrian architectural studio Coop Himmelb(l)au, and is very contemporary in its design and materials. The main access is through long exterior stairways, and spectacular engineering gives the building a sense of magnificence. The huge hall welcoming visitors is an absolutely astonishing, functional and airy space with large windows that connect with the outside landscape. In order to complete the visit, an attractive garden was created at the rear of the building between both rivers and offers an interesting place for recreation. Once inside, the open, transparent and wide space of the hall provides a counterpoint to the cosy atmosphere of the exhibitions located on the top floor, which is accessed by long escalators, provoking great expectations among visitors. The museum is based on the collections formed by the Natural History Museum (a Cabinet of Curiosities created in 1772), the Musée Guimet (founded in 1879), and the Musée Colonial of Lyon (created in 1927) – a total of 2.2 million objects. These are organised according to three major disciplines: Natural Sciences (Palaeontology, Mineralogy, Osteology, Entomology, Malacology

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and Invertebrates, Vertebrates), Social Sciences (Archaeology, Ethnography and Anthropology: Africa, Oceania, America, Asia, Europe, Egyptian animal mummies), and Science and Technology, related to the observation of nature. However, the new institution transcends the traditional classification of museums and offers a new vision of the confluences of collections to build new discourses. The museum addresses issues related to the origins of the Earth, the origins of life, the relationship of humans with biodiversity, their way of organising life in society in it, as well as the vital questions that concern human beings from birth to death and the beyond. The permanent exhibition is divided into four spaces presenting, through 3,600 high quality objects, suggestive topics that have interested and troubled human beings over time: Origins: Stories of the World: What are our origins? Species:The Web of Life: Who are we and what is our place in the world? Societies: Human Theatre: What is our capacity for organisation, exchange and creation? Eternities,Visions of the Beyond: What happens after life?

Without losing a sense of the past, the presentation of the objects has a contemporary look and offers narratives that involve visitors. In general, the atmosphere of the exhibitions is intimate and warm. All have thematic structures that are very well defined and coherent with each other, supported by interdisciplinary collections. Scientific topics are sometimes integrated with contemporary artistic creations and a clear approach to interpretation is present all the time. This skill is especially apparent in the remarkable ‘Origins’ exhibition, which shows the origin and evolution of life, including humans, where replicas of early humans and monkeys are placed close to a contemporary Inuit artwork symbolising the story of the creation of the world. Excellent scenography is a trademark of this museum and each exhibition has been created by different designers, offering visitors a variety of experiences. This diversity of presentation can stimulate the interest of different types of audiences, enabling them to pace themselves, give more attention and inspiring the desire for knowledge. The technological approach is also very high level, with a big variety of original interactives and multi-media devices aimed at the different audiences. In addition to the permanent exhibition, there are five to seven temporary exhibitions each year, which present different and interdisciplinary approaches, renewing the interest for different local and foreign audiences. In general, they are exhibitions on cultures of the world and themes such as Antarctica, African potters, or footwear, but they also address challenging issues such as prison and poison. It is a museum designed for people, which is open to everybody, and where all sciences engage in dialogue to better understand the world in which we live. The public quality of the museum is very high, since exhibitions, services, activities and management are oriented towards the public, taking a great variety of

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audiences into consideration. In this sense, the museum is aware of the profile of its visitors, 75 per cent of whom come from the region, between 6 to ten per cent from abroad and the remainder from other French regions (2015 data).The physical accessibility is absolute (in spite of the immense stairway of the main entrance) and intellectual accessibility is key. With many types of resources to help understand the issues, it is worth noting the human mediation programme in the exhibitions called ‘A time for you’, presented by the museum staff, who explain them to individual visitors at specific times. In addition to the collections that were born in and grew from the eighteenth century, the commitment to the present is clear as it is a space that promotes reflection and debate on issues that affect citizens and society nowadays. Furthermore, the museum, aware of the cultural diversity in the city, creates activities and events, engaging different kinds of people and communities, through a solid cultural and scientific programme based on three concepts – World Cultures, Science and Biodiversity. A visit to this museum is an enjoyable experience. The general impression from the beginning is that one is in a special and important place where there could be something interesting to see and do. During the visit, it is very common to see visitors sharing reflections and observations with each other, making this a place of connection and relationship between people. The name Confluences reflects the whole philosophy of the museum: the natural confluence between two rivers, the confluence between a spectacular open building and the intimate exhibition spaces, the interdisciplinary confluence between Natural and Human History collections and the confluence of time, between the past, the present and the future. The Museum of Confluences provides a model and an inspiration for rethinking museums for the twenty-first century.

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Silesian Museum, Poland. ©Muzeum Śląskie in Katowice/Marcin Czechowicz

47 SILESIAN MUSEUM Katowice, Poland Special Commendation 2017 Marlen Mouliou

From the hard power of the coalmines to the soft power of culture I arrived at Katowice on a Friday afternoon in late October 2016. I had flown to the nearest airport, and on my way to the city through beautiful countryside roads covered with bronze-leaved trees, I talked with the young taxi driver about the recent history of the city and the changes it faced after the closure of the local coalmine industry. An enthusiastic ambassador for the museum, she stressed how it helped the city, how well it was used, and how it added to the complete re-branding of Katowice and the region. The region has undergone radical changes in the last 25 years with the end of both its heavy industries and communism. In a city that has been experiencing progressive development thanks to a service-based economy, the Silesian Museum stands out as one of Katowice’s biggest investments. Gifted with amazing collections gathered throughout its unsettled past and with an impressive new architectural complex at the deeply evocative site of the former Kopalni Ferdynand-Katowice coal mine where it was relocated in June 2015, the museum signposts the past industrial heritage, the present creative talent and the promising prospective of the region of southern Silesia. The transformation of the former coalmine complex, that operated for 176 years, into a hub of cultural and creative industries, just 16 years after its final closure in 1999, is an exemplary case of urban regeneration through culture. Its finely executed conceptual, architectural and operational design can certainly be a point of reference for museum professionals and place branders as regards the soft power museums can generate for cities.This was the spirit and vision of

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its management team in 2016 (with experienced and talented arts administrator Alicja Knast leading it), when the Silesian Museum applied for the EMYA award and was eventually granted a Special Commendation for the strength and quality of its diverse public activities. A museum of many virtues The museum operates in two different locations in the city, which are approximately 15 feet walk apart. The main complex with the permanent exhibition space is huge. It tells the story of the Upper Silesia and its people, and how their fate was shaped by industrialisation, by the development of cities, by wars, power struggles and numerous crises, by the struggles of the working class as well as continuous social changes and eventually the fall of communism. The museum’s scope, the quality of the permanent exhibitions and the architectural excellence of the newly adapted subterranean chambers seemed all equally impressive. Some of the elements that particularly appealed to me were how the harsh history of the region and of the coal mine site shaped the contours of the core museum narrative as well as how affective was the power of the personal stories connected to the coal mines. I was impressed with the new museum architectural complex and surrounding park with a superb combination of heritage buildings and new installations. Their materiality playfully created dialogues with the surrounding cityscape during both day and night and reintegrated a previously harsh grey zone of industrial production into the modern fabric of the city. Another of the museum’s strength is its proximity to other key urban landmarks (e.g. Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, International Conference Centre, Katowice Sports Arena) with which the museum organically connects through a large landscaped space that sparkles cultural brilliance in the city. More can be noted about its success in creating a new museum self from an old ‘mould’. Through its core narrative, the museum presented how Silesia became a multicultural place, a bridge between the East and the West; it highlighted the Silesian heritage and the Silesian dialect but also connected the Silesian character and historical fate with broader European social and economic developments and historical events that shaped European history as a whole. It promoted heritage-based creativity and cultural democracy to its local communities by forming a special collection of Non-Professional Art. And it placed a special emphasis on interpreting its collections. All galleries were based on quality design and benefited from the creative use of digital media. The largest of the galleries ‘The Illumination of History: Upper Silesia through the Ages’ felt like a separate museum on its own due to the diversity and historical span of authentic objects on display and the information-rich impressive contexts the objects were set in. The narrative focused

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on the tripartite nature of Silesian culture, which was based on the religious, hard-working and family-centred life of the local people. The museum has been instantly loved and appraised by them, as I had the opportunity to attest by speaking to a few locals during my short visit in the city. The number of visits (255,000 in 2015) was a good indication of its popularity right from the start. The museum has also built alliances with former miners who had lost their jobs in 1999 but today act as the ‘most reliable and bestinformed guides to the former coal mine area’ (to use the museum’s words).The fact that historical buildings in palatial-industrial style have been used as adjunct museum spaces for other purposes, from purely cultural to more entrepreneurial functions (like the beautiful restaurant) also reflects the museum’s thoughtful repositioning in the city’s life. I found the museum welcoming, evocative, immersive, informative, creative and fun, almost dreamlike. I had a great time as a lone visitor but I could sense that those who visited in groups had also a great social experience together.The museum had a new-media based section for kids and for adults with interesting quizzes that promoted interaction between the visitors in a pleasant historybased social environment.Young adult visitors used the museum as a cool social space for an evening out. In the outside area of the park, the overall space, co-shaped by the old industrial structures, the large transparent glass buildings illuminated in the dark and the remaining ghost-like industrial monuments, was absolutely mesmerising. These were all indications of the power, evocative and transformative, of the museum. The text that ended the exhibition ‘The Illumination of History: Upper Silesia through the Ages’ summarised effectively much of the above: this land was like a bridge allowing the inhabitants of Eastern and Western Europe to contact each other and exchange both economic and cultural experiences, while enriching Silesia at the same time. However, as a valuable region in many aspects it was often seen as a prize by competing superpowers and ideologies, while attempted to appropriate it turning the region into a burden land and a battlefield. Regardless of its changing roles, the region has always been a place where countries and people can meet. The turning point of 1989 began the transformation process for the economic and social aspects of the region. Over the past 25 years, Upper Silesia has become one large construction site… Are we, after two centuries of industrialization, facing the beginning of a new era? An era with a clean and futuristic IT industry symbolised by the ground-breaking processor developed by a Bytom-based company? Will the future of Upper Silesia also be a part of your future?

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 arubi National Museum of Photography, Albania. Photograph: ©Christian Richters and Blerta M Hoçia

48 MARUBI NATIONAL MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY Shkodra, Albania Candidate 2017 Marlen Mouliou

The Marubi brand Visiting the Marubi National Museum of Photography in summer 2016 was one of the early missions I was assigned as an EMYA judge. This meant that I would need to travel across Albania to reach Shkodra, a city with a long history, a large population of students and easy access to the Adriatic Sea and the Alps. To plan my first visit there, I took advice from an Albanian friend who lived in Athens. She was not familiar with the existence of the museum but felt instantly connected with the name ‘Marubi’. She showed me a personal photographic treasure in black and white, kept in her cell phone, an image of her mother at a young age taken in the renowned Marubi studio. Her mother would have been one of thousands of Albanians who chose to have a special memento created in this studio. The Marubi brand has been very strong within Albania. The work of the Marubi dynasty (through its three main figures, grandfather Pietro, father Kel and son Gegë) resonates with the history of Albanian people who hold their family memories in pictures. The brand also serves as an important ambassador for Albanian culture in the wider world. The earliest items of the collection are the first pictures taken in the studio founded by Pietro Marubi (an Italian citizen immigrant to Albania) in 1856. The latest date from the 1970s–1980s, when the archive was nationalised and turned from private to state property during the communist regime. The collection is of unique significance for the history of photography and for the local and regional history captured in the surviving images (500,000 glass plate negatives and much more archival material), whose good state of preservation and richness of content is remarkable. Each one of the Marubi photographers had been a pioneer in his own era and in his own way. Gegë Marubi, the last in the line, was a key figure in keeping the whole collection intact by donating it

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to the Albanian state, which in exchange designated him to be the keeper of the family archive till his death in 1984. ‘A museum can change a city!’ The Marubi National Museum of Photography is the first museum of its kind in Albania with one of the largest collections of photographs in the Balkan region and in Europe. Its foundation dates back to 1970 and in its current form it reopened in 2016. The museum’s vision is to act as a vehicle of social change in the city and the wider region, using its rich past and the multiplicity of connections it can build with the local people as a driving force for a better future. The motto encapsulating its vision is: ‘A museum can change a city!’ During the first days after the museum opened, personal family photos from the archive went viral on Facebook, in users’ personal pages and profile pictures, proof that the Marubi Studio had been a social experience open to all citizens. In the words of its museum director, Lucjan Bedeni: the new Marubi aimed to go to the community and build a community around itself in order to sensitize generations about a common cultural and historical heritage through the images of people, landscapes, architecture, events, tradition, costumes.

