The European Museum Forum announced the list of museums nominated for the European Museum of the Year Award. The EMYA Judging Panel recently held its annual meeting at the Federal Policy Office in Brussels, Belgium and selected the museums nominated for the European Museum of the Year Award 2013. The Judging Panel received applications from 21 member countries of the Council of Europe.

Nominated for EMYA 2013 are the following museums: Gobustan National Historical Artistic Museum, Garadakh district, Azerbaijan; LIBRARIUM: Cultures of the Book and the Written Word, Brussels, Belgium; MAS Museum aan de Stroom, Antwerp, Belgium; Parlamentarium – The European Parliament’s Visitor Centre, Brussels, Belgium; STAM – Ghent City Museum, Gent, Belgium; Estonian History Museum, Great Guild, Tallinn, Estonia; Carelicum – North Karelia Regional Museum, Joensuu, Finland; The Maritime Museum of Finland, Kotka, Finland; Museum of Classical Art in Mougins, Mougins, France; Museum of Natural History of Venice, Venice, Italy; Art Museum Riga Bourse, Riga, Latvia; National Maritime Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Lofoten Viking Museum, Lofoten Islands, Borg, Norway; Batalha’s Municipal Community Museum, Damão e Diu – Batalha, Portugal; Machado de Castro National Museum, Coimbra, Portugal; Slovene Ethnographic Museum, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Natural History Museum of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain; SanTelmo Museum, San Sebastian, Spain; Västmanland County Museum, Västerås, Sweden; Swiss Alpine Museum, Bern, Switzerland; Basel Paper Mill, Swiss Museum for Paper, Writing and Printing, Basel, Switzerland; Museum of La Gruyère, Bulle, Switzerland; Zeugma Mosaic Museum, Gaziantep, Turkey; Grant Museum of Zoology, UCL (University College London), London, United Kingdom; Museum of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom; National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, United Kingdom; Riverside Museum: Scotland’s Museum of Transport and Travel, Glasgow, United Kingdom; The Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

Winners for the European Museum of the Year Award, Special Commendations, the Silletto Prize and the Kenneth Hudson Award will be announced at a special award ceremony which will take place as part of the EMF Annual Assembly from 15‐18 May at the Gallo Romeins Museum, EMYA Winner in 2011, in Tongeren, Belgium. The Council of Europe Museum Prize Winner for 2013 was announced in December and this year’s winner is the Museum of Liverpool, UK.

The annual assembly of the European Museum Forum is a great opportunity for museum professionals from all over Europe to network to come together and discuss changing roles of museums and challenges in the current economic, social and political climate of Europe. The EMYA Award Ceremony will take place on18 May, which is International Museum Day and this year runs under the theme of Museums (memory + creativity) = social change.