Azernews.Az

By Laman Ismayilova

Azerbaijan Carpet Museum, the treasury of national culture, with over 14,000 unique exhibits, is nominated to the most prestigious award in the museum world - European Museum of the Year Award (EMYA).

The Judging Panel of the European Museum of the Year Award held its meeting in Poland’s capital Warsaw on November 16-18.

The judges determined the nominations for the European Museum of the Year Award 2018 (EMYA).

The museums of Great Britain, Turkey, Sweden, the Netherlands, Russia, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Andorra, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ireland, Hungary, Greece and Finland are also nominated for the prize.

The announcement of the winners and the formal EMYA Award Ceremony will take place during the Annual Assembly of the European Museum Forum, on May 9-12 May 2018 in Warsaw.

The ceremony will take place in the POLIN - Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which was awarded with the European Museum of the Year Award in 2016.

With their intriguing array of radiant patterns revealed in artfully gradated color palettes, carpets continue to astonish art lovers and critics. Rug making is an ancient art form that goes back many centuries, some say many thousands of years.

Carpets have been always a part of Azerbaijani culture. They occupy a preeminent place among all the examples of national craftsmanship.

National carpets are known at international level, saved and stored at the world museums and private collections. Thanks to the care of the country, on November 10, 2010, the Azerbaijani carpet art was included into the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of UNESCO.

Azerbaijan's Carpet Museum established in Baku in 1967, being the first carpet museum in the world is the very place that can familiarize all the interested with the unique examples of the national carpets.

The main purpose of the creation of the museum was to store, research, and demonstrate unique examples of the carpet weaving art, which are the Azerbaijan’s national heritage. The initiator of the museum was Latif Karimov – an outstanding scientist and carpet weaver, the founder of the science of Azerbaijan Carpet Weaving Art, artist and teacher, author of the fundamental work of national carpet.

A new carpet museum, designed in the form of a rolled carpet, opened in the Baku Seaside Park in 2014 and all carpets were transferred to this museum.

Today museum hosts many events, such as exhibitions, international symposiums, and conferences.

During its 50 years of existence, the museum has organized more than 30 exhibitions in different countries throughout the world.

The Museum operates as the site for the comprehensive research of traditional carpet weaving art and its popularization within world culture.

The European Museum of the Year Award (EMYA) was founded in 1977, by the now legendary Kenneth Hudson and Richard Hoggart, under the auspices of the Council of Europe, with the aim of recognizing excellence in the European museum sector, and of encouraging innovative processes in a museum world, which still took the more traditional view of focusing on collections rather than on their use for the benefit of society.

Every year, a rigorous judging process involves visits to up to 50 museums, culminating in an annual conference with up to 300 leading museum professionals, at which the candidates present their museums, the winners are announced, and the underlying values and innovative ideas in the European museum field are discussed, renewed and reinterpreted.

Since 1977, the European Museum Forum, as the longest running and most prestigious museum award scheme, has presented the European Museum of the Year Award and a series of related awards, and functioned as a continuous benchmark for best practices for the sector. Innovation, public quality and accessibility are the absolute criteria for the EMYA award and constitute the shared denominators for all the awards in the scheme.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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