The museum aimed to become a cultural hub that would bring all positive forces of the city together to enhance the development of tourism and promote creative synergies with other cultural organisations in the wider Balkan region. It also aimed to develop national policies for the protection, conservation, restoration, exhibition, research and promotion of cultural heritage photography. Additionally, it hoped to promote a more sensitive and informed citizenship, using the Marubi Photo Archive as a springboard for encouraging a better appreciation of cultural and natural resources and of how cities and people have changed in the course of time. A museum reinvents its present through its past The Marubi Museum exists in two forms; a compact physical one at the very heart of the historic city centre, and a digital one on the web (the ‘MaViMu project’) where over 100,000 glass negatives are digitised and categorised in different themes such as animals, architecture, ethnography, events, landscapes, objects, societies and movements, schooling, etc. The physical Marubi Museum occupies a remodelled historic building, originally designed by the Albanian architect Kolë Idromeno. Rescued through a restoration project funded by the Albanian government and European Union, the new museum building resulted from an international architectural

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competition. Proposing a dialogue between tradition and modernity, the winning team designed a modern, functional, compact, energy-saving building, which respected the volume of the original edifice and transformed it into a modern creative space. The design is based on an abstract pattern, inspired by the geometry of the aperture of a camera that opens and closes to control the light. This pattern is also used in the facades of three autonomous exhibition ‘functional boxes’ on the first floor. Inside each of these a different story is told about the Marubi dynasty and the history of Albanian photography: the photo-studio of Pietro Marubi’s ‘riteshkronja’, the darkroom of Kel Marubi; and the Gegë Marubi archive.The ‘functional boxes’ follow different periods of national history traced through the images. The narrative approach is compelling as the photographs speak out the voices of the Marubi photographers who in their own time wrote detailed descriptions for every picture and archived them with care. The flexibility of the boxes’ design allows the museum to periodically change the exhibits on display – a really nice sustainable solution. Technology is used in a discreet manner as a means to enhance the historical value, aura and materiality of the Marubi archive. A sign ‘take your picture #Marubi’ encourages visitors to tweet their Marubi experiences and create a wider movement of support for the Marubi story and its relevance to society. The Marubi Museum strategic plan was developed around several key axes whose aims were to enhance research on the archive, enrich the collection through collecting of contemporary artistic work, better preserve the collection, strengthen the social responsibility of the museum through educational activities for diverse audiences, create a wide network of communities of practice, and develop the international reputation and visibility of the museum. A museum team in the Marubi genealogy chain Today, the Marubi National Museum of Photography is entrusted with the duty of keeping the memory of the Marubi work alive and produce meaningful intergenerational connections with it. Its aim of becoming a hub of innovation through cultural practice is realised in diverse creative ways for the sake of redevelopment in the area and the neighbouring regions. A number of innovations, institutional, curatorial and social/educational have been introduced and provide a paradigm of excellence for other museums in the country and the region. In the year of its EMYA candidacy, the Marubi Museum did not get any prize. Yet, its future was already pictured bright and promising. Its small team, young in age but highly qualified, full of passion and drive to innovate, was committed to adding another inspiring phase in the long genealogy of the Marubi dynasty, acting as its worthy fourth generation of keepers of photographic collections and memories and as their re-interpreters in the contemporary world.

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War Childhood Museum, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Photograph: ©War Childhood Museum

49 WAR CHILDHOOD MUSEUM Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina Council of Europe Museum Prize 2018 Marlen Mouliou

Inspiring and memorable at first sight In summer 2017, when I was assigned to visit the War Childhood Museum as the first judge and started studying its application portfolio, one of the elements that immediately captured my attention was the museum’s name and visual identity. With its genuineness, boldness yet also ambiguity, it made a powerful statement about war childhood memories and the special soul of what proved to be a truly unique project. But there is often a discrepancy between the image and the reality. In the case of the War Childhood Museum, the site visit confirmed and enhanced what was already notable in its robust and finely prepared application form: this was a young project with a big heart, instantly inspiring and memorable as a human-centred museum that tells the stories of the children who grew up during the 1992–1995 Bosnian War, through donated personal items and their contributors’ descriptions. Although located in Sarajevo with its soul very much rooted in the city and its collective memory of war, the museum’s aim was broader than its territory: it was to study and present the collective multi-layered experience of childhood in times of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in other major conflict and post-conflict zones in the world, and thus fill a gap by documenting war experiences from children’s perspective. Through this focus, the museum has set itself the high goal of becoming a platform for communal healing and reconciliation and an effective medium for projecting children’s creative resilience and growing into functional adults, contrary to pervasive stereotypical representations of kids as faceless and passive war victims.

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A museum as a method for collective healing The museum opened in early 2017 in a small building, inventively transformed to accommodate all museum functions in a compact way. Before long, in its quiet neighbourhood on the periphery of the touristic trail of Sarajevo, it became a hub of creative production for the neighbourhood kids. The story of the museum started in 2010 when young, charismatic and resourceful Jasminko Halilović (who was four years old at the outbreak of Bosnian war), issued an open call via a webpage for condensed, 160-character answers to the question: ‘What was a war childhood for you?’ He collected over thousand replies and in 2013 he edited them into a book. In 2015, Selma Tanović, a medical anthropologist, and Amina Krvavac, a psychologist and children’s rights activist (and later executive director of the War Childhood Museum), teamed up with Jasminko and led the creation of this crowdsourced and nowadays multi-award-winning museum project. The project has been widely and enthusiastically supported by a number of grassroots campaigns, which made its realisation possible despite many obstacles. Since its opening, its operation has been grounded on three pillars: research, exhibition and education. Gradually, it became a unique documentary and oral history archive for childhood war memories with dozens of citizens sharing their personal stories with the museum researchers who record them diligently for future reference. The War Childhood Museum prides itself on being ‘a rare safe space in a still-divided country where open dialogue can take place, shared narratives can emerge, and improved interethnic relations can take root’. The policy statement on tackling trauma through museum practice issued by the museum was indicative of the social role it endeavoured to play. Its founder, director and staff, not museum professionals by training, have been keen promoters of the idea that museums can serve as sites for individual and communal healing, catharsis, and reconciliation. They see museums as places that can foster peace-making through continuous dialogue, acts of empathy and the provision of inclusive narratives.This was especially important in the post-war Bosnian context where many of the war traumas have not yet been processed and ethnically segregated schooling continues to be a reality. In order to heal and not re-traumatise, the museum adopted an interdisciplinary approach by combining the diverse expertise among its staff and volunteers, which include social anthropologists and mental health specialists, psychologists, human and children’s rights experts. It is indeed an accessible institution, both physically and intellectually, for a diverse public audience. Special attention is given to today’s youth, through peace-building workshops held at elementary and middle schools across the country, and regular on-site thematic events for children and their families. Classroom workshops have also taken place in cities and towns outside Sarajevo (e.g. on both sides of the ethnically divided city of Mostar), in order to reach audiences across regional, ethnic, and political lines. Internationally, the museum’s

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director and staff are committed to presenting the project at universities and public forums, and to connecting with members of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s diaspora. Their vision is to encourage conceptual weaving between past childhood memories of war with current ones and through these threads offer cultural remedies to people of diverse backgrounds, victims of contemporary wars. Connected primarily with the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina but also with the contemporary refugee crisis, the project has both historical and contemporary European relevance. To this end, the museum has partnered with human rights activists and organizations from Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey to produce exhibits on today’s children of war, to be presented in different venues across Europe. As the museum officials stated in their application ‘in highlighting children’s individual stories of tragedy and resilience, the War Childhood Museum expresses universal themes that are today equally vital for Europe as a whole’. Its ambition is to grow into the world’s largest collection and archive dedicated to the experience of growing up in war. The War Childhood Museum’s permanent exhibit showcases 50 contributor-submitted stories and their accompanying items against a minimalist backdrop with lighting, which creates an evocative ambiance. This aesthetic echoes the museum’s overarching philosophy of not imposing any rigid ideological narrative on the collection. All texts are very short and allow contributors to speak for themselves and visitors to reflect on personal stories told. The objects’ juxtapositions are not random. The museum’s conscious choice not to provide historical context through introductory texts may be seen by those unfamiliar with the Bosnian war as an omission. Yet, most of the visitors do not seem to bother and accept the museum’s decision to avoid what are still highly contested histories and to allow the biographical stories to set the tone. A success story with a sustainable future The War Childhood Museum testifies to the power of private, socially sustainable museums that address wider societal problems. In 2018, the museum was awarded the Council of Europe Museum Prize, in recognition of its focus on peace, reconciliation and the value of cultural diversity. Anyone interested in following the museum’s development can receive regular updates through its online Newsletter and website, which is very detailed about the project and its ideas. In 2020, the museum is planning to open a new space in the vicinity of the Museum’s permanent exhibition and organise exhibitions outside Bosnia and Herzegovina. The War Childhood Museum is a telling example of what museums can do to change people’s lives and make our world a better one to live in. It is also a fortunate museum, for its operation is daily driven by a team of passionate, knowledgeable, highly committed people whose work is grounded on four key values: social entrepreneurship, togetherness, trust and equality.

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Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, The Netherlands. Photograph: ©Marlen Mouliou

50 RIJKSMUSEUM BOERHAAVE Leiden, The Netherlands European Museum of the Year Award 2019 Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

Tucked away in a courtyard, a short walk from Leiden’s central train station, is a museum whose exterior belies what lies within. A lover of all kinds of museums, I  must confess an affinity for museums that retain the magic of the Wunderkammer, while bringing the story they tell fully into the present. Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, a museum devoted to the history of science and medicine, is a case in point. Brought together in such an intelligent way, the exquisite scientific instruments, rarities both natural and technological, and beautiful works of art evoke the sense of wonder that excited scientists in the past and that continues to inspire them today. By being a museum of science and at the same time a museum of the history of science, Rijksmuseum Boerhaave presents not only the certainties of science, but also the ways that uncertainty unleashes the scientific imagination. This is a place where curiosity meets awe. This museum has come a long way from 1907, when the idea for such an institution first arose. It opened in 1931, became a national museum in 1947, and was renamed Rijksmuseum Boerhaave in 1967.The museum finally moved in 1991 to its current building, originally St Caecilia’s convent, dating from 1440, and later home to the first academic hospital in Northern Europe. The museum is appropriately located in this building, where Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738), a celebrated physician, scientist, and humanist, taught medicine to his students at the bedside of his patients 300 years ago, and in Leiden, an old university town and prominent science centre, with 13 Nobel Prize winners to its credit. A major renovation of the historic building and redesign of the permanent exhibition began in 2014 and was completed in 2017. Created in collaboration with modern scientists, in fields ranging from medicine to astrophysics, Rijksmuseum Boerhaave highlights connections of the history of science to the Netherlands and specifically to Leiden, from the Dutch

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golden age to the present. Visitors are introduced to the main themes of the exhibition in a reconstruction of Leiden University’s 1594 anatomical theatre – Boerhaave himself would have taught in just such a theatre. The dissection of a corpse that would have taken place on a slab at the base of this theatre is presented here as an animated projection of the human body, its anatomy rendered transparent by x-ray, rather than opened with a scalpel – on occasion a taxidermist actually dissects an animal, one that was killed by accident. The digital anatomy lesson is followed by a 360-degree immersive multimedia presentation, floor to ceiling, of the history of science over the last five centuries. More than a thousand scientific instruments, specimens, models, paintings, maps, books, and works of art from the museum’s outstanding collection of almost 120,000 artefacts, spanning five centuries, come together in this cabinet of treasures. They are as astonishing to visitors today as they were to those who created, used, and collected them. Among them are the oldest heliocentric planetarium in the world, moon rocks from the Apollo 17 mission, and objects associated with Nobel laureates, to mention only the fountain pen with which Albert Einstein wrote his theory of relativity.Working closely with modern scientists, the museum is enlarging its collection with such new kinds of ‘objects’ as artificial lab-grown hamburger, the first in the world, and a qubit, the building block of the quantum computer. Objects are seamlessly integrated with imaginative multimedia and hands-on interactives – one of the most inventive is a digital animation projected on your own arm to demonstrate surgery. Engineering principles are clearly explained through working models, clever interactive games, and down-to-earth videos in real-life situations that demonstrate how everything from windmills to iron lungs, electricity, and optical illusions work. Personal stories throughout the exhibition inspire in the visitor the curiosity that so motivated science enthusiasts, both professional and amateur, in the past and that continue to drive them to the ends of the earth, indeed to the ends of the universe, in pursuit of knowledge. This is science with a human face. As they ‘meet’ the scientists behind the discoveries and hear how they found their calling, visitors begin to see the world through their eyes, which is the curatorial lens governing the entire exhibition. The museum’s curators are also scientists in their own right, and when not developing new ways to communicate scientific principles to visitors, they might turn to objects in the collection that remain a mystery because no one remembers their purpose or how they work. Rijksmuseum Boerhaave remains first and foremost a museum, and as such it communicates complex ideas through the tangible and intangible heritage of ­science – its instruments, specimens, and ways of representing knowledge. By lowering the threshold for encountering science, the museum not only educates a broad public but also fosters respect for science, an especially important goal given the rise of science sceptics in our day. Visitors leave the museum better prepared to understand the world in which we live. Active nationally

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and internationally in modern science and science education, Rijksmuseum Boerhaave engages its public in debates on important current and future issues. Visitors are invited to weigh in on the unintended consequences and ethical questions raised by scientific advances. Would they like to design their child, accept an organ created in a laboratory or harvested from an animal, or live for an extremely long time if not forever? Most recently, the museum’s temporary exhibition, Besmet! (Infected!), explored epidemics, their origins, and how to avoid them. Consistent with its mission, the exhibition and accompanying programmes ask: What can be learned from the history of epidemics – plague, smallpox, influenza, and polio, among others – and how we have dealt with them in the past, not least in this very building, which once housed plague victims? And what can modern science teach us about epidemics? Among the issues raised are the vaccination debates, assessing risk, calculating social and economic costs, and addressing social exclusion and empathy. The museum’s commitment to science extends to the sustainability of the institution itself both environmentally and socially. A warm and welcoming place, Rijksmuseum Boerhaave communicates with visitors in Dutch and also in English, with the help of a tablet, and provides an attractive café, museum shop, and play area for children in the courtyard. Through its outstanding outreach and educational programmes Rijksmuseum Boerhaave is also inspiring today’s younger generation to become tomorrow’s scientists, engineers, and doctors – and to cherish the legacy bequeathed to them and celebrated in this museum. Ever since I walked out the door of Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, the last guest to leave that day, the memory of that visit has stayed with me. It exemplifies the museum experience that I most treasure – total absorption, to be carried away in time and space to places real and imagined, followed by a yearning to return.

