31 March 2017

York Art Gallery will find out if it has won the prestigious European Museum of the Year Award (EMYA) at a ceremony in Croatia this May.

The gallery is the only British museum on the list of 46 nominees from 24 countries.

The winner will be announced on May 6 2017 at a special ceremony in Zagreb, Croatia.

This is the latest of several awards York Art Gallery has won or been shortlisted for since its reopening after an £8 million transformation in August 2015. These include winning the Family Friendly Museum of the Year and the York Visitor Attraction of the Year and being one of five finalists for the Art Fund Museum of the Year.

Reyahn King, chief executive of York Museums Trust, said:

“We are delighted to be named as one of the best museums in Europe: to be the only British museum on the list is an incredible achievement.

“This is international recognition for the transformation which has taken place at York Art Gallery and it will help us to promote the gallery and the city of York as an exciting cultural destination to new audiences across the continent.”
The nomination follows a visit by one of the judges last year.

Other museums to have made the shortlist include the National Gallery, in Sofia, Bulgaria, Musee national Picasso in Paris, France, the Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology, Stockholm and the Museum of the First President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, in Yekaterinburg, Russia. For a full list of finalists please click here.

As well as the Family Friendly Museum of the Year from Kids in Museums and the York Visitor Attraction of the Year at the Visit York Tourism Awards the Gallery has also won:

• Three Royal Institute of British Architecture (RIBA) Awards (the RIBA Yorkshire Award 2016 and the RIBA Yorkshire Conservation Award 2016 as well as the RIBA Yorkshire Project Architect of the Year 2016 for Tom Van Hoffelen of Simpson & Brown).
• Two York Design Awards (the Public and Community: Large Award and the Lord Mayor’s Award.
• It also received the Visitor Attraction Quality Assurance Scheme (VAQAS) Visit England Gold Award for Excellence.

The gallery was also one of five finalists in the Art Fund’s Museum of the Year.

The awards follow the £8 million development of the gallery which saw the gallery space increase by 60 per cent, new learning spaces, a new café and a new Artists Garden. It also saw the creation of the Centre of Ceramic Art (CoCA) which displays ceramics from the gallery’s collection of British Studio Ceramics, the largest in the UK.