DVD The Best in Heritage 4

1. Introductory lecture by Mr. Julian Spalding

Questions of Quality

2. ''Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art'' (Edinburgh, Scotland) - 2004 Gulbenkian Prize for Museum of the Year

Charles Jencks’s Landform at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art is the centrepiece of the recent redevelopment of the grounds of the gallery, which has been in progress since the opening of the adjacent Dean Gallery in 1999. Completed in 2002, the Landform has won many plaudits, including, in 2004, the Gulbenkian Prize for Museum of the Year.

3. ''Trakya University Sultan Bayazid II Kulliye Health Care Museum'' (Edirne, Turkey) - 2004 The Council of Europe Award (EMYA - EMF)

Trakya University Health Care Complex of Sultan Bayezid II opened to the public in 1997 is the project aiming to bring the important details in the history of medicine to the present.

4. ''The Ulster Folk & Transport Museum'' (Belfast, Northern Ireland) - 2004 Irish Museum of the Year Award

The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum – part of the National Museums and Galleries of Northern Ireland (MAGNI) – sits in on the shores of Belfast Lough. It started as a folk museum 40 years ago, established in response to the speed at which the countryside and the way of life of its people was changing. It was created out of a desire to preserve and record a heritage in danger of disappearing.

5. ''Joe Alon Center - The Museum of Bedouin Culture'' (Israel) - 2005 Berlson Award & Ford Foundation Conservation and Environment grants 1st Prize

The Museum of Bedouin Culture is situated in the Northern Negev, near dense Bedouin population, on the border between the desert and arable land and the Palestinian Authority. The aim of the museum is conserving Bedouin tangible and non-tangible heritage, serving as a bridge between past and future and promoting co-existence between Bedouin and Jews.

6. ''The House of Terror Museum'' (Budapest, Hungary) - 2004 Special Commendation (EMYA - EMF) & 2004 Hungarian Museum of the Year

In Hungary, a country that survived two terror systems, the time has finally come to raise a monument to the memory of the victims and present to the public what it meant for our fellow countrymen to live through those times.

7. ''Old Paper Mill Complex'' (Warsaw, Poland) - 2003 Europa Nostra Diploma - Architectural Heritage

Reconstruction of an Old Paper Mill Complex was not a simple recreation of an old historical building, following preservation theories and methods. The more important task was to recreate a spirit of the place and give this important urban element of the neighbourhood its central, forgotten role.

8. ''L'Arno Racconta'' (Florence, Italy) - 2003 Europa Nostra Medal - Studies in the field of Architectural Heritage

The light illuminates our world and therefore also our imagination. From this presupposed it is the project: to improve the urban quality through the light and the colour in those spaces, that if also rich of historical meaning, that they have lost their natural connotation inside the city.

9. ''Landscape Park of the Sečovlje Salt-Pans'' (Piran, Slovenia) - 2003 Europa Nostra Medal - Cultural Landscapes

The Museum is a collection and study of the maritime past of the Slovene coast, Slovene naval history and connected economic activities. It contains an archaeological collection, a maritime collection, an art-history collection and an anthropological study and collection of items used in fishing.

10. ''Midt-Troms Museum'' (Norway) - 2004 Norwegian Museum of the Year 2004

Aside from the very oldest institutions, the structure of Norway’s museum landscape has for the greatest part been determined by local initiatives. This has meant in many cases that engaged individuals and small associations has created quite large collections of artifacts and antiquarian buildings, many of these museums are very impressive.

11. ''Museum of Folkart and Tradition'' (Spittal / Drau, Austria) - 2003 Austrian Museum Quality Proof Mark

In 1958 seven enthusiastic volunteers interested in history and tradition founded the Museum for the goal to preserve objects and documents and later on give them back to the public in the form of a permanent exhibition. They started to collect items especially from the alpine areas of western Carinthia which through the years turned out to be one of the biggest ethnographic collections in Austria.