PART 3

European Museum of the Year Awards 1977–2019

1977  Strasbourg, France European Museum of the Year Award Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, Ironbridge, United Kingdom Council of Europe Museum Prize Joan Miró Foundation, Barcelona, Spain Specially commended FN Museum of Industrial Archaeology, Herstal, Belgium Technical Museum, Helsinki, Finland Terra Amata Museum, Nice, France Municipal Museum, Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany Historical Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Preus Foto Museum, Horten, Norway International Museum of Clocks and Watches, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland 1978  Aachen, Germany European Museum of the Year Award Schloss Rheydt Municipal Museum, Mönchengladbach, Germany Council of Europe Museum Prize Bryggens Museum, Bergen, Norway Specially commended Louisiana: Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark Centre of Oceanography, Paris, France Ecomuseum, Le Creusot, France Bank of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland International Museum of Ceramics, Faenza, Italy

230  EMYA 1977–2019

National Museum of Costume, Lisbon, Portugal National Travelling Exhibitions, Stockholm, Sweden Museum of London, London, United Kingdom Erddig Park, Wrexham, United Kingdom 1979  Brussels, Belgium European Museum of the Year Award Museum of the Camargue, Arles, France Council of Europe Museum Prize Municipal Museum, Rüsselsheim, Germany Specially commended Michel Thiery Natural History Museum, Ghent, Belgium National Maritime Museum, Dun Laoghaire, Ireland Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, Tel-Aviv, Israel Museum of the Tropics, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Tromsø Museum, Tromsø, Norway Royal Armoury, Stockholm, Sweden Pierre Gianadda Foundation, Martigny, Switzerland Guernsey Museum and Art Gallery, St Peter Port, United Kingdom Bank of Ireland Special Exhibitions Award Archaeological Museum, Thessaloniki, Greece – Treasures of Macedonia Specially commended Crédit Communal de Belgique, Brussels, Belgium – Brussels: Building and Rebuilding Museum of Cultural History, Randers, Denmark – This is all about us; When the asphalt starts rolling;The vagabonds Award for Creative Museum Management Dr Alfred Waldis Swiss Transport Museum, Lucerne, Switzerland 1980  London, England European Museum of the Year Award Catharine Convent State Museum, Utrecht, The Netherlands Council of Europe Museum Prize Monaghan County Museum, Monaghan, Ireland Specially commended Sara Hildén Museum, Tampere, Finland Museum of Art and History, Metz, France PTT Museum, Riquewihr, France State Museum of History and Art, Luxembourg Norwegian Forestry Museum, Elverum, Norway Museum of Spanish Abstract Art, Cuenca, Spain Castle Museum, Hallwil, Switzerland

EMYA 1977–2019  231

British Museum (Natural History), London, United Kingdom Bank of Ireland Special Exhibitions Award Museum of Ethnography and History, Povoa de Varzim, Portugal – Signs and symbols used by local fishermen Specially commended Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde, Denmark – Boats of Greenland Children’s Workshop, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France – The sense of touch; Colour Gallery of Modern Art, Milan, Italy – Illustrations of working-class life: Attilio Pusterla and the poor man’s eating place 1981  Stockholm, Sweden European Museum of the Year Award Folk Art Museum, Nafplion, Greece Council of Europe Museum Prize Music Museum, Stockholm, Sweden Specially commended National Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark Museum of Prehistory of the Ile-de-France, Nemours, France Museum of Gardeners and Vinegrowers, Bamberg, Germany Historical Museum, Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany The Peggy Guggenheim Collection,Venice, Italy Museum of the Valley, Zogno, Italy Ethnological Museum, Muro, Mallorca, Spain Historical Museum, Olten, Switzerland Natural History Museum, Solothurn, Switzerland ‘Hunday’, National Farm and Tractor Museum, Stocksfield, United Kingdom Bank of Ireland Special Exhibitions Award Northern Animal Park, Emmen, The Netherlands – Flowers and colours; Locomotion Specially commended People’s Palace Museum, Glasgow, United Kingdom – Glasgow stained glass Museum of Mankind, London, United Kingdom – Asante, kingdom of gold Royal Armoury, Stockholm, Sweden – Royal leisure 1982  Milan, Italy European Museum of the Year Award Museum of Art and History, Saint-Denis, France Council of Europe Museum Prize Åland Museum, Mariehamn, Finland Specially commended National Museum of Marble, Rance, Belgium

232  EMYA 1977–2019

Archaeological Museum, Kelheim, Germany Goulandris Natural History Museum, Kifissia, Greece Palazzo Pepoli Campogrande, Bologna, Italy Ringve Museum, Trondheim, Norway Museum of Crafts and Maritime Culture, Lidköping, Sweden Museum of Stained Glass, Romont, Switzerland Technorama, Winterthur, Switzerland Bank of Ireland Special Exhibitions Award Awarded jointly to The Yorkshire Museum,York, United Kingdom – The Vikings in England The Guinness Museum, Dublin, Ireland – Wine of the country: a James’s Gape at Guinness and Dublin Specially commended Museum for the Blind, Brussels, Belgium – The Cathedral 1983  Paris, France European Museum of the Year Award Regional Museum, Sargans, Switzerland Council of Europe Museum Prize Joanneum: The Provincial Museum of Styria, Graz, Austria Specially commended Museum of Old Technology, Grimbergen, Belgium Museum of Contemporary Art, Dunkirk, France German Museum of Locks & Fastenings,Velbert, Germany Roscrea Heritage Centre, Roscrea, Ireland Museum of the Mediterranean, Stockholm, Sweden Scottish Agricultural Museum, Edinburgh, United Kingdom Ulster Folk & Transport Museum, Belfast, United Kingdom Museum of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom Royal Marines Museum, Southsea, United Kingdom Personal Citations Knud Jensen Louisiana: Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark Angelos and Niki Goulandris The Goulandris Natural History Museum, Kifissia, Greece 1984  Enkhuizen, The Netherlands European Museum of the Year Award Zuiderzee Museum, Enkhuizen, The Netherlands Council of Europe Museum Prize Awarded jointly to Living Museum of the Canal du Centre, Thieu, Belgium The Boat Museum, Ellesmere Port, United Kingdom

EMYA 1977–2019  233

Specially commended Paul Delvaux Museum, Saint-Idesbald, Belgium David d’Angers Museum, Angers, France Museum of Navigation, Regensburg, Germany Museum of Early Industrialisation, Wuppertal, Germany Fota House, Carrigtwohill, Ireland Archaeological Museum, Chieti, Italy Museum of Farming & Crafts of Calabria, Monterosso Calabro, Italy Evaristo Valle Museum, Gijón, Spain Museum of the Province of Bohuslän, Uddevalla, Sweden Museum of the Horse, La Sarraz, Switzerland Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art, Istanbul, Turkey The Burrell Collection, Glasgow, United Kingdom Quarry Bank Mill, Styal, United Kingdom Note: For administrative reasons, the judging of candidates for the 1985 and 1986 Awards took place in 1986 and the presentations were made in 1987. It was therefore decided to refer to these as the 1987 Awards.

1987  Durham, England European Museum of the Year Award Beamish: North of England Open Air Museum, Stanley, United Kingdom Council of Europe Museum Prize Neukölln Museum, Berlin, Germany Specially commended Museum of Biometeorology, Zwettl, Austria Waterloo Museum, Waterloo, Belgium Museum of Prehistory, Carnac, France Wallpaper Museum, Rixheim, France Ruhr Museum, Essen, Germany New State Gallery, Stuttgart, Germany Museum of Cycladic and Ancient Greek Art, Athens, Greece Sarakatsani Folklore Museum, Serres, Greece Municipal Museum, Rende Centro, Italy Akershus Museum, Strømmen, Norway National Theatre Museum, Lisbon, Portugal Forestry Museum, Lycksele, Sweden Nature Museum, Lucerne, Switzerland Alimentarium,Vevey, Switzerland The Ruskin Gallery, Sheffield, United Kingdom 1988  Delphi, Greece European Museum of the Year Award Brandts Klaedefabrik, Odense, Denmark

234  EMYA 1977–2019

Council of Europe Museum Prize Awarded jointly to The Bavarian National Museum, Munich, Germany Museum of the Convent of Descalzas Reales, Madrid, Spain Specially commended Provincial Museum of Modern Art, Ostend, Belgium Aine Art Museum, Tornio, Finland Museum of Aquitaine, Bordeaux, France Normandy Museum, Caen, France ‘Tactual Museum’ of the Lighthouse for the Blind in Greece, Kallithea, Greece Sa Dom’e Farra Museum, Quartu S. Elena, Italy Museon, The Hague, The Netherlands Museum of Medieval Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden Maison Tavel, Geneva, Switzerland Antalya Museum, Antalya, Turkey Mary Rose Museum, Portsmouth, United Kingdom 1989  Basel, Switzerland European Museum of the Year Award Sundsvall Museum, Sundsvall, Sweden Council of Europe Museum Prize Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Specially commended Ecomuseum of Alsace, Ungersheim, France Museum of Coaches, Carriages, Carts and Wagons, Heidenheim a.d. Brenz, Germany Municipal Museum, Iserlohn, Germany International Lace Museum, Nordhalben, Germany Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art, Prato, Italy National Museum of Roman Art, Mérida, Spain The Futures’ Museum, Borlänge, Sweden Bergslagen Ecomuseum, Falun, Sweden Swiss Museum of Games, La-Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, United Kingdom Brewing and Brewery Museum, Ljubljana,Yugoslavia 1990  Bologna, Italy European Museum of the Year Award Ecomuseum of the Fourmies-Trélon Region, Fourmies, France Council of Europe Museum Prize Manuel da Maia Museum of Water, Lisbon, Portugal Specially commended Heureka – The Finnish Science Centre,Vantaa, Finland

EMYA 1977–2019  235

German Cookery Book Museum, Dortmund, Germany Municipal Museum, Gütersloh, Germany Røros Museum, Røros, Norway Marionette Museum, Stockholm, Sweden National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford, United Kingdom National Waterways Museum, Gloucester, United Kingdom Personal Citation Graziano Campanini Municipal Art Gallery, Pieve di Cento, Italy 1991  Helsinki, Finland European Museum of the Year Award The Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia, Cyprus Council of Europe Museum Prize German Salt Museum, Lüneburg, Germany Specially commended Moorland and Peat Museum, Heidenreichstein, Austria Dairy Museum, Saukkola, Finland Museum of Automata, Souillac, France The Old Synagogue, Essen, Germany Coastal Museum, Gratangsbotn, Norway Agricultural Museum of Entre Douro e Miño,Vila do Conde, Portugal House of Wheat and Bread, Echallens, Switzerland Natural History Museum, Schaffhausen, Switzerland Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester, United Kingdom 1992  Leiden, The Netherlands European Museum of the Year Award State Museum of Technology and Work, Mannheim, Germany Council of Europe Museum Prize Argenta Marsh Museum, Argenta, Italy Specially commended National Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures, Prague, Czech Republic Océanopolis, Brest, France Museum of Cretan Ethnology,Vori, Greece Vasa Museum, Stockholm, Sweden Inveraray Jail, Inveraray, United Kingdom 1993  Guimäraes, Portugal European Museum of the Year Award Alta Museum, Alta, Norway Council of Europe Museum Prize

236  EMYA 1977–2019

Awarded jointly to Kobarid Museum, Kobarid, Slovenia Archaeological Museum of Istanbul, Istanbul, Turkey Specially commended State Archaeological Museum, Konstanz, Germany King Stephen Museum, Székesfehérvár, Hungary Museum of the Olive, Imperia Oneglia, Italy Municipal Museum, Loures, Portugal Basel Paper Mill, Basel, Switzerland Manx Museum, Douglas, Isle of Man, United Kingdom Personal Citation Dr Corneliu Bucur Museum of Folk Civilisation in Romania, Sibiu, Romania 1994  Belfast, Northern Ireland European Museum of the Year Award National Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark Council of Europe Museum Prize Provincial Museum of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland Specially commended Historical Record of the Great War, Péronne, France Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany Museonder, Hoenderloo, The Netherlands Cotroceni National Museum, Bucharest, Romania The Tower Museum, Derry, United Kingdom Museum of Farnham, Farnham, United Kingdom 1995  Västerås, Sweden European Museum of the Year Award The Olympic Museum, Lausanne, Switzerland Council of Europe Museum Prize House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn, Germany Specially commended Museum of Traditional Local Culture, Spittal/Drau, Austria Lapidarium of the National Museum, Prague, Czech Republic City Museum, Helsinki, Finland Westphalian Industrial Museum, Waltrop, Germany Morandi Museum, Bologna, Italy County Museum of Västernorrland, Härnösand, Sweden Lindwurm Museum, Stein am Rhein, Switzerland Museum of Underwater Archaeology, Bodrum, Turkey City Art Gallery, Southampton, United Kingdom

