Geneva ethnography museum named European Museum of the Year
May 8, 2017
It's over 100 years old and holds more than 100,000 ethnographical objects from around the world. Geneva's museum of ethnography has won the prestigious European Museum of the Year Award.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/N. Falco
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Europe's new and innovative museums
Each year the European Museum Forum gives the European Museum of the Year Award (EMYA) to the most-deserving winner. This year, 46 museums were nominated, with some in Germany and Switzerland.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/N. Falco
Enthography in Switzerland
Europe rewards museums that are newly renovated of that have redesigned their presentation. The 2017 European Museum of the Year (EMYA) is Geneva's Museum of Ethnography (MEG - Musée d’ethnographie de Genève) in Switzerland. A total of 46 museums were nominated for the prize. Here are some of the candidates in Germany and Switzerland.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/N. Falco
The Football Museum in Dortmund
Dortmund's German Football Museum is located in this colorful, futuristic new building, opened in 2015 by the German Football Association. The is about more than just football; socio-political topics are also discussed. Visitors can learn why, in 1989, the European champion women's team only recieved a meager reception, or how the East German secret police were involved in the sport.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/B. Thissen
The Begas Haus museum in Heinsberg
Initially, this museum in Heinsberg, Germany was a local history museum. Then, the decision was made to expand it by adding an extension. In the foreground of this picture are the famous painter and sculptor family Begas, which hail from Heinsberg. Visitors embark on an interactive journey through the region's history from the Romantic period to the "Gründerzeit" period of economic prosperity.
Image: Begas Haus
Königstein Fortress in Saxony
This historic fortress is situated in the mountainous region of Saxony, Germany. The new permanent exhibition provides an overview of the 800-year history of the castle and fortress and the 60 buildings that sit on the 9.5-hectare site. In the more than 20 years since the end of the German Democratic Republic, the museum has collected exhibition items and now has plenty to offer visitors.
Image: Festung Königstein gGmbH
Where visitors turn into birds
Whoever enters the ecologically constructed visitors' center of the Swiss Ornithological Institute in Sempach, Switzerland can expect to see the world from a bird's perspective. Throughout the visit, visitors must think like a bird, deciding what to eat or where to live. At the end of the tour, visitors learn what kind of bird they resemble most based on their decisions.
Image: Vogelwarte Sempach/B. Marcel
Restored: The Town Hall Museum in Sempach
The Town Hall Museum in Sempach was also nominated for a European Museum of the Year Award. Built in 1447, the building was renovated three years ago. Now, instead of only having capacity to show small exhibitions, the new and spacious four-storey museum can offer much more. Exhibitions about religion, as well as resistance to customs, are accompanied by multimedia features.
Image: Rathausmuseum Sempach/C. I. Barrer
The Hansemuseum in Lübeck
Very few items remain from the Hanseatic period, so a great deal of research and imagination are needed to reconstruct this era of history. At the new Hansemuseum in Lübeck, Germany has managed to recreate 10 Hanseatic sites, including the market square in Bruges and a hall in Lübeck. The few objects that remain from this period in the Late Middle Ages are displayed in small exhibition rooms.
Image: Olaf Malzahn
The Roman mine in Kretz, Germany
In the Roman mine in Kretz, Germany, visitors can have a true hands-on experience. In addition to visiting the ancient mine, where tuff was once dismantled, visitors can also experience "Ancient Technology World," where machinery from Roman times and the Middle Ages like cranes, mills and byzantine marble saws can be tested.
Image: Römerbergwerk/S. David Zimpfer
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Boris Wastiau, director of the Musée d'Ethnographie de Genève (MEG), accepted the European Museum of the Year Award, known as the EMYA, at a ceremony this past weekend. The EMYA trophy, a sculpture by Henry Moore entitled "The Egg," goes on loan to the winning museum for one year before being passed on to the following year's title holder.
The MEG is considered one of the most significant ethnographical museums in Switzerland. After four years of reconstruction, it was reopened on October 31, 2014 - more than 100 years after it was first founded in 1901. The jury hailed the museum as an "excellent example of a living museum."
Thanks to its reconstruction, it now addresses visitors in a modern and appealing way, while making its entire ethnological collection accessible online and thus to a worldwide audience, the jury stated. This approach was based on the museum's conviction that the heritage of diverse cultures deserves to be protected and be made accessible to as many people as possible.
EMYA - a sought-after prize
The EMYA is one of the most prestigious museum awards in Europe. Since 1977, the prize has been handed out annually by the European Museum Forum either to a recently reopened museum, or to a museum housing a totally modernized exhibition. The objective of the award is to promote and publicize innovative developments in the international museum scene.
Nominated are museums that welcome visitors in a special and unique way, while their size, location and public standing are not among the criteria.
Among the famous winners of the last few years are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (2000) and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (2015). Last year, the award was won by the Museum of the History of Polish Jews (POLIN) in Warsaw.