12. ''Museums to Discover : Portail des musées du Québec'' (Société des Musées Québécois, Canada) - 2004 F@IMP (AVICOM) - Silver Web'Art Award

The Société des musées québécois (SMQ - Association of Quebec Museums), a non-profit organization, was founded in 1958. In 1973, it established a structure allowing it to act as the representative of museum institutions in Quebec (regardless of their size, mandate or geographic location) and on behalf of museography and museology professionals. Today, the association represents 300 museum institutions and more than 600 individual members.

13. ''The Avesta Works'' (Sweden) - 2004 NODEM - Nordic Digital Excellence in Museum - Best large scale / immersive installation

Avesta has been entrusted a magnificent industrial heritage. At the centre of Avesta, by the rapids, lies the old iron works area, which dates back to the 17th Century.

14. ''The Varazdin Municipal Museum : Kukci / Insects CD ROM'' (Varazdin, Croatia) - 2004 F@IMP (AVICOM) - Multimedi'Art Honorable Mention for education and documentary research

The exhibition entitled the WORLD OF INSECTS offers original museum holdings with only a few museumaids. Since the presentation includes preparations of tiny animals, numerous physiological characteristics and interesting phenomena connected to their biology cannot be explained through the displayed static items (regardless how complex they might be). Therefore we have decided to take advantage of the options modern media provide – an interactive CD-ROM which includes text, photographs, audio and video recordings and animation. Special physiological features of insects, i.e. flight, cry, metamorphosis, mimicry and senses characteristic to insects (sight, hearing, smell, etc.) presented in the most contemporary way enhance communication with the visitors.

15. ''Zagreb City Museum : The Dictates of the Time CD ROM'' (Zagreb, Croatia) - 2003 Croatian Museum Association Annual Award for outstanding ''Integrated Museum Project: Exhibition & Catalogue & CD-ROM''

The Dictates of the Time / Zvonimir Faist / Posters from the late 1930s to the early 1960s is a museum project realised through the exhibition, catalogue and CD-ROM that presents Zvonimir Faist, the oldest living Croatian academically trained painter (born in 1914), who had from 1937 devoted 40 years of his professional life to the design of posters in Zagreb, working both as a freelance artist and as an employee in state propaganda institutions.

16. ''Desht-i-Art Centre - Minus Six. Exhibition about GULAG'' (Karaganda, Kazakhstan) - 2004 Open Museum Forum (Russia) - ''Arch of the Future'' / The special diploma for artistic expressiveness of the document

Karaganda is a town, which is located in the center of Kazakhstan, and its history is directly connected with the events of the Stalin époque. The tragic collision for millions of people appeared to have quite a different effect on our town. The town grew and developed mostly due to the efforts of those who had been repressed and exiled. But strangely enough, it is not known widely and spoken much.

17. ''The Trace of the Garden - Museum of P.V. Kuznetsov'' (Russia) - 2004 Open Museum Forum (Russia) - Grand Prix

“I was born in Saratov in the family of gardeners”. This is the phrase Pavel Varfolomeevich Kuznetsov started his biographies with. This phrase had helped to get things moving to reconstruct the artist’s house in Saratov.

18. ''The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum'' (Springfield, Illinois, USA)

Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum and in exhibition galleries all across North America are re-inventing the definition of museum and leading the change from collection-based institutions to experience-based institutions. Here, objects or the material culture of museums are not being supplanted – they are being given context and used as part of a great compelling story that educates audiences and leaves them wanting more.

19. ''Domvs Romana project - Heritage Malta'' (Rabat, Malta)

Heritage Malta is the national agency of the Government of Malta, in charge of the management of 24 national museums and heritage sites and their related collections in Malta and Gozo, including seven UNESCO world heritage sites.

20. ''The Worker's Museum'' (Copenhagen, Denmark)

The Workers’ Museum in Copenhagen was established in 1983. In 2004 we merged with The Labour Movements Library and Archives, founded in 1909. We are now a cultural historical museum, an art museum, a library and an archive.

21. Andrew Hunter: ''11 Fishermen - Lalla Rookh: A poetic Archive''

Hunter’s project is a poetic memorial to the “Brave Eleven,” a small group of Worthing fishermen who drowned in a futile attempt to come to the aid of the ship Lalla Rookh that foundered in distress November 25th, 1850. The ship Lalla Rookh would recover and sail on but the local community would be marked by the tragedy for generations.