EMYA 1977–2019  237

Personal Citation Gabriele Mazzotta Antonio Mazzotta Foundation, Milan, Italy 1996  Barcelona, Spain European Museum of the Year Award Museum of the Romanian Peasant, Bucharest, Romania Council of Europe Museum Prize MAK-Austrian Museum of Applied Arts,Vienna, Austria Specially commended Museum of the Práchenské Region, Písek, Czech Republic Lusto – Finnish Forest Museum, Punkaharju, Finland Countryside Museum, Usson-en-Forez, France German Safety at Work Exhibition, Dortmund, Germany Turaida Museum, Turaida, Latvia Groningen Museum, Groningen, The Netherlands Chiado Museum, Lisbon, Portugal Gijón Heritage Project, Gijón, Spain Glassworks Museum, Hergiswil, Switzerland Museum of Liverpool Life, Liverpool, United Kingdom Micheletti Award German Safety at Work Exhibition, Dortmund, Germany Personal Citation Mr Rahmi M. Koç Rahmi M. Koç Industrial Museum, Istanbul, Turkey 1997  Lausanne, Switzerland European Museum of the Year Award Museum of Anatolian Civilisations, Ankara, Turkey Council of Europe Museum Prize Children’s Museum, Tropical Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Specially commended Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova, Turku, Finland Historical Museum, Bielefeld, Germany Lower Bavarian Museum of Prehistory, Landau, Germany Historical and Ethnological Museum of Greek-Cappadocian Civilisations, Nea Karvali, Greece Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, The Netherlands Old Royal Observatory, London, United Kingdom Micheletti Award Municipal Museum, Idrija, Slovenia

238  EMYA 1977–2019

1998  Samos, Greece European Museum of the Year Award National Conservation Centre, NMGM Liverpool, United Kingdom Council of Europe Museum Prize The Museum Centre, Krasnoyarsk, Russia Specially commended Zeppelin Museum, Friedrichshafen, Germany Neanderthal Museum, Mettmann, Germany Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum, Paderborn, Germany Hungarian Natural History Museum, Budapest, Hungary Museum of the History of the City of Luxembourg, Luxembourg Michel Giacometti Museum of Work, Setúbal, Portugal Vladimir & Suzdal Museum of History, Art and Architecture, Vladimir, Russia Buckinghamshire County Museum, Aylesbury, United Kingdom Micheletti Award Ecomuseum Bergslagen, Smedjebacken, Sweden 1999  Ljubljana, Slovenia European Museum of the Year Award French Museum of Playing Cards, Issy-les-Moulineaux, France Council of Europe Museum Prize Palace of Fine Arts, Lille, France Specially commended Otto Lilienthal Museum, Anklam, Germany Amedeo Lia Municipal Museum, La Spezia, Italy Museum De Stadshof, Zwolle, The Netherlands Murska Sobota Regional Museum, Murska Sobota, Slovenia Vitlycke Museum, Tanumshede, Sweden Museum of Prehistory, Zug, Switzerland Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, United Kingdom Maritime Museum of Jersey, United Kingdom Micheletti Award Verdant Works, Dundee, United Kingdom 2000  Bonn, Germany European Museum of the Year Award Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain Council of Europe Museum Prize In Flanders Fields Museum, Ieper/Ypres, Belgium Specially commended Siida – Sámi Museum & Northern Lapland Nature Centre, Inari, Finland National Socialist Documentation Centre of the City of Cologne, Germany

EMYA 1977–2019  239

Museum of Reconstruction, Hammerfest, Norway Visionarium, Santa Maria da Feira, Portugal Museum Estate of L. Tolstoy,Yasnaya Polyana, Russia Silver Museum, Arjeplog, Sweden Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, United Kingdom Micheletti Award Industrion, Kerkrade, The Netherlands 2001  Pisa, Italy European Museum of the Year Award National Railway Museum,York, United Kingdom Council of Europe Museum Prize Theatre Museum, Helsinki, Finland Specially commended Farmhouse Museum, Bielefeld, Germany Museum of the City and the District, Monsummano Terme, Italy Zaans Museum, Koog aan de Zaan, The Netherlands Coal Mining Museum of Slovenia,Velenje, Slovenia Härjedalen Mountain Museum, Funäsdalen, Sweden National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford, United Kingdom Micheletti Award English Mill’s Cork Museum, Silves, Portugal 2002  City of Luxembourg, Luxembourg European Museum of the Year Award Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Ireland Council of Europe Museum Prize Buddenbrook House, Lübeck, Germany Specially commended National Museum of History, Sofia, Bulgaria City Museum – Street Museum, Helsinki, Finland Levi Strauss Museum ‘Jeans & Kult’, Buttenheim, Germany Waterford Treasures Museum, Waterford, Ireland Permafrost Museum, Igarka, Russia Museum of Kyburg Castle, Kyburg, Switzerland STEAM: Museum of the Great Western Railway, Swindon, United Kingdom Micheletti Award Ceramics Museum of Sacavém, Portugal 2003  Copenhagen, Denmark European Museum of the Year Award Victoria and Albert Museum – British Galleries, London, United Kingdom

240  EMYA 1977–2019

Council of Europe Museum Prize Laténium – Park and Museum of Archaeology, Hauterive, Switzerland Specially commended Kierikki Stone Age Centre,Yli-Ii, Finland The Goulandris Natural History Museum – Gaia Centre for Environmental Research and Education, Kifissia, Greece Danube Museum – The Hungarian Museum of Water Administration, Esztergom, Hungary National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden, The Netherlands CosmoCaixa, Alcobendas (Madrid), Spain Imperial War Museum – Holocaust Exhibition, London, United Kingdom Micheletti Award Industrial Museum of Clockmaking,Villingen-Schwenningen, Germany 2004  Kifissia, Greece European Museum of the Year Award MARQ, Archaeological Museum of the Province of Alicante, Spain Council of Europe Museum Prize Trakya University Sultan Bayazid II Kulliye Health Care Museum, Edirne, Turkey Specially commended La Piscine – André Diligent Museum of Art and Industry, Roubaix, France House of Terror, Budapest, Hungary Imperial War Museum North, Manchester, United Kingdom Micheletti Award Herring Era Museum, Siglufjordur, Iceland 2005  Brussels, Belgium European Museum of the Year Award Netherlands Open-Air Museum, Arnhem, The Netherlands Council of Europe Museum Prize Museum of Byzantine Culture, Thessaloniki, Greece Specially commended Saxony Museum of Industry, Chemnitz, Germany Fishing Museum, Palamos, Spain Mölndal Museum, Mölndal, Sweden Micheletti Award City of Science, Naples, Italy 2006  Lisbon, Portugal European Museum of the Year Award CosmoCaixa Barcelona, Spain

EMYA 1977–2019  241

Council of Europe Museum Prize Churchill Museum, London, United Kingdom Specially commended inatura – The Natural History Adventure Experience in Dornbirn, Austria ARoS Denmark, Aarhus, Denmark National Museum of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland Micheletti Award Tom Tits Experiment, Södertälje, Sweden 2007  Alicante, Spain European Museum of the Year Award German Emigration Center, Bremerhaven, Germany Council of Europe Museum Prize International Museum of the Reformation, Geneva, Switzerland Specially commended Museum of the Bresse Region, Saint-Cyr-sur-Menthon, France The Dolhuys: Museum of Psychiatry, Haarlem, The Netherlands The Railway Museum, Utrecht, The Netherlands Paul Klee Centre, Bern, Switzerland Micheletti Award Brunel’s ss Great Britain, Bristol, United Kingdom 2008  Dublin, Ireland European Museum of the Year Award Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia Council of Europe Museum Prize Svalbard Museum, Longyearbyen, Norway Specially commended Catharijneconvent Museum, Utrecht, The Netherlands Museum of Almeria, Almeria, Spain Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum, London, United Kingdom Micheletti Award University Science Museum, Coimbra, Portugal 2009  Bursa, Turkey European Museum of the Year Award Salzburg Museum, Salzburg, Austria Council of Europe Museum Prize Zeeuws Museum, Middelburg, The Netherlands Specially commended Archaeological Centre of Almoina,Valencia, Spain Museum of Life Stories, Speicher, Switzerland Museum of Modern Art, Istanbul, Turkey

242  EMYA 1977–2019

Micheletti Award Museum of the Jaeren Region, Naerbø, Norway 2010  Tampere, Finland European Museum of the Year Award Ozeaneum, Stralsund, Germany Council of Europe Museum Prize Portimão Museum, Portimão, Portugal Specially commended Museum of Natural Sciences, Brussels, Belgium The Science Gallery, Dublin, Ireland Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Micheletti Award Agbar Water Museum, Cornellà de Llobregat, Spain Kenneth Hudson Award Museum of Contraception and Abortion,Vienna, Austria 2011  Bremerhaven, Germany European Museum of the Year Award Gallo-Roman Museum, Tongeren, Belgium Specially commended The British Music Experience, London, United Kingdom Douro Museum, Peso da Regua, Portugal Museum of the Artist and Story-Teller Stepan Pisakhov, Arkhangelsk, Russia Museo Memoria de Andalucia, Granada, Spain Schiller National Museum, Marbach, Germany Tampere 1918 – Museum of the Finnish Civil War, Tampere, Finland Kenneth Hudson Award Museum of Broken Relationships, Zagreb, Croatia Silletto Prize Watersnoodmuseum, Owerkerk, The Netherlands 2012  Penafiel, Portugal European Museum of the Year Award Museo de Madinat al-Zahra, Cordoba, Spain Council of Europe Museum Prize Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, Kulturen der Welt, Cologne, Germany Specially commended Audax Textielmuseum, Tilburg, The Netherlands The Museum of a Disappeared Taste – Kolomna Pastilla, Kolomna, Russia

EMYA 1977–2019  243

The Museum of Prijepolje, Serbia The People’s History Museum in Manchester, United Kingdom Kenneth Hudson Award The Glasnevin Cemetery Museum in Dublin, Ireland Silletto Prize The International Puppet Museum Centre, Tolosa, Spain 2013  Tongeren, Belgium European Museum of the Year Award Riverside Museum: Scotland’s Museum of Transport, Glasgow, United Kingdom Council of Europe Museum Prize Museum of Liverpool, United Kingdom Specially commended Gobustan National Historical Artistic Preserve, Garadakh district, Azerbaijan Art Museum Riga Bourse, Riga, Latvia The National Maritime Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands San Telmo Museum, San Telmo, Spain Kenneth Hudson Award Batalha’s Municipal Community Museum, Damão e Diu – Batalha, Portugal Silletto Prize MAS Museum aan de Stroom, Antwerp, Belgium 2014  Tallinn, Estonia European Museum of the Year Award The Museum of Innocence, Istanbul, Turkey Council of Europe Museum Prize Baksi Museum, Bayburt, Turkey Specially commended Lennusadam, Estonian Maritime Museum, Tallinn, Estonia Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden Museo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, A Coruña, Spain Museo Occidens/Catedral de Pamplona, Spain Kazerne Dossin – Memorial, Museum and Documentation Centre on Holocaust and Human Rights, Mechelen, Belgium Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial, Germany Kenneth Hudson Award Žanis Lipke Memorial, Riga, Latvia Silletto Prize The Saurer Museum, Arbon, Switzerland

244  EMYA 1977–2019

2015  Glasgow, United Kingdom European Museum of the Year Award Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Council of Europe Museum Prize MuCEM: Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations, Marseille, France Specially commended The Finnish Nature Centre Haltia, Haltia, Finland (Special Commendation for Sustainability) Red Star Line Museum, Antwerp, Belgium MUSE: Museo delle Scienze (Science Museum), Trento, Italy Mary Rose Museum, Portsmouth, United Kingdom Vorarlberg Museum,Vorarlberg, Austria Kenneth Hudson Award The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, Geneva, Switzerland Silletto Prize The Familistère at Guise, France 2016  Tolosa and San Sebastian, Spain European Museum of the Year Award POLIN: Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw, Poland Council of Europe Museum Prize European Solidarity Centre, Gdańsk, Poland Specially commended Museum of Bibracte, Mont Beuvray, France (Special Commendation for Sustainability) The Archaeological Museum of Tegea, Tegea, Greece BZ ´18–´45. One Monument, One City, Two Dictatorships: permanent exhibition within the Monument to Victory, Bolzano, Italy National Military Museum, Soest, The Netherlands The Information Age Galleries, The Science Museum, London, United Kingdom The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, United Kingdom Kenneth Hudson Award Micropia, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Silletto Prize Vukovar City Museum,Vukovar, Croatia 2017  Zagreb, Croatia European Museum of the Year Award MEG – Museum of Ethnography, Geneva, Switzerland Council of Europe Museum Prize

