History

Cinematek and Bokrijk also come out on top in popular annual award. This year’s Museum Prize for Flanders has been awarded to In Flanders Fields, the First World War memorial museum in Ypres, West Flanders. The director of the museum, Piet Chielens, said that the award “was as if they wanted to give us a shot in the arm now that we’ve started renovations. It’s as if they were saying, ‘you’re on the right track, keep going’.”

The museum (pictured) opened 12 years ago, taking its name from a poem by the Canadian military surgeon Major John McCrae, who died near Ypres. It has been praised for its wide range of activities, which include conferences, educational activities, concerts, literary events, scientific research and artists in residence. It will be a hub of the major remembrance festivities planned by Flanders between 2014 and 2018.

“The Museum gives war a human face by bringing to life the stories of many soldiers and civilians,” the jury said of In Flanders Fields. “Despite many thousands of satisfied visitors, the museum does not rest on its laurels, but constantly regards its activities with a critical eye.”

This is the fifth time the Museum prizes have been awarded. Every year, a panel of experts draws up a short list of museums from Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia. At the same time, the public votes via the Museum Prize website for their favourite. And classes of schoolchildren visit two of the museums on the short list and give their vote to the best.

The main prize for Brussels this year went to Cinematek, the cinema museum, which reopened last year in the Bozar complex after a two-year renovation project. In Wallonia, the winner was Musée de l’Hôpital Notre-Dame à la rose in Lessines, which features a collection of medico-historical equipment and 2,000 books dating back to the 13th century.

The public prize for Flanders was awarded to the open-air museum in Bokrijk, featured in Flanders Today just two weeks ago, when we described it as “the most fun 550 hectares in Flanders”. The museum, which also features the country’s largest playground, reconstructs village life from a century ago, with genuine buildings of the period and living artefacts – human guides dressed in period clothes pose as villagers to help explain exhibits and the way of life to visitors.

Bokrijk is the destination of school trips from across the region: every former schoolchild has been there at least once. Perhaps for that reason, it also won the children’s prize this year.

The nominations for Flanders, one from each province, featured In Flanders Fields, the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Deurle; Museum Mayer van den Bergh in Antwerp; the Museum of Historical Techniques in Grimbergen and the Provincial Gallo- Roman Museum in Tongeren.

In Brussels, the public gave their vote to the Museum of the National Bank of Belgium. Brussels schoolchildren, meanwhile, voted for the Royal Museum of the Army and War History, part of the Jubelpark complex. The votes of the Walloon public went to Notre-Dame à la rose, and those of the schools to the Musée de Groesbeek-De Croix in Namur, a restored 18th-century manor house with French garden.

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