Museum Prize

The Workers Museum (Copenhagen, Denmark) wins 2023 Council of Europe Museum Prize

The 2023 Council of Europe Museum Prize has been awarded to the Workers Museum (Copenhagen, Denmark). The museum was selected by the Culture Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), meeting in Paris on 5 December 2022.

During a ceremony held in the Palais de l’Europe on 25 April 2023, Tiny Kox, President of the Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) awarded the Prize to Søren Bak-Jensen, Director of the Workers Museum /Arbejdermuseet.

The Workers Museum collects, researches and communicates the development of living and working conditions for Danish wage workers during the past 150 years, and the development of the Danish labour movement. It combines the history of this symbolic building and the history of the Danish Labour movement with present-day concerns about how workers’ culture could be more relevant to society.

According to the committee's representative for the Museum Prize, Roberto Rampi (Italy, SOC), the museum “raises the themes of dialogue, the future development of democracy, climate change, an equal society, the labour market and political activism; it provides spaces for meetings and encourages people to gather. The museum has the potential to become a beacon of activism, as it was in the past.”

The Council of Europe Museum Prize has been awarded annually since 1977 to a museum judged to have made a significant contribution to the understanding of European cultural heritage, the promotion of respect for human rights and democracy, bridging cultures, overcoming social and political borders, broadening visitors' knowledge and understanding of contemporary societal issues and exploring ideas of democratic citizenship.

The prize forms part of the European Museum of the Year Awards. Recent winners of the prize include Nano Nagle Place in Cork (2022), the Gulag History Museum in Moscow (2021) and the National Museum of Secret Surveillance “House of Leaves” in Tirana (2020).