More than 50 museums and galleries are competing for the national museum award

Prague – The Association of Museums and Galleries will, for the second year in a row, postpone the ceremonial announcement of the Gloria musaealis competition, which highlights the most significant achievements of domestic museums. Last year, the traditional May date was replaced by a ceremony in October accompanied by security measures and without audience participation. Today, Anna Komárková, the executive director of the organizing association, informed ČTK that the replacement date for this year's edition is yet unknown. This year, 56 museums and galleries entered 98 of their projects into the competition.

This is approximately the same as last year when 60 museums and galleries competed with 87 projects. The competition aims to draw public attention to the top performances of museum institutions and individual professionals in the museum field in creating exhibitions and new permanent displays, presenting collections in professional publications, or in rescuing and making objects or locations of our cultural heritage accessible.

This year, the strongest category became Museum Exhibition of the Year 2020, where 40 projects are vying for the award. The category Museum Publication of the Year 2020 has 33 entries, and the category Museum Achievement of the Year 2020 has 25 projects registered.

Last year, the Museum Achievement of the Year 2019 was an exhibition commemorating the history and present of Czech mountaineering. The award went to the Museum of the Czech Paradise in Turnov, which, according to the jury, succeeded in creating a space for an impressive exhibition representing the mountain landscape in an architecturally inventive extension of the museum. The exhibition was part of the project For Mountaineers, There Are No Borders, which was supported by the European Union. The partner city for the project was Bad Schandau in nearby Saxony, where a smaller exhibition called Climbing Worlds in the Elbe Sandstones was created.