The Main Živa Awards to the Emigration Museum from Poland and to the Russian Kizhi Museum
The Forum of Slavic Cultures (FSC) bestowed the awards for the best Slavic museums in Prague in co-operation with the National Technical Museum from Prague and under the honorary patronage of the Czech Ministry of Culture. In addition to the main award, the winner was the Emigration Museum from Poland, the award for the best Slavic heritage site was bestowed for the first time in five years. It went to the Kizhi Museum from Russia.
25 museums from 12 Slavic countries entered this year’s competition for the Živa Award for the best Slavic museum and heritage site. At the fifth ceremony (previous ones took place in Skopje, St. Petersburg, Zadar and Bled; in 2019 will take place in Montenegro) the Živa Award for the best Slavic museum was bestowed to the Emigration Museum Gdynia from Poland. For the first time the winner was given also the money prize in the amount of 3,000 euros. Also for the first time this year, the jury consisting of 13 museum experts from Slavic countries and the European Museum Academy selected the winner of the Živa Award for the best Slavic heritage site. It was bestowed to the Kizhi Museum from Russia.
In addition to the main award, a special recognition for leadership was given to the Viminacium Arcaheological Park (Kostolac, Serbia); the winner of the recognition for attention to visitors and openness was the Regional Museum of History (Shumen, Bulgaria); the Museum of Contemporary Art (Zagreb, Croatia) received the special recognition for creativity; the Lidice Memorial (Lidice, Czech Republic) for storytelling; and the Centre for Building Heritage in Plasy – National Technical Museum (Plasy, Czech Republic) for good use of resources.
“The purpose of the Živa Award is to encourage Slavic museums to better recognisability as well as to enhance the museums’ influence on local, regional and international level in the form of social responsibility,” said the director of the Forum of Slavic Cultures Andreja Rihter, PhD, at the ceremony that took place in the National Technical Museum in Prague, and added that in five years of its existence the award had brought together nearly 100 museums. Among them there were many which, also thanks to Živa, became more recognizable beyond the borders of Slavic world where they were given the opportunity for promotion, new contacts and were even among winners of other European museum awards.
Živa 2018