Mr. Pinna thank You for starting this discussion! I think the European Museum of the Year Award has proofed through all these years that there is a need for awarding exceptional museum work. Also in my country the ministery of education, science and culture gives an Austrian Museum Award for 15 Years now. The awards have a lot of positive functions: honoring outstanding museum work, motivating to go on further in raising standards, emblematic function for the visitors.... This would also fit in the development to set up criteria for museum quality and standards in accreditation systems and quality proof marks for museums worldwide. E.g. ICOM Austria in cooperation with the Austrian Museum Association gives a Quality Proof Mark for museums since 2002. The ICR (Committee for Regional Museums) worked on museum quality and standards for 4 years and offers printed "guidelines" to museums worldwide. The problem with Awards is the handling of the evaluation of the candidates (time, costs, personal view of the jury-members) and the big differences in museum categories ( big/small, Art/Ethnografic/Natural/Open Air etc.). Therefore some suggestions: ICOM should give the preselection to the National Committees, which collect the applications from their country and nominate one or two museums maximum per year. Give awards in different categories, so the the whole field of museum work can be covered (the awards need not necessarily be money prices!! - getting an award from ICOM is a big and desireable goal of honor which can be used for fund raising, pr and marketing etc.) Out of the applications ICOM can start to set up a worldwide archive of museum documentation by collecting the application infos. The award winning projects can be published as signs of best practice.... I would like to here that Your idea develops! Hartmut Prasch Austria Vice-Chairman of ICOM/ICR -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: Giovanni Pinna [SMTP:[log in to unmask]] Gesendet am: Samstag, 04. Oktober 2003 17:34 An: [log in to unmask] Betreff: An ICOM prize for the best museum? As assigned by President Jacques Perot, I was representing ICOM on the occasion of The Best in Heritage second edition,held in Dubrovnik from 18 to 21 September 2003. The event aimed to present all those museum achievements - or other achievements linked to cultural heritage - which have been awarded a special prize or mention during the last few years. 18 projects were there to represent 16 countries and they showed the current trend of museology: this is the main value and the remarkable interest of the event. The event also showed that several national and international awards are assigned to museums every year. Among these, the very best known is the European Museum of the Year Award assigned by the European Museum Forum - such an organization brings back to memory the activity and the passion for museums which qualifies Kenneth Hudson's life - . However,all this has pushed me to wonder if ICOM, as representative of the museums community in the world, should create a yearly award for the best museum achievements in the world, or for the best paper or book on Museology, or both: a sort of "Nobel Prize" for museology, not excluding extra-european museums, as it already happens for EMF. This kind of award would have moreover many functions: for exemple it would provide ICOM with wide visibility all over the world thanks to an international event, it would create a forum for debates,it would incite researches as for what relates to museum communication, it would spur museum and their owners to renovate the production of museums achievements. I here suggest this idea to the Executive Council, to the Advisory Committee and to all ICOM members, urging to open a debate on this. Giovanni Pinna Member of the Executive Council -- Giovanni Pinna ----------------------- e-mail: [log in to unmask] web page: http://giovanni.pinna.cx ------------------------------------------------ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Change ICOM-L subscription options, unsubscribe, and search the archives at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/icom-l.html - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Change ICOM-L subscription options, unsubscribe, and search the archives at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/icom-l.html