The FeliX Art & Eco Museum is quite atypical: a museum site inspired by the avant-garde painter-farmer Felix De Boeck. We see the atypical as a unique and pioneering opportunity to evolve into an ensemble where the art museum is nurtured bottom-up into a community museum. We help give a future to heritage objects, intangible heritage, and nature experiences of the region. Located on the outskirts of Brussels, a place between the metropolitan and the rural whit a diverse linguistic mix, the museum inspires togetherness. At the intersection of all our initiatives is contributing to developing a sense of community in harmony with our environment. The EMYA nomination proves that it is possible to inspire from a local or regional project, even at an international level. For our museum team, this nomination is a recognition of our work and a reward to our many volunteers, visitors, and neighbors. And we plow on, just as the painter-farmer did... 

To be nominated for EMYA with a museum storage facility is very thrilling to the whole museum organization of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, from the director to the art handlers, conservators to educators. As the museum shows just 6-8% of the museum collection, visitors asked us regularly about the rest of it. Since we were able to build a brand new storage facility, we were able to give it a twist and make the whole museum collection accessible to the visitors. We are delighted that this new museum typology is reason for the EMYA nomination. Our desire to go beyond art history and to tell the story of art through the objects, materials and means of conservation, has been acknowledged by the jury. It is a great pleasure to share our experience within the museum world and shed a new light on means of exhibiting collections. EMYA brings the Depot on the European stage.

Years ago, when I started working at L’ETNO, the museum was one of those relatively small ethnographic museums visitors felt little interest for and knew little about. As a young generation of curators then, we decided we wanted to change things, to improve, to make the museum grow into something relevant. We looked at other museums seeking examples to follow, and we found several of the ones we liked had already been recognized by EMYA. That’s how we learn about EMYA and its contest, but the wish of being part of EMYA felt then too far to be reached. Life is full of surprises however, years have gone by and L’ETNO is now an EMYA nominee and nothing can be so exciting for us as a team. The perspective of sharing our work with colleges in an international context, of exchanging experiences and views that EMYA poses for us, is already a prize difficult to imagine all those years ago.

Joan Seguí. L’ETNO (Valencian Museum of Ethnology)

We discovered EMYA while searching many national and international museums and applied for the competition. After the EMYA jury accepted our application, we were honored for being invited to the finals in Barcelona as a result the visits and examinations in our museum that were realized by the distinguished members of the jury. It created an excitement in our organization of 350,000 people.

Together with EMYA, the idea of getting familiar with different perspectives of other museums, developing ourselves by communicating with them and being together inspires us. We are honored to be a part of EMYA which enables us to develop ourselves further by opening new horizons in the field of museology.

We were honoured to be one of the Nominees. I was really impressed by the diversity of all Nominees. It was really inspiring to see all the different narratives and different perspectives.

EMYA 2016 changed my professional life and was one of the most important meetings in my whole professional career. To have been nominated for this prestigious award was a reward in itself. But the best reward was the pleasure and honour of meeting all those incredible wonderful colleagues who do such great and important work for European people.

EMYA made it possible to meet colleagues full of passion with whom I had the most important exchanges and inspiring talks. For the first time I started to understand fully the importance of cultural heritage. It is worth standing up and fighting for our heritage. Never have I understood the European Idea so well as during those days in Spain. It will not be politics which keep Europe together it will be European culture.