The Portimão Museum will host, in 2024, the European Museum of the Year (EMYA) award ceremony and the European Museum Innovation Conference, two «very important» events for the city and for the country, considers Isilda Gomes, president of the City Council of that Algarve city.
The partnership agreement between the European Museum Forum (EMF – European Museum Forum) and the Portimão Museum was signed this Thursday, November 17, between Jette Sandahl, president of the EMF board, and Isilda Gomes, president of the Portimão municipality, for the EMYA (European Museum of the Year Award), in 2024.
«For us, as an international organization, it is very interesting to have this place as part of our identity. The Portimão Museum is, without a doubt, an example for other museums in the world», said Jette Sandah to Sul Informação.
The connection between the two entities goes back a long way, starting in 2010 when Portimão received the “Museum Council of Europe” award, and has been maintained through the participation of its scientific director José Gameiro, since 2011, as a member of the EMYA Jury, having even exercised its presidency between 2015 and 2018.
For José Gameiro, the agreement signed yesterday is «the continuation of this very important relationship for the museum, city and country».
«It is a unique moment to see the diversity and quality of the competing museums gathered in one place», he also told our newspaper. According to the scientific director, one of the next steps is to find out how many museums will apply for the award next year.
«Today was just the beginning and a start of something that had already been decided, but that had to be formalized again because there are always many countries competing», he stressed.
This event, now scheduled for two years from now, should have happened in 2021, but did not advance, due to the pandemic.
The partnership now established foresees that, in May 2024, the European Museum Innovation Conference and the European Museum of the Year Awards Ceremony will be two important moments of the EMYA in Portimão.
For these awards, all European museums, from the 46 countries belonging to the Council of Europe, which have been inaugurated or renewed since January 2017, will be able to apply and register, next year, as potential candidates for winners in the seven award categories, of which the “European Museum of the Year Award” and the “Council of Europe Museum Award” stand out.
Isilda Gomes also highlighted, during the partnership signing ceremony, that, in the same year, the elevation of Portimão to city status was celebrated. «It is a very important year, in which we have to talk a lot about our history, because, those who do not know their origins, have no future», she stressed.
The mayor of Portimão also made a point of recalling that, since July 2018, another partnership agreement was established between this city and the EMF, allowing the installation of the secretariat of this Forum in the Museum of Portimão and its historical archive in the Documentation Centre.
The Museum of Portimão has also become, since that year, the “Home of the EMYA” and, since 2019, the annual meeting place of its jury for the selection and choice of award-winning museums, an activity that takes place again this year, between 17 and 19 November.
Whole history of this European Award and the documentation of the hundreds of candidate, nominated and awarded museums, throughout its 45 years of existence (1977-2022) that, from Liverpool, Berlin and Milan, came to Portimão where they are being organized and prepared for later public access.
Also a result of this partnership, the “Museu Portimão” Prize was created, a new category through which the most welcoming and inclusive museum in Europe is distinguished annually.
At yesterday's ceremony, the members of the EMYA Jury were present, who are in the city of Portimão for their annual meeting and to decide which museums to announce, in May of next year, at the EMYA 2023 that will take place in the city of Barcelona .
Photos: Mariana Sedge | Sul Informação
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