EMYA 1977–2019  245

Mémorial ACTe, Caribbean Centre of Expressions and Memory of the Slave Trade and Slavery, Guadeloupe, France Specially commended Visitor Centre of the Swiss Ornithological Institute Sempach, Switzerland (Special Commendation for Sustainability) The Old Town. National Open-Air Museum of Urban History and Culture, Aarhus, Denmark Museum of Confluences, Lyon, France Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Heraklion, Greece Silesian Museum, Katowice, Poland York Art Gallery,York, United Kingdom Kenneth Hudson Award Museum of the First President of Russia Boris Yeltsin, Yekaterinburg, Russia Silletto Prize Leiria Museum, Leiria, Portugal 2018  Warsaw, Poland European Museum of the Year Award Design Museum, London, United Kingdom Council of Europe Museum Prize War Childhood Museum, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina The Silletto Prize Betina Museum Of Wooden Shipbuilding, Betina, Croatia The Kenneth Hudson Award Estonian National Museum, Tartu, Estonia Special Commendation for Sustainability Vapriikki Museum Centre, Tampere, Finland Specially Commended Helsinki City Museum, Helsinki, Finland Lascaux IV – International Centre for Cave Art, Dordogne, France Rainis and Aspazija’s Museum, Riga, Jurmala and Dunava, Latvia Museo dell’ Opera del Duomo, Florence, Italy Museo Egizio, Turin, Italy University Museum of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain 2019  Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina European Museum of the Year Award Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, The Netherlands Council of Europe Museum Prize Museum of Communication, Switzerland Kenneth Hudson Award

246  EMYA 1977–2019

Weltmuseum, Austria Silletto Prize Strandingsmuseum St George, Thorsminde, Denmark Portimão Museum Prize Brunel’s SS Great Britain, United Kingdom Special Commendation for Sustainability World Nature Forum. Switzerland Specially commended House of European History, Belgium Museum of Apoxyomenos, Croatia Moesgaard Museum, Denmark The National Museum in Szczecin – The Dialogue Centre Upheavals, Poland Pan Tadeusz Museum, Poland Verdun Memorial Museum, France

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Karmele Barandiaran is an art historian. Her professional career has been related to museums direction and management, commissioning new museums, and the development of cultural and heritage projects. She has been Head of the Development and Cultural Programming department at San Telmo Museum, San Sebastian, Spain (EMYA 2013 Special Commendation), and Assistant Director for the relaunch of this new and reinvented museum from 2010. Karmele has taken part in the creation and management of many small/medium size museums and she was founding partner and co-director of K6-Cultural Management (1989–2010). She was a member of the Advisory Council of Museums in the Basque Government (2008–2018) and of the jury of the European Museum Year Award (2016–2019), for whom she has been National Correspondent for Spain since 2019. She has been a member of the Executive Board of ICOMSpain since 2020. José Gameiro is founder and Scientific Director of the Museum of Portimão, Portugal, winner of the Council of Europe Museum Prize 2010. He was an EMYA judge from 2011 to 2014, and Chair of the EMYA Jury 2015–2018. He was a founding member of the Portuguese Museums Network 2000, and the Algarve’s Museum Network, 2007. In 2011, he was nominated for the Museum and Conservation Committee of the Portuguese National Culture Council and elected to the Board of ICOM Portugal in 2014–2017 and 2017–2020. He has been a member of the COOPMAR, Ibero-American network since 2017. He has a Masters in Management and Administration of Cultural Heritage from the University of the Algarve and a degree in Visual Arts from the Fine Arts School of Lisbon.

248  List of contributors

Mikhail Gnedovsky, PhD currently works as Leading Analyst in Mosgortur, the Moscow City Government agency responsible for museum development, teaches in the Moscow Higher School for Social and Economic Sciences, and is a member of the Standing Ethics Committee in ICOM. He has worked internationally as an expert in cultural projects, including the programmes of the Council of Europe and the European Commission. He was Director of the Cultural Policy Institute in 2003–2015, and Director of the Arts and Culture Programme at the Open Society Institute, Russia, in 1998–2002. He served on the jury of the European Museum of the Year Award in 2002– 2014, and chaired the Board of Trustees of the European Museum Forum in 2009–2011. J. Patrick Greene, PhD is CEO and Museum Director of EPIC, the Irish Emigration Museum at Custom House Quay in Dublin. From 2002 until 2017 he directed Museums Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. He led the development of the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester in the buildings of the world’s oldest railway station from 1983 to 2002. From 1971 until 1983 he directed the excavation of the medieval Norton Priory and Gardens in Cheshire, and its development as a museum. He is a former member of the jury of the European Museum of the Year Awards, and its Chair until 2002. He is a member of the European Museum Academy’s Pool of Experts. Sirje Helme, PhD has been CEO of Art Museum of Estonia Foundation since 2016. Previously she has been: editor of the art magazine Kunst, director of Centre for Contemporary Arts, Estonia, director of Kumu Art Museum (a branch of Art Museum of Estonia), and general director of Art Museum of Estonia. Her main research field is post-war art (modernism and avant-garde) in Estonia and East-Central Europa. She lectures in Tartu University and was visiting professor in Tartu University in 2012–2013. She has been a member of several international organizations including: International Foundation Manifesta judging panel 2007–2011; the Board of Trustees of Tartu University, until 2011; the European Museum of the Year Award jury, 2012–2016. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is University Professor Emerita and Professor Emerita of Performance Studies at New York University and Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Her books include Destination Culture:Tourism, Museums, and Heritage; Image before My Eyes: A Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1864–1939 (with Lucjan Dobroszycki). She received the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and recently received the 2020 Dan David prize. She currently serves on advisory boards for Jewish museums in Vienna, Berlin, and Moscow, and advises on museum projects in Lithuania, Albania, Israel, and the United States.

List of contributors  249

Marlen Mouliou, PhD is Assistant Professor of Museology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens-NKUA (Faculty of History and Archaeology & Postgraduate Programme in Museums Studies), following a 16-year career at the Directorate of Museums, Exhibitions and Educational Programmes of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. She has served as Secretary and Chair of ICOM-CAMOC and Co-Coordinator of the project Migration: Cities /(im) migration and arrival cities. She has been an EMYA judge since 2016 and ViceChair of the European Academic Heritage Network (UNIVERSEUM). She is co-founder of the first scientific journal of museology in Greece and of the online journal CAMOC news. Her research focuses on museum archaeology and interpretation, urban museology, public participation in culture, systems thinking and heritage management, museum professionalism and more. She believes in the social value and transformative power of museums. The Museum Inside Me, an online initiative, is one of her developing projects to advocate the value of museums. Massimo Negri is Scientific Director of the European Museum Academy Foundation. He was a Member of the Jury of the Council of Europe Museum Prize and of the European Museum of the Year Award from 1983 to 2009. From 2000 to 2009 he was Director of the European Museum Forum and of European Museum Academy (EMA) from 2000 to 2009 and is still a jury member of the EMA Awards. He has twice held Fulbright Fellowships, at the Pennsylvania State University and at the Smithsonian Institution. A museum consultant and an active lecturer, he has developed several exhibition and museum projects. He is founder and Director of the Executive Master Course in European Museology, IULM University, Milan, and also teaches Museography of Industrial Heritage at the State University of Padua. He is the author of the first book in Italian on industrial archaeology (1977). Ann Nicholls was Administrator of the European Museum of the Year Award, 1977–1996 and of the European Museum Forum, 1997–1999. She has been Co-ordinator of the European Museum Academy since 2000. She is co-author with Kenneth Hudson of Macmillan’s worldwide Directory of Museums (three editions: 1975, 1981, 1985); The Cambridge Guide to the Museums of Britain and Ireland (1989); The Cambridge Guide to the Museums of Europe (1991); and The Cambridge Guide to the Historic Houses of Britain and Ireland. Mark O’Neill is Chair of the European Museum of the Year Award jury. He is an independent researcher and consultant; Associate Professor, College of Arts, Glasgow University; Research Fellow, Museum Studies, Leicester University; and adviser to Event Communications, London. He was Director of Policy & Research for Glasgow Life, the charity which delivers arts, museums, libraries and sports services for the City of Glasgow from 2009–2016. As head of Glasgow Museums from 1998 to 2009, he led the teams that established the

250  List of contributors

St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, refurbished Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum and created the Riverside Museum (European Museum of the Year 2012). He has lectured in universities and given conference keynotes in the UK, Europe, North America and Australia and has published extensively on museum policy, philosophy and practice. Jouetta van der Ploeg studied at the Reinwardt Academy of Museology in Leiden. In 1997 she received an MA from Leiden University for her thesis on the iconography and iconology of the Samaritan Woman in Early Christian Art. She was director of the City Museum of Zoetermeer from 1991 until November 2017. The museum is noted for its pioneering work in challenging the borders of a traditional museum. Van der Ploeg lectures at national and international conferences on this policy and is author of several publications. From 2010 until 2013 she was a Board Member of the Dutch Museum Association and through the years 2012 –2017 she worked as a judge for the European Museum of the Year Award. Since November 2018 Jouetta van der Ploeg has been Head of Content and Deputy Director of a museum in creation in Zoetermeer focusing on Lifestyle. Maritta Pitkänen, Phil. Lic., has carried out her life´s work as director and developer of the Gösta Serlachius Art Museum and the secretary of Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation for 35 years, from 1973 to 2008. Throughout her career she was active in various positions in the International Council of Museums (ICOM), at both national and international levels. She was the Finnish correspondent for EMYA and subsequently a judge over the period 1994–2006. She served as the first chairman of the coordinating body of the Association for the Finnish Fine Arts Foundations in 2006–2008. She was awarded the gold medal of the Finnish Museums Association in 2003 and a prize for cultural activities by the Pirkanmaa Regional Fund of the Finnish Cultural Foundation. Since 2009 she has been a freelance researcher and non-fiction writer. Michael Ryan trained as an archaeologist,  and served in Irish museums for 40 years. He publishes on archaeological topics and is research-active. He was Keeper of Irish Antiquities in the National Museum of Ireland (1979–1992). As Director, he reformed the Chester Beatty Library (1992–2010) and led it to a new home and to the award of European Museum of the Year 2002. He was an EMYA judge from 2010 to 2016. Jette Sandahl was the founding director of two pioneering new museums, the Women’s Museum of Denmark and the Museum of World Cultures in Sweden. She served as Director of Exhibitions and Public Programmes at the National Museum of Denmark, and as Director Experience at Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Most recently, she was director of the Museum of Copenhagen, Denmark. She publishes within the broad museological field and

List of contributors  251

leads ICOM’s work on developing a museum definition for the twenty-first century. A long-time EMYA judge, she currently chairs the European Museum Forum. She is interested in how – or whether – museums can become essential and integral parts of the societal fabric where current concerns, conflicts, hopes and fears are articulated and where future choices and priorities are shaped. Peter Schirmbeck, PhD born in 1943, lives as a former museum director and author in Frankfurt/Main, where he studied German Literature, Sociology and History of Art. While creating a city and industrial museum in the Opelindustry-town Rüsselsheim, near Frankfurt, he developed, in 1974, a new conception which for the first time displayed industrial technology alongside the history of industrial work. Stimulated by the Seveso-catastrophe, Schirmbeck turned towards the threat to our natural life-basis posed by the industrial revolution.Therefore, in 1990, the museum opened a permanent exhibition ‘Man and Nature’. In 2000 Schirmbeck initiated the ‘Route of Industrial Culture RheinMain’, containing about a thousand industrial buildings, embracing the history, present and future of industry. Jahangir Selimkhanov is Head of International Relations Department at Azerbaijan National Conservatoire and Azerbaijan National Expert in UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Committee, a Member of European Cultural Parliament. He has been a judge for the European Museum of the Year Award (2011–2016), a Senior Associate of Cultural Futures Consultancy (London), and an Advisory Board Member of the Centre for Cultural Policies and Management, Bilgi University (Istanbul). He has been a lecturer, panellist, speaker, presenter at conferences, symposia and cultural events taking place from Abu Dhabi to Vancouver and from Oslo to Bangkok. With a background in musicology he has a track record of dozens of projects across various artistic disciplines and cultural domains including creative economy, visual art curating, fostering living heritage, conceptualisation and programming of multidisciplinary festivals and experimental stage productions. Wim van der Weiden, an historian by training, was director of Museon, the Museum for Education, and of Europe’s first space theatre, Omniversum, both in The Hague. He served on the Dutch Museum Association Board and was an initiator of the Dutch Museum Pass. He was also Chairman of ICOM Netherlands and a member of ICOM’s Executive Council. In 1989 he became a member/judge of the European Museum of the Year Committee (from 1997 European Museum Forum) and was its Chairman in 2002–2010. He was director of Naturalis, the National Museum of Natural History in Leiden for 12 years, leading the building of a completely new museum. Since 2003, he has been involved in promoting Dutch history, writing the first draft for a future National Historical Museum at request of the Dutch Parliament. In 1999 he was honoured by the Queen: Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau.

