Turkey’s Baksı Museum wins 2014 Council of Europe Museum Prize

STRASBOURG

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The Council of Europe Museum Prize for 2014 has been awarded to the Baksı Museum in the eastern Black Sea province of Bayburt, by the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
 
The museum is an example of the personal vision of its founder, Hüsamettin Koçan, and 160 contemporary artists around him, who aspired to bring a high standard of art and design to an under-developed rural area of Northern Anatolia. Koçan aimed for it to bridge the gap between the center and the periphery, helping the local population to remain culturally and economically rooted in their territory and to sustain cultural memory by reviving traditional weaving and textile manufacturing.
 
“This museum, its governance and the activities associated with it, provide a very inspiring model of how the principles of the Council of Europe Faro Convention on the value of cultural heritage for society can be adopted to fit locally,” Museum Prize rapporteur Vesna Marjanovic said.
 
The Council of Europe Museum Prize has been awarded annually since 1977 to museums judged to have made a significant contribution to the understanding of European cultural heritage.
 
Winning museums are presented with a bronze statuette, “La femme aux beaux seins” by Joan Miró, which they keep for a year, as well as a diploma.
 
The prize is decided by the PACE on the basis of a shortlist presented by a jury of the European Museum Forum, and forms part of the European Museum of the Year Awards.
 
Recent winners include the Museum of Liverpool, U.K. (2013), the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum in Cologne, Germany (2012) and the Portimão Museum in Portugal (2010).