International Museum Day
Future museum awards
MúzeumCafé 16.
International Museum Day, held during the weekend closest to 18 May, draws thousands of people to the garden of the Hungarian National Museum in central Pest every year. Alongside the Night of Museums, it is the most significant event promoting museums in Hungary. The May celebration of museums is particularly important for provincial and small museums because this is the time when they can present themselves to the profession as well as to the public in Budapest. On the day the Pulszky Society, the association of Hungarian Museums, presents a prominent award, ‘Museum of the Year’, which from this year on only one institution can receive. However, from 2011 the association intends to have museums compete for the prize of ‘Exhibition of the Year’. International Museum Day has been celebrated since 1977. The Advisory Committee of ICOM (International Council of Museum) determines the topic for each year. Museums for Social Harmony is this year’s theme, which refers to the social role of museums and suggests a non exclusively European attitude. That is not surprising since ICOM’s congress, held every three years, is meeting in Shanghai this time. Museums have a key role in building bridges between social groups and cultures, promoting diversity and difference along with mutual understanding and acceptance. In several European countries the Night of European Museums is held on the Saturday closest to International Museum Day, while in Hungary the May celebration in the Museum Gardens represents the International Day’s most important event. “This programme is a prominent initiative of our institution,” says László Csorba, the recently appointed director of the Hungarian National Museum. “It is a model for how high-standards and popularity can be intelligently fused.” By launching the International Museum Day thirty-three years ago the International Council of Museums had the aim of focusing public attention on the situation and significance of public collections in preserving human culture. It is up to the participants what input they provide for the events. “The first celebration was held in the Museum Gardens in 1996 when one phase of the National Museum’s reconstruction ended. Then thirty-three museums were invited,” Judit Lovas, programme co-ordinator recalls. The-one day event was unexpectedly successful. Now more than a hundred museums from Hungary and the neighbouring countries present a sample of their programmes and collections for the 25-30,000 visitors at the week-end in May. This year the Museum Gardens will be decorated, students of the Moholy-Nagy University of Art will hold a festival of animation films and local history collections will be in focus. At this year’s event the Pulszky Society will announce the founding of the ‘Exhibition of the Year’ award with a sum of one million forints. As MúzeumCafé went to press, negotiations with commercial sponsors were still underway. Simultaneous special awards will cease and the title ‘Museum of the Year’ will be awarded in one category only, presented to a ‘large’ museum every other year and a ‘small’ one in between. According to the Ministry of Education and Culture, there would also be an opportunity to present certificates and prizes of quality. Thus new professional awards can be expected in the future, but the details can be finalised only following broad agreement. In Hungary the now very popular Night of Museums happens to be organised during the weekend closest to the summer solstice, Midsummer’s Day. The Night of Museums was first held in France in 1999. When a delegation of the Ministry of Education and Culture saw the success of Museum Night it was organised in Hungary in 2003, albeit on a small scale. Since then the Night of Museums in Hungary has become an extremely successful cultural event, having attracted the interest of the museum profession and the public alike. On the night the largest programme of events is presented by the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.