INDEX

achievement 3, 13, 16, 18, 33, 67, 162, 189 aesthetic 5, 39, 98, 130, 131, 154, 162, 194, 203, 223 Albania 8, 12, 216, 217–220, 248 Alta Museum 8, 10, 68, 69–71, 235 ambiance 171, 190, 223 Archaeological Museum of Ioannina 7, 11, 136, 137–139 archaeology 10, 14, 17, 30, 41, 42, 54, 63, 69, 102, 105, 119, 131, 143, 198, 210, 229, 236, 240 architect 33, 59, 66, 69, 82, 85, 101, 106, 121, 157, 158, 161, 169, 178, 218 architecture 3, 11–12, 17, 34, 35, 54, 82, 85, 101, 102, 106, 130, 141, 166, 218, 238 art 4, 5, 7–9, 17, 19, 20, 32, 33–35, 37, 38, 41, 42, 45, 49, 51, 53, 58, 59, 62, 68, 70, 73, 77, 85–87, 93, 97–99, 104, 105–108, 114, 121, 123, 131, 146, 150, 153, 154, 162, 165, 169, 170, 178, 189, 192, 193–199, 203, 214, 225, 226, 229–231, 233–238, 240, 241, 243, 245 artefacts 8, 37, 38, 49, 57, 58, 66, 125, 129, 138, 174, 175, 226 atmosphere 3, 49, 62, 94, 98, 119, 130, 142, 143, 145, 159, 187, 189, 191, 202, 209, 210 audience 4, 7, 17, 20–22, 78, 79, 130, 145, 149, 166, 174, 175, 177, 191, 198, 210, 211, 219, 222

award 1–3, 5, 11, 14–19, 29–31, 35, 37–39, 41–45, 61–63, 69–71, 73–75, 77–79, 81, 89, 91, 93–95, 97–99, 101–104, 109–115, 119, 121–124, 129–135, 149–152, 157–160, 169–172, 179, 189, 201–205, 214, 222, 225–227, 229–246 Baert, Albert 104, 106 Baksi Museum 5, 9, 10, 16, 20, 21, 152, 153–156, 243 Ban, Shigeru 169 Barandiaran, Karmele 209–212, 249 Basque 86, 87, 247 beauty 5, 55, 85, 97, 139, 197, 198 Bedeni, Lucjan 218 Belgium 39, 88, 89, 109, 229–234, 238, 240, 242–244, 246 belong 57, 119 benchmarking 16 Benfica FC Museum 7, 188, 189–192 Bernea, Horea 74 best practice 4, 20, 21, 142, 207 Borg, Alan 97 Bosnia and Herzegovina 220 Bouvy, D.P.R.A. 37 Braudel, Fernand 146 Britain 17, 29, 30, 89, 94, 97, 98, 141, 241, 246 Buchanan, R.A. 54

254  Index

budget 18, 19, 70, 171, 178 building 8–11, 30, 33–35, 38, 46, 49, 50, 53, 54, 59, 61, 62, 66, 69, 74, 78, 79, 82, 85–87, 89, 94, 95, 102, 105, 106, 109–111, 113, 115, 117, 118, 121, 125, 127, 129, 130, 134, 135, 137–139, 141, 142, 145, 150, 153, 156, 159, 161–163, 166, 170, 173, 178, 181, 186, 190, 193, 197, 202, 205, 206, 209, 211, 214, 215, 218, 219, 222, 225–227 capital 1, 10, 20, 22, 62, 71, 105, 117, 119, 129, 154, 165 Cardia, Gringo 169 Casson, Dinah 98 Catharine Convent State Museum 11, 36, 37–39, 230 cemetery 65, 132, 133–135, 243 centre 7, 11–13, 16, 30, 56, 57–59, 68, 70, 73, 76, 77–79, 80, 81–84, 84, 86, 89, 94, 112–115, 118, 125, 129, 135, 137, 141, 143, 145, 153–155, 170, 177, 178, 180–185, 193, 194, 197–200, 209, 214, 218, 225, 228, 231, 232, 234, 238, 240, 241, 243–246, 248, 251 Chester Beatty Library 5, 11, 92, 93–95, 239, 250 childhood 11, 14, 20, 21, 174, 220–224, 245 citizenship 24, 118, 143, 145, 165–166, 181, 203, 218 civil war 6, 7, 14, 124, 125–128, 134, 135, 242 civilisation 29, 164, 165–168, 236, 237, 244 class 10, 17, 22, 43, 45, 83, 101, 105, 106, 111, 113, 114, 138, 150, 157, 182, 190, 194, 201, 203, 205, 214 climate 55, 66, 70, 94, 130, 147, 162, 177, 178, 185 coexistence 10, 130, 153, 154 coherence 4, 5 collection 2, 3, 5–8, 11, 13, 14, 17–19, 23, 30, 33, 35, 37, 38, 42, 45, 46, 69, 73, 74, 77, 78, 86–87, 90, 93–95, 97–99, 102, 106, 107, 109, 121–123, 126, 127, 130, 137, 138, 142, 145, 146, 149, 153–154, 161–163, 165, 166, 169–171, 178, 182, 185, 186, 189, 193–195, 198, 206, 209–211, 213, 214, 217–219, 223, 226, 231, 233 colonial 7, 23, 162, 207, 209 commitment 7, 12, 13, 16, 17, 34, 78, 107, 130, 138, 153, 155, 167, 174, 183, 197, 207, 211, 227 communities 5, 9–13, 16, 19, 22–24, 31, 61,

70, 71, 82, 83, 87, 95, 110, 117–119, 125, 133, 141–143, 153, 155, 166, 183, 185–187, 206, 211, 214, 218, 219, 243 compassion 12, 169, 171 complex 8, 10, 31, 34, 37, 38, 46, 54, 65, 102, 127, 129, 147, 153, 155, 177, 178, 213, 214, 226 complexity 150, 151, 165 concept 2, 14, 17, 41, 50, 62, 94, 102, 106, 115, 122, 123, 139, 154, 155, 165, 166, 183, 186, 201, 211 conceptual 98, 213, 223 conflict 6, 14, 82, 89–91, 110, 125, 150, 153, 179, 183, 221, 251 conservation 6, 30, 31, 65, 66, 70, 76, 77–79, 94, 98, 103, 106, 129–131, 161–163, 173, 174, 190, 194, 218, 238, 247 Conservation Centre 6, 76, 77–79, 238 contemporary 7, 10, 23, 29, 34, 35, 54, 57, 86, 87, 93, 98, 102, 103, 105, 106, 111, 114, 117, 126, 127, 131, 142, 143, 146, 149, 153, 154, 165–167, 170, 178, 183, 189, 193, 194, 198, 203, 206, 207, 209, 210, 219, 223, 232, 234 context 2, 5–8, 18, 19, 34, 41, 45, 46, 49, 65, 66, 97, 101–103, 119, 131, 133, 138, 141, 150, 151, 155, 165, 167, 181, 198, 199, 214, 222, 223 Coop Himmelb(l)au 209 Cossons, Neil 30 Council of Europe 13, 15, 16, 19 Council of Europe Museum Prize 15, 16, 45–47, 81–84, 89–92, 117–119, 141–144, 153–156, 165–168, 181–184, 197–200, 221–225, 229–247, 249 courage 14, 23, 38, 99, 135, 199, 201 craft 8, 10, 43, 48–52, 110, 137, 138, 154, 163, 169, 175, 232, 233 creative 3, 5, 10, 14, 85, 94, 141–143, 149, 154, 213–215, 218, 219, 221, 222, 230, 251 critical 1, 58, 99, 206, 207 Croatia 120–124, 242, 244–246 cultural 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10–15, 18, 19, 21–24, 29, 30, 35, 39, 45, 46, 49, 50, 53, 58, 63, 77, 87, 99, 101, 107, 117–119, 122, 130, 133, 141, 142, 145, 150, 153, 154, 165–167, 170, 171, 182, 183, 194, 199, 206, 207, 209, 211, 213–215, 218, 219, 223, 230 culture 3, 8, 12, 15, 17, 19–21, 29, 41, 45, 50, 69, 74, 75, 81, 86, 102, 107, 110, 111, 119, 131, 135, 136, 137, 138, 142, 151, 153, 154, 161, 165, 189, 191, 199, 205, 207, 213–215, 217, 232, 236, 240, 245

Index  255

curator 6, 62, 63, 106, 125, 248 curiosity 13, 98, 114, 122, 143, 150, 179, 189, 209, 225, 226 Cuypers, Pierre 161, 162 Cyprus 60, 61–63, 235 Dahlbäck, Marianne 66 daily life 23, 62, 205, 206 death 11, 35, 93, 134, 210, 218 de-colonisation 6, 199 dementia 143, 207 Demetriades, Lellos 61 democracy 3, 5, 9, 13, 15, 24, 41, 133, 154, 178, 181, 201–203, 214 democratisation 3, 5, 12, 13, 22–24, 142 demographic 22, 174 Denmark 10, 13, 17, 32, 33–35, 204, 205–207, 229–233, 236, 239, 241, 245, 246 depopulation 153 design 7–9, 11, 14, 19, 20, 34, 43, 46, 59, 62, 66, 69, 74, 82, 89, 90, 94, 97–99, 102, 103, 106, 117, 122, 123, 126, 130, 135, 138, 145, 146, 159, 163, 170, 173, 175, 178, 189, 198, 201, 202, 205, 209, 213, 214, 219, 225, 227, 245 designer 82, 90, 146, 157, 158, 162, 169, 171, 186, 210 Deutsches Museum 57 De Varine, Hugues 31 dialogue 6, 11, 13, 33, 34, 71, 167, 177, 183, 197, 199, 210, 214, 219, 222, 246 difficult issues 127 dignity 133, 169, 171, 198 Diligent, André 104–108, 222 director 7, 15, 30, 37, 58, 70, 74, 79, 82, 87, 94, 97, 101, 106, 109, 118, 170, 179, 183, 187, 218, 222, 223 disobedience 70 display 3, 5, 7–9, 11, 16, 17, 21, 22, 24, 37–39, 43, 46, 50, 59, 62, 73–75, 78, 79, 81, 94, 95, 97, 98, 110, 113, 122, 123, 129, 130, 137, 138, 142, 145–147, 150, 162, 163, 174, 182, 186, 189–191, 193, 194, 198, 206, 214, 219 diverse 10, 19, 93, 95, 123, 141, 142, 153–155, 177, 198, 214, 219, 222, 223 diversity 2, 12, 13, 18, 78, 106, 111, 143, 166, 171, 198, 210, 211, 214, 223 Durham, Andrew 30, 79, 233 Ecomuseum 30, 31, 229, 234, 238 economic 2–4, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 20, 21,

29, 46, 69, 70, 86, 87, 111, 117, 118, 138, 141, 142, 153, 154, 178, 202, 203, 214, 215, 227, 248 economy 8, 10, 30, 69, 86, 119, 138, 213, 251 education 2, 3, 7, 15, 19–22, 45, 57, 58, 70, 78, 114, 131, 138, 154, 163, 199, 203, 222, 227, 240 educational 2, 3, 5, 17, 21, 22, 39, 58, 62, 78, 131, 137, 142, 154, 170, 181–183, 219, 227 elegance 5, 7, 131, 138, 139 elegant 11, 70, 85, 95, 137, 146, 166, 194, 195 emigration 7, 13, 112, 113–115, 153, 241 emotional 8, 91, 102, 121, 122, 143, 150, 151, 155, 171, 182, 191, 199 emotions 8, 90, 113, 121, 142, 151, 198 empathy 8, 9, 222, 227 empowerment 182 engagement 6, 8, 10, 16, 21, 22, 119, 135, 206, 207 Engberg, Gabriel 125 entrepreneur 33, 54, 93, 158 entrepreneurial 4, 20, 30, 215 epic 7, 9, 141, 201 equality 142, 143, 223 ethical 12, 227 ethnographic 6, 73 Europe 6, 7, 10, 13, 15–17, 19–21, 23, 29, 33, 45–47, 58, 62, 70, 79, 81–84, 89–93, 103, 105, 109, 117–120, 129–131, 133, 135, 141–144, 153–156, 162, 163, 165–168, 178, 181–184, 191, 194, 197–200, 207, 210, 215, 218, 221–225, 229–245 European 1–3, 6, 13–17, 19, 21, 23, 29–31, 33–35, 37–39, 41–44, 61–64, 69–75, 77–81, 85–87, 89–91, 93–95, 97–99, 101–104, 109–115, 119, 129–132, 149–152, 161–164, 180, 181–184, 189, 205, 225, 229–246, 248, 249, 251 European Museum Forum 39, 70, 81, 119, 248, 249, 251 European Museum of the Year 1, 3, 14, 16, 19, 29–31, 33–35, 37–39, 41–44, 61–64, 69–75, 77–80, 85–87, 89–91, 93–95, 97–99, 101–104, 109–115, 119, 129–132, 149–152, 161–164, 189, 205, 225, 229–246 European Solidarity Centre 13, 16, 180, 181–184, 244 Event Communications 16, 90, 94, 249

256  Index

everyday 5, 6, 8, 41, 42, 50, 98, 110, 111, 123, 143, 149, 150 evocative 95, 114, 135, 159, 182, 183, 213, 215, 223 excellence and equity 78 exhibition 2, 5, 9, 19, 21, 22, 34, 35, 37, 38, 46, 50, 58, 59, 62, 66, 69, 78, 81–83, 86, 87, 90, 91, 94, 95, 98, 99, 102, 103, 106, 107, 110, 113, 114, 118, 121, 125–127, 130, 131, 135, 138, 141–143, 145–147, 150, 153–154, 159, 166, 167, 169, 170, 175, 178, 181, 182, 185, 187, 190, 193–195, 197–199, 201–203, 205, 209–211, 214, 215, 218, 219, 222, 223, 225–227, 230–232, 237, 240, 244 experience 1, 5, 7, 10, 14, 15, 18, 35, 46, 53, 54, 61, 67, 78, 87, 91, 93, 95, 98, 99, 103, 107, 113, 114, 127, 134, 142, 145, 146, 149–151, 158, 162, 175, 179, 185, 186, 194, 198, 207, 210, 211, 215, 218, 219, 221, 223, 227, 241, 242 Exploratorium 58 fanaticism 37, 38 FC Porto 7, 188, 189–192 feelings 6, 7, 58, 66, 95, 97, 119, 121–122, 167, 178, 179 fictional 6, 149–151 Finland 56, 57–59, 124, 125–128, 229–231, 234–240, 242, 244, 245 Fleming, David 79 Forrester, Jim 79 Foster, Richard 79 foundation 8, 10–12, 14, 15, 19, 30, 33, 40, 41–44, 53, 55, 61, 86, 90, 101–103, 109, 153, 155, 158, 161, 167, 178, 179, 218, 247, 248 France 30, 41, 89, 104, 105–107, 164, 165–167, 168, 196, 197–200, 209–212, 229–238, 240, 241, 244–246 Frank O. Gehry & Associates 85 Franzén, Anders 65 funding 1, 14, 17, 19–22, 94, 119, 190 future 1, 4, 8, 10, 11, 13, 23, 24, 57, 86, 87, 102, 115, 123, 130, 142, 151, 153, 178–183, 198, 211, 215, 218, 219, 222, 223, 227, 234, 251 Gaile, Zaiga 158 Gailis, Māris 158 galleries 5, 7, 9, 17, 34, 35, 76, 77–79, 93, 94, 96, 97–99, 102, 106, 114, 129, 130, 134, 138, 142, 143, 159, 162, 175, 193, 197–199, 214, 230–236, 238, 239, 242, 244, 245

Gameiro, José 117, 118, 141–144, 164, 165–168 garden 5, 34, 59, 94, 106, 159, 166, 167, 181, 194, 209 Gaudichon, Bruno 106 Geist, J.F. 53 geographical 1, 6, 10, 16, 118, 122 German Emigration Centre 7, 13, 112, 113–116 Germany 45, 53, 89, 112–116, 229–243 Glinska, Ana 82 global 13, 19, 41, 79, 86, 87, 119, 135, 141, 142, 169, 170, 174, 177–179, 198 Gnedovsky, Mikhail 18, 81, 109–112, 125–128, 157–160, 248 governance 18, 20, 161 government 2, 33, 77, 79, 101, 135, 158, 178, 195, 202, 218 Greece 8, 10, 40, 41–43, 49, 136, 137–140, 230–234, 236, 238, 240, 244, 245 Green, John 61, 66, 73–75, 81–84, 89–92, 94, 134 Greene, J. Patrick 73–75, 81–84, 89–92 Guggenheim Museum 11, 12, 84, 85–87, 88, 238 Guinness Storehouse 93 Halilović, Jasminko 222 health 4, 202, 222, 240 Heller, Andreas 113 Helme, Sirje 121–124 heritage 3, 6, 15, 19, 30, 31, 39, 49, 50, 53, 68, 70, 77, 101, 105, 110, 117–119, 130, 131, 135, 138, 146, 151, 167, 179, 193, 203, 213, 214, 218, 226, 232, 237 Heureka 7, 56, 57–60, 234 Hicks, Malcolm 87 historic 5, 13, 29, 33, 46, 50, 54, 89, 90, 97, 113, 118, 127, 141, 142, 145, 150, 154, 157, 167, 173, 183, 193, 197–199, 205, 218, 225 history 2–4, 6, 10, 11, 13, 16, 29, 35, 41, 45, 46, 49, 50, 53, 54, 62, 66, 69, 70, 73, 78, 82, 86, 87, 98, 102, 107, 110, 111, 113, 115, 117, 118, 122, 123, 126, 127, 131, 133–135, 141–143, 145, 146, 149, 151, 157, 161–163, 166, 170, 177–179, 181, 183, 186, 190, 191, 193, 194, 197, 198, 201, 203, 205, 207, 209, 211, 213–215, 217, 219, 222, 225–227, 230–232, 235, 236, 239–241, 243–246 Hoggart, Richard 14, 15 Holzer, Barbara 178 hope 2, 14, 23, 49, 113, 155, 167, 171, 198, 199, 202, 251

Index  257

Hudson, Kenneth 1–4, 6, 7, 11, 13–17, 19, 22, 24, 37, 41–43, 54, 57, 62, 94, 98, 103, 105, 107, 121–124, 133–136, 157–160, 169–171, 201–204, 242–245 Hufschmid, Pascal 170 human 3, 8, 9, 11–15, 20, 22–24, 29, 41, 58, 89, 91, 94, 102, 119, 121–123, 127, 133, 135, 139, 145, 169, 170, 174, 175, 178, 197–199, 210, 211, 221–223, 226, 243 human rights 3, 9, 13, 15, 24, 133, 135, 178, 198, 199, 223, 243 humanitarian 169, 171, 182, 183 humanity 6, 11–13, 24, 41, 83, 147 iconic 11, 34, 86, 98, 190 identity 3, 10–13, 15, 22, 29, 31, 42, 90, 101, 105, 117–119, 126, 133, 142, 221 Idromeno, Kolë 218 imagination 3, 81, 83, 126, 182, 225 immigrant 115, 170, 205, 206, 217 immigration 13, 115, 206 Imperial War Museum 97, 98, 240 In Flanders Fields 7, 12, 88, 89–92, 238 inclusion 10, 22, 50, 90, 142 indigenous 70, 81 industrial 8, 10, 14, 29–31, 33, 42, 50, 53–55, 57, 58, 86, 98, 102, 104, 105–108, 110, 117, 118, 141, 142, 162, 182, 193, 197, 213–215, 229, 236, 237, 240 industrialisation 10, 29, 31, 53–55, 57, 214, 233 industry 10, 29, 31, 54, 55, 58, 105, 117, 118, 163, 181, 186, 213, 215, 235, 240 inequality 12, 22, 23, 198 influence 17, 35, 38, 62, 70, 91, 94, 95, 110, 123, 131, 137, 138, 150, 161 innovation 1–4, 8, 9, 11, 17, 19–21, 23, 24, 31, 58, 74, 97, 135, 145, 219 innovative 4, 6, 18, 20, 21, 30, 61, 62, 73, 97, 166, 182 intellectual 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, 14, 17, 21, 70, 103, 138, 143, 182, 197, 199, 211, 222 interdisciplinary 6, 151, 183, 198, 210, 211, 222 international 8, 12, 15, 18, 19, 30, 34, 35, 42, 46, 62, 74, 81, 83, 85–87, 114, 137, 149, 154, 155, 158, 169–172, 178, 182, 197, 202, 214, 218, 219, 229, 234, 241, 243–245

interpretation 3–5, 7, 14, 20, 22, 31, 46, 47, 50, 83, 97, 98, 110, 111, 130, 142, 145–147, 150, 151, 154, 170, 174, 178, 201, 202, 210 Ireland 92, 93–96, 133–136, 229–233, 236, 239, 241–243 Irish Museum of Modern Art 93 Ironbridge 30, 31, 53 Ironbridge Gorge Museum 10, 20, 28, 29–32, 105, 229 Islamic 93, 129–131 Italy 8, 10, 39, 48, 49–52, 177, 229, 231–240, 244, 245 Jensen, Knud W. 33–35, 232 Jones, Mark 98 jury 1, 5, 15–17, 19, 41, 43, 46, 50, 54, 70, 75, 83, 91, 97, 98 justice 13, 23, 183 Kenneth Hudson Award i.e. Kenneth Hudson Award 1, 3, 7, 13, 14, 16, 17, 24, 37, 41–43, 54, 57, 59, 62, 97, 103, 105, 107, 121–124, 133, 135, 157–160, 171, 201–204, 242–245 Kéré, Diébédo Francis 169 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara 225–227, 248 Knast, Alicja 214 knowledge 7, 9, 20, 24, 45, 73, 78, 110, 175, 182, 183, 186, 210, 226 Kobler, Tristan 178 Koçan, Hüsamettin 153 Konstantinidis, Ares 138 Krasnoyarsk Museum Centre 11, 80, 81–84 Krvavac, Amina 222 Kvarning, Lars-Åke 67 La Piscine 9, 104, 105–109, 240 landscape 8, 11, 29–31, 34, 35, 54, 55, 110, 118, 131, 153, 186, 194, 214, 218 language 14, 37, 38, 46, 58, 66, 69, 75, 87, 90, 94, 97, 150, 159, 170, 178, 194, 197, 198 Latvia 156, 157–160, 237, 243, 245 Le Creusot-Montceau 30, 31 learning 4, 7, 20, 58, 70, 97 Letts, John 14 local 10, 12, 15, 18, 19, 50, 69–71, 83, 86, 101, 102, 107, 117, 118, 130, 142, 150, 151, 153–155, 179, 182, 183, 185–187, 197, 199, 210, 213–215, 217, 218, 231, 236

258  Index

Loizou Hadjigavriel, Loukia 62 Louisiana Museum of Modern Art 5, 32, 33–36, 229, 232 Lungin, Pavel 202 Madinat al-Zahra Museum 13, 128, 129–132 management 3, 4, 19, 20, 30, 46, 70, 79, 83, 102, 145, 162, 163, 177, 187, 209, 210, 214, 230 Månsson, Goran 66 maritime 9, 13, 77, 119, 141, 142, 144, 145–148, 162, 182, 185, 230, 232, 238, 243 Markwalder, Alfred 179 MARQ 5, 9, 100, 101–104, 240 Marubi National Museum 8, 12, 216, 217–220 Mayou, Roger 170 McCrae, John 90 meaning 7, 8, 11, 14, 22, 23, 45, 75, 101, 122, 150, 151, 159, 165, 177, 206 Mediterranean 11, 62, 118, 164, 165–168, 174, 232, 244 Mémorial ACTe 7, 196, 197–200, 245 memories 6, 7, 12, 35, 41, 121, 122, 125, 126, 131, 133, 137, 143, 151, 153–154, 185, 186, 196, 197–200, 203, 217, 219, 221–223, 227, 245 Meyvaert Museum Prize for Sustainability 15 Micka, Boris 102 Miles, Gwyn 97 mission 13, 39, 78, 118, 165, 183, 186, 207, 226, 227 model 3, 11, 13, 20, 29, 31, 34, 35, 37, 87, 103, 106, 109, 110, 118, 119, 135, 155, 161, 169, 174, 179, 183, 186, 211, 226 modern 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 13, 14, 22, 29, 30, 32, 33–35, 38, 39, 57, 61–63, 93, 94, 102, 106, 114, 134, 137–139, 145, 155, 162, 205, 207, 209, 214, 219, 225–227, 229, 231, 232, 234, 236, 238, 241 modernity 9, 98, 155, 219 Moluccan 110 Mouliou, Marlen, 1–24, 76, 112, 148, 208, 213–215, 216, 217–224, 249 movement 6, 15, 34, 45, 50, 55, 70, 126, 149, 181–183, 198, 218, 219 MuCEM 6, 11, 164–168, 244 multicultural 134, 214

municipal 9, 14, 60, 61–64, 106, 186, 193, 195, 229, 230, 233–238, 243 Musée Colonial of Lyon 209 Musée d’Orsay 106 Musée Guimet 209 museological 18, 62, 63, 77, 92, 101, 102, 130, 145, 151, 153, 155, 199, 250 museology 10, 14, 15, 98, 145, 191, 249, 250 Museon 78, 234 Museum of Broken Relationships 6, 11, 21, 120, 121–123, 242 Museum of Confluences 6, 9, 208, 209–212, 245 Museum of Liverpool 10, 22, 77, 140, 141–144, 237, 243 Museum of Portimão 10, 116, 118–119 Museum of the First President of Russia Boris Yeltsin 9, 200, 201–204, 245 Museum of the Romanian Peasant 11, 72, 73–75, 237 museumification 5, 22 narrative 3, 8, 9, 18, 57, 99, 111, 133, 142, 146, 149, 150, 153, 154, 166, 167, 178, 182, 190, 198, 205, 210, 214, 219, 222, 223 national 2, 3, 8–10, 12–14, 17, 19, 31, 37, 41, 42, 65, 67, 70, 71, 72, 73, 76, 77–80, 86, 111, 135, 142, 144, 145–149, 154, 155, 161, 165, 179, 182, 205, 207, 214, 216, 217–220, 225, 230, 231, 233–236, 238–246 nationalistic 10, 14, 62 natural 3, 4, 6, 17, 20, 43, 54, 55, 59, 118, 130, 138, 145, 159, 169, 209, 211, 218, 225, 230–232, 235, 238, 240–242 nature 1, 2, 6, 34, 54, 55, 74, 123, 210, 215, 233, 238, 244, 245 Negri, Massimo 12, 19, 22, 29–36, 39, 97–104 neighbourhood 71, 149, 181, 199, 205, 222 Nemo 57, 145 Netherlands Open-Air Museum 108, 109–112, 240 Nève de Mévergnies, Francis Xavier 39 Nicholls, Ann 15, 37–40, 65–67, 69–71, 109, 113–116, 249 Nieto, Fuensanta 130 Nitulescu,Virgil 73 Norway 8, 11, 68–72, 184, 185–188, 229, 230, 232, 233, 235, 239, 241, 242 Noyabrsk Children's Museum 81, 237

Index  259

O’Neill, Mark 1–24, 249 objects 5–8, 10, 13, 15, 20, 22, 23, 29, 30, 38, 43, 45, 46, 49–51, 57, 66, 69, 74, 78, 89, 90, 94, 95, 98, 106, 111, 123, 125, 126, 130, 143, 149–151, 154, 159, 161, 166, 170, 171, 178, 179, 182, 186, 198, 206, 209, 210, 214, 218, 223, 226 Ontario Science Centre 58 open-air 10, 30, 102, 108, 109–112, 185, 205–207, 240, 245 ordinary people 114, 182, 202 originality 70, 75, 94 Palais de la Découverte 57 Pamuk, Orhan 149, 150 Papantoniou, Ioanna 40, 42 paradigm 2, 3, 151, 155, 175, 206, 219 participatory 187, 207 peace 61, 89, 91, 127, 222, 223 peasant 11, 45, 49, 50, 72–75, 110, 237 Peggy Guggenheim Collection 33, 231 Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation 8, 10, 40, 41–44, 49 permanent 9, 33, 51, 58, 62, 65, 86, 95, 118, 125, 142, 146, 155, 166, 169, 170, 181, 182, 185, 193, 195, 197, 198, 201, 210, 214, 225, 233, 244 Perrin, Jean 58 personal 8, 11, 35, 53, 87, 122, 123, 138, 149, 151, 153, 155, 157, 174, 182, 186, 190, 201, 203, 214, 217, 218, 221–223, 226, 232, 235–237 Persson, Per-Edvin 58 Phelan, Celestine 94 Philippon, Jean-Paul 104, 106 Pitkänen, Maritta 85–88, 250 playful 58, 143, 189, 191, 214 Poland 16, 180, 181–184, 212–216, 244–246 political 2, 3, 6, 12, 13, 31, 45, 62, 63, 77, 101, 126, 127, 131, 133, 141, 150, 151, 169, 182, 183, 198, 201–203, 206, 222 Ponsioen, Adelheid 109 Portimão Museum Prize 16, 119, 246 Portugal 15, 16, 116, 117–120, 188–192, 230, 231, 234–243, 245 poverty 12, 65, 187 power 8, 10, 12, 19, 53, 54, 101, 129, 150, 162, 190, 198, 201, 213–21, 223 Prasch, Hartmut vi preservation 2, 3, 23, 30, 31, 65, 106, 173, 205, 217 pride 7, 12, 118, 141, 146, 179, 185, 191, 222

professional 2, 6, 10, 16, 18, 21, 22, 24, 38, 90, 107, 111, 125, 143, 151, 161, 163, 167, 170, 190, 199, 207, 213, 214, 226 programme 3, 4, 8, 15, 16, 19, 35, 39, 42, 66, 77, 78, 81, 82, 103, 107, 113, 114, 122, 131, 135, 138, 143, 154, 161–163, 166, 170, 174, 182, 183, 194, 199, 201, 203, 207 progress 2–4, 9, 13–15, 24, 50, 55, 57, 58, 63, 146, 173 proud 170, 190, 194 public quality 2–4, 11, 14–18, 21, 35, 93, 95, 97, 142, 167, 210 public service 17, 78 purpose 1–4, 9, 15, 16, 18, 33, 46, 50, 59, 62, 70, 90, 94, 113, 142, 155, 174, 175, 177, 183, 198, 205, 206, 215, 226 Quarry Bank Mill 7, 8, 10, 52–56, 233 radical 6, 7, 17, 74, 82, 83, 98, 122, 150, 153, 213 Ralph Appelbaum Associates 202 reconciliation 127, 134–135, 189, 221–223 reflection 2, 11, 23, 24, 31, 105, 134, 143, 179, 199, 211 refugee 113, 115, 162, 170, 183, 223 regeneration 12, 117, 145, 165, 166, 209, 213 regional 11, 13, 69, 71, 82, 86, 101, 119, 130, 138, 139, 194, 217, 222, 232, 238 relevance 13, 114, 115, 207, 219, 223 relevant 54, 62, 91, 102, 114, 115, 150, 165, 170, 207 religion 11, 37–39, 94, 133, 134, 187, 191 religious 5, 8, 37–39, 73, 74, 94, 130, 133, 150, 162, 187, 194, 215, 250 research 2, 3, 9, 17, 31, 42, 50, 66, 67, 78, 90, 93, 94, 103, 114, 119, 122, 126, 129, 131, 163, 174, 178, 181–183, 187, 198, 199, 218, 219, 222, 240 resilience 197–199, 221, 223 resistance 3, 135, 154, 182, 183 resources 8, 9, 17, 21, 23, 58, 70, 77, 103, 118, 143, 145, 155, 186, 194, 197, 198, 211, 218 respect 13, 20, 35, 46, 87, 103, 127, 131, 167, 183, 190, 226 responsibility 13, 18, 45, 70, 87, 99, 123, 131, 161, 194, 198, 199, 201, 219 restoration 65, 78, 102, 130, 131, 186, 190, 193, 218

260  Index

revolution 2–3, 5, 7–8, 14, 29, 30, 54, 74, 95, 98, 113, 141, 142, 194, 251 Rijksmuseum 12, 160, 161–164, 244 Rijksmuseum Boerhaave 5, 13, 14, 224, 225–227, 245 Rivière, Georges Henri Romania 72, 73–75, 236, 237 rural 8, 10, 110, 111, 119, 153, 154 Rüsselsheim Museum 7, 42 Russia 8 Ryan, Michael 94, 137–140, 161–164, 173–176, 192, 193–196, 250

Sandahl, Jette 1–24, 129–132, 149–156, 181–184, 197–200, 250 Sasso San Gottardo 13, 20, 176, 177–180 scale 4, 7, 10, 17, 18, 30, 34, 74, 85, 86, 103, 122, 123, 134, 143, 150, 181, 182, 197–199 Schäfer, Herman 81 Schirmbeck, Peter 41–55 school 45, 62, 66, 69, 70, 75, 79, 107, 131, 135, 163, 194, 222, 247, 248 science 4, 6, 7, 13, 15, 30, 56–60, 66, 78, 145, 174, 175, 209–211, 225–227, 234, 235, 240–242, 244 Science Museum 4, 57, 58, 241, 244 scientific 20, 45, 50, 58, 78, 79, 131, 161, 162, 166, 174, 175, 178, 195, 211, 225–227 Selimkhanov, Jahangir 145–148, 169–172, 177–180, 185–192, 201, 202 Shoubsky, Mikhail 82 Silesian Museum 10, 11, 212–216, 245 Silletto Prize 16, 242–246 Skansen 10, 109, 110 slavery 7, 13, 146, 196–200, 245 Sobejano, Enrique 130 social 2, 4–7, 9, 10, 13–16, 18–24, 29, 45, 46, 58, 62, 66, 70, 74, 86, 87, 94, 98, 105–107, 111, 117–119, 122, 131, 141–143, 146, 150, 154, 155, 162, 165–167, 170, 181–183, 186, 190, 194, 198, 199, 202, 203, 207, 209, 210, 214, 215, 218, 219, 221–223, 227, 238 solidarity 5, 6, 13, 16, 23, 106, 180, 181–184, 191, 244 Spain 13, 84, 85–88, 100, 101–104, 128, 129–132, 229–231, 233, 234, 237, 238, 240–244 Special Commendation 16, 39, 49–51, 53–60, 65–68, 105–108, 125–128, 145–148, 173–176, 205–216, 244–246

staff 16, 18, 22, 24, 45, 46, 67, 74, 79, 81, 90, 95, 135, 142, 155, 161, 170, 182, 186, 187, 199, 203, 211, 222, 223 standards 14–17, 20, 21, 62, 74, 93, 94, 103, 138, 154, 155, 195 state 3, 7, 11, 13, 20, 24, 33, 36, 37–40, 59, 61, 62, 77, 81, 91, 94, 109, 114, 134, 183, 186, 217, 218, 230, 233, 236 Steiner, George 13 Stockholm Music Museum 7, 44, 45–47 stories 6, 8, 9, 13, 15, 30, 38, 74, 81, 90, 97, 110, 113–115, 119, 122, 123, 125, 127, 133–135, 141, 146, 149, 150, 154, 157–159, 166, 170, 171, 181, 182, 186, 189, 201, 202, 205–207, 210, 214, 219, 221–223, 225, 226, 241, 242 sustainability 15, 16, 118, 153, 155, 178, 227, 244–246 sustainable 13, 30, 31, 155, 162, 169, 178, 207, 219, 223 Sweden 44, 45–48, 64, 65–68, 230–236, 238–241, 243 Switzerland 168, 169–172, 176, 177–180, 229–241, 243–246 taboo 150, 187 Tampere 6, 7, 14, 124, 125–128, 230, 242, 245 Tanović, Selma 222 Tate Britain 97 Technisches Museum 57 technological 3, 4, 29, 57, 142, 174, 210, 225 technology 4, 7, 21, 42, 57, 58, 66, 70, 111, 114, 134, 143, 210, 219, 232, 235 temporary 9, 35, 59, 65, 69, 82, 86, 102, 106, 125, 143, 146, 147, 170, 189, 193, 197, 203, 206, 210, 227 Terence 24 The British Galleries 5, 7, 96, 97–90, 97, 98 The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum 8, 12, 168, 169–171, 178, 244 The Leventis Municipal Museum 9, 14, 60, 61–63, 235 The Mary Rose 11, 66, 172, 173–175 The Museum of Innocence 6, 8, 11, 16, 148, 149–151, 243 The Netherlands 10, 36, 37–40, 89, 108–112, 144, 145–147, 162, 163, 224–227, 229–242 The Old Town Museum 10, 13, 204, 205–207

Index  261

The Vasa Museum 11, 64, 65–67 Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum 33 tolerance 191, 198 tourism 10, 19, 20, 86, 117–119, 138, 185, 218, 248 tradition 1–3, 7, 9–11, 16, 17, 42, 95, 101, 103, 106, 109, 122, 134, 150, 151, 155, 165, 166, 178, 194, 195, 218, 219 traditional 2, 4–8, 10, 31, 43, 50, 51, 69, 74, 83, 86, 87, 98, 109, 110, 117, 131, 135, 137, 138, 150, 154, 159, 162, 166, 202, 205, 206, 210, 236 tragic 11, 125, 127, 175 training 15, 70, 75, 78, 79, 143, 169, 199, 222 traumatic 73, 126, 127 Tripadvisor 12, 83 Turkey 10, 15, 16, 61, 148, 149–156, 223, 234, 236, 237, 240, 241, 243 Tzigara-Samurcas, Alexandru 75 UNESCO 15, 30, 70, 110, 129, 193, 251 United Kingdom 28, 29–32, 53–55, 76, 77–80, 97–100, 141–144, 172, 173–176, 229–246 unity 4, 15, 129, 131 university 15, 30, 45, 53, 58, 125, 131, 137, 138, 194, 225, 240, 241, 245 urban 10, 11, 34, 102, 110, 111, 117, 126, 142, 149, 153, 154, 165–167, 199, 205, 207, 209, 213, 214 Vaessen, Jan 109 value 3–5, 7, 9, 11–13, 15, 18, 22–24, 33, 39, 50, 53, 70, 103, 122, 123, 131, 139, 141, 161, 166, 169, 171, 178, 182–184, 186, 190, 194, 198, 202, 203, 219, 223

van der Ploeg, Jouetta 117–120, 133–136, 205–208, 250 van der Weiden, Wim 57–59, 61–63, 77–79, 93–95, 105–107 van Mensch, Peter 15, 207 violence 113, 191 vision 4, 9, 12, 18, 24, 31, 35, 39, 94, 111, 119, 121, 138, 143, 149, 155, 162, 165, 202, 210, 213, 218, 223 visitor 3, 7, 8, 12, 13, 17, 18, 20–22, 34, 35, 37, 39, 45–47, 51, 54, 55, 57–59, 62, 66, 67, 70, 73, 75, 78, 82, 87, 90, 91, 93–95, 97–99, 102, 103, 110, 111, 113, 114, 118, 119, 126, 127, 130, 131, 134, 138, 142, 143, 145, 146, 150, 155, 158, 159, 161, 163, 166, 167, 170, 173–175, 177–179, 181, 185, 186, 189–191, 194, 199, 201–203, 207, 209–211, 215, 219, 223, 226, 227, 245 war 6, 7, 10–15, 20, 21, 38, 42, 45, 58, 69, 74, 82, 89–91, 93, 97, 98, 125–129, 134, 135, 157, 158, 166, 169, 171, 173, 177, 202, 203, 214, 220, 221–224, 236, 240, 242, 245 welcome 24, 119, 139, 142–143 Weil, Stephen 2 working class 10, 105, 106, 157, 182, 190, 214, 231 World Heritage 30, 68, 70, 129, 193 world views 10, 150, 153 Yamalo-Nenetz Museum 81 Yaroslavl Art Museum 7, 8, 192, 193–195 Žanis Lipke Memorial 7, 8, 156, 157–160, 243