Object of the month: European Museum of the Year Award – diploma

European Museum of the Year Award – diploma

In May 1993 Alta Museum won the prize as the Museum of the year at the European Museum of the Year Award. The Museum was the first museum in Norway who won this prestigious award and is still the only one. The main reasons why Alta Museum won the award was, with a new building, had a high visiting number, gave guiding in multiple languages, and had many new exhibitions. The award ceremony was conducted in a duke’s palace in Portugal. From Alta travelled a delegation consisting of the manager Hans Christian Søborg, the secretary Britt Rasmussen, the mayor Eva Nielsen, the head of Culture Jan H. Pettersen and the architect Peter Maisenhölder.

Alta Museum’s indispensable colleague Hans Christian Søborg passed away too soon in April 2021. He was a very generous man who was concerned about everyone around him. This shows clearly in his thank you-speech from the award, where he didn’t hold back on the superlatives when he talked about Alta, the Museum and his colleagues. Here Hans Christian addressed the wonderful people of Alta who made Alta’s history very exciting. He also declared his genius colleagues:

«Mrs. (Marita) Grimsø has designed everything from exhibitions to shopping bags to visiting cards, and is an exceptional woman in all respects. […] We have now lost this fabulous woman. She is now designing exhibitions for the 1994 Olympic Games in Norway.

Mr. (Kristen) Kristensen is another one of our geniuses. When he is given a task, he’s finished in a fraction of the time expected and the result is 10 x better than anybody possibly could hope. Most of the exhibition has been produced on his carpenter bench. […]

Mrs. (Britt) Rasmussen, […] is one of the amazing people that work at museums all over the world. I don’t know where museums get them from, these poorly paid museum workers who work themselves to death night and day in part time positions, and do so with a wonderful charm and peals of laughter. […]»

Hans Christian himself was a very important contributor to Alta Museum’s chances of winning this award, and by his passing we want to show the European Museum of the Year Award – diploma as the object of the month.

Written by Ann-Silje Ingebrigtsen, curator