The Silletto Prize recognises excellence in working with the local community and involving volunteers.
The European Museum of the Year Award (EMYA), organised by the European Museum Forum (EMF), was presented on April 9, 2016, t the 2016 Award Ceremony held in San Sebastian, Spain, in collaboration with TOPIC, Tolosa’s International Puppet Centre. This year’s ceremony, held for the 39th time, was marked by the centenary of Kenneth Hudson, founder of EMYA and EMF.
Two Croatian museums were among 49 museums in the running for the prestigious award and the Vukovar city museum won the special Stiletto Prize which recognizes excellence in working with the local community and involving volunteers. Second nominated Croatian museum was Ivana’s House of Fairy Tales in Ogulin.
In 1991, during the war in former Yugoslavia, the Eltz castle on the bank of the Danube, that housed the Vukovar City Museum, was almost completely destroyed. Since 1997, after the end of the war, the museum, which had existed as a museum in exile, has been an active force in reconstructing social and cultural life in Vukovar. Barely 17 years after the end of the armed conflict, the Vukovar Museum presents tragedies of the past as things to be avoided in future, not in a spirit of revenge or glorifying military action, but concentrated on people’s suffering and the need for peace-keeping.
The European Museum of the Year Award 2016 went to POLIN: Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw, Poland and the museum received the EMYA trophy, The Egg by Henry Moore, which it will keep for one year.
