European Museum Academy (EMA) announces
FINALISTS FOR THE 2020/21 EUROPEAN MUSEUM ACADEMY AWARDS:
Luigi Micheletti Award
• Estonian Maritime Museum (Fat Margaret), Tallinn, Estonia
• Futurium, Berlin, Germany
• Textile Museum, Tilburg, The Netherlands
DASA Award
• Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• National Museum of Romanian Literature, Bucharest, Romania
• Stapferhaus, Lenzburg, Switzerland
Art Museum Award
• Trapholt Museum of Modern Art, Craft and Design, Kolding, Denmark
• Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany
• Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), Glasgow, United Kingdom
On September 18 the winners of three different Awards by the European Museum Academy (EMA) were announced: the Luigi Micheletti Award 2020/21, the DASA Award 2020/21 and the first Art Museum Award 2021. Due to the ongoing Covid-19 restrictions, the Award ceremony
was broadcast online via the European Museum Academy website.
The Covid-19 pandemic had a huge effect worldwide on the cultural heritage sector. The judging visits to candidates for the Luigi Micheletti and DASA Awards have therefore been cancelled for the last two years and have been replaced by online visits and interviews. In 2021 EMA launched the Art Museum Award, a new annual award specifically designed for art museums and galleries throughout Europe, dedicated to honour and highlight museum projects that work with art in an innovative, pioneering and creative way in order to address or respond to current social issues that are a major challenge to our contemporary society.
Andreja Rihter, EMA President, said: “Sadly, the jurors for all three Awards were not able to visit
candidates personally and online interviews took place earlier this year. We found it inspiring that so
many museums had managed to increase their online offers to their visitors and had found ingenious
ways to publicise their activities in other ways.”
THE LUIGI MICHELETTI AWARD goes to Futurium, located in the new Forum in the centre of Berlin
among government buildings and near the central railway station. Its first director was Reinhold
Leinfelder who wanted to build a museum of the archaeology of the future, based on the proposition
that future generations should be able to develop freely and should not continue to run into problems
during their lifetime. This concept was developed into Futurium, in which holistic, interdisciplinary,
international and participatory work is carried out and communicated widely. In the Exhibition visitors
are confronted and invited to interact with ideas and visions of the future in three ‘Thinking Spaces’:
Nature, Human, Technology. In the Forum, throughout the museum, people can exchange ideas
about future topics. Visitors get a wristband to be used at points in the exhibition, giving them the
opportunity to position themselves with regard to the hot issues.
THE DASA AWARD this year goes to The National Museum of Romanian Literature in Bucharest.
The museum dates from 1957 and was established in the communist era. With its dedicated and
professional management, it developed into an archive museum with interesting collections of
historical and current literature from authors in Romania and those living abroad. Today it is a
heritage research facility as well as a public space open to visitors. Specific programmes are
arranged for school classes and others mostly in higher education. The museum has a
comprehensive programme, responding to current issues in Romanian society, including the Romany
people, the LGBTQ community, female writers, and the Jewish theatre, with the aim of broadening its
audience base and involving visitors actively. As part of its mission to make the wealth of Romanian
literature known throughout the world, projects are arranged in co-operation with organisations,
including the British Council, the Centre Pompidou and the Norwegian government.
THE ART MUSEUM AWARD was presented to Trapholt Museum of Modern Art, Craft and
Design, Kolding, Denmark. The museum is in a large historic park sloping down towards the fjord.
80.000-100.000 visitors come to Trapholt each year, 50% from the region, 20% from Copenhagen.
The museum has an exhibition area of 3.000 m², in which special exhibitions are displayed in addition
to a sculpture park and permanent exhibitions on the painter Richard Mortensen and the designer
Arne Jacobsen (Kubeflex House). Trapholt attracts more than twice as many visitors without middleor
higher education compared to other art museums. Its mission is to develop a platform for
understanding the past, reflecting and discussing the present and pointing into the future, with
reference to contemporary art, craft and design. The vision is to create a museum community where
citizens and audiences engage in contemporary topics through artistic questions, craft materiality and
designer solutions.
