International honor for EMST: Athens National Museum of Contemporary Art wins the “Art Museum Award”

A major international honor for the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) of Athens: the institution has won the “Art Museum Award” of the European Museum Academy (EAM), announced on the evening of September 26, 2026 in Alicante, Spain.

The jury was impressed by EMST’s vision and the way it sees art as a key instrument for human evolution, especially “in these turbulent times”. EMST was selected from a shortlist of six museums, including the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the new FENIX migration museum in Rotterdam and the National Gallery of Slovenia