European Museum Forum

The European Museum Forum (EMF) is a museum organisation operating under the auspices of the Council of Europe. This non-profit charity registered in the United Kingdom is one of the leading organizations in Europe for developing the public quality of European museums. It has established this primary position after 38 years of providing its services.

Since 1977 the European Museum Forum organizes the annual European Museum of the Year Award (EMYA). The EMYA is awarded to museums that stand out in innovation and public quality. Museums in 47 European countries, all members of the Council of Europe, can take part in the competition if they are newly opened or have undergone modernization or expansion in the past two years.

The European Museum Forum was founded in 1977 by Kenneth Hudson, who aimed to stimulate the international interchange of ideas and to create networks of inspiration.

From the very beginning the European Museum Forum handed out two main awards: the European Museum of the Year Award (EMYA) and the Council of Europe Museum Prize. It soon became apparent that the Awards were an efficient instrument for tracking and highlighting the changes in European museums. The European Museum Forum’s activity then evolved from a museum competition into a full embrace of the whole diverse range of challenges facing both the museum profession and the role of museums in a changing European society.

Over the years the European Museum Forum has observed dramatic changes in the European museum landscape – both quantitative, involving a rapid growth in the number of museums, and qualitative, affecting how museums operate and how they are perceived. The European Museum Forum has always been sensitive to those and other trends and tendencies. It was often first to pinpoint new approaches to the protection and interpretation of heritage, as well as new ways in which museums operate, before they were endorsed by intergovernmental organisations and the professional community.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, the European Museum Forum was a strong advocate of smaller museums as they played a vital role in changing museum methodology.

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