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Celebrating award-winning cultural heritage institutions
Over the past year and into 2023, a number of museums across Europe have won Museum of the Year prizes nationally, regionally and internationally.
Let's take a look at some award winning cultural heritage institutions.
European Museum of the Year
The European Museum of the Year Award is presented each year in May by the European Museum Forum, an organisation which is part of the Council of Europe.
The European Museum of the Year for 2022 was the Museum of the Mind in Haarlem in the Netherlands. It is a national museum for psychiatry, located in a building called Het Dolhuys which had been a hospital for centuries.
The Council of Europe Museum Prize
The European Museum Forum also annually awards the Council of Europe Museum Prize each December.
For 2022, this was won by Nano Nagle Place in Cork, Ireland. This museum commemorates the educational and religious work of Nano Nagle, who founded schools in the 18th century for the Catholic poor in Cork at a time when it was illegal.
In 2023, the Council of Europe Museum Prize is being awarded to the Workers Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark. The Workers Museum collects, researches and communicates the development of living and working conditions for Danish wage workers during the past 150 years, and the development of the Danish labour movement.
You can explore the museum's digitised collections on Europeana.
The European Museum Academy Art Museum Award
The European Museum Academy is a volunteer society of museum experts from across Europe. It awards a number of prizes, including the Art Museum Award which honours artistic projects that address current social issues.
In 2022, this was awarded to the Lewis Glucksman Gallery in Cork, Ireland which has a collection of modern and contemporary Irish art. The judges for the award noted the gallery's excellence in curatorial practice, collections care and audience engagement which brings communities and artists together, to explore, visualise and express their thoughts and opinions on important societal issues.
Art Fund Museum of the Year 2022
In the United Kingdom, Art Fund annually award a Museum of the Year Prize each July. In 2022, this was won by the Horniman Museum and Gardens in Forest Hill in southeast London.
The Horniman opened in 1901 as a gift to the people from tea trader and philanthropist Frederick John Horniman, to 'bring the world to Forest Hill'. Today the Horniman has a collection of 350,000 objects, specimens and artefacts from around the world in natural history, music and anthropology as well as an aquarium and display gardens.
You can explore part of the Horniman's collection on Europeana.
Årets Museum: Swedish Museum of the Year
Each spring, the Swedish Museums Association confers the Museum of the Year Award (Årets museum).
In 2022, this was awarded to the National Museum, Sweden's art and design museum. Its collections comprise around 700,000 paintings, sculptures, miniatures, arts and crafts, designs, drawings, graphic sheets and portrait photographs from the 16th century to the present day. It won the award for showing how museums can make a difference by broadening the conversation about art and culture in society - work that reaches far beyond the walls of the museum.
You can explore the National Museum's collections on Europeana.
Museum Prize in the Netherlands
Each December, the VriendenLoterij Museumprijs is awarded in the Netherlands, voted by the public from nominated museums chosen by a jury. In 2022, the Museum Prize was won by the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam (Het scheepvaartmuseum).
Under the motto 'Water connects worlds', the Maritime Museum safeguards 500 years of Dutch maritime history and connects it with the society of today and the future, through permanent and temporary exhibitions and a wide range of public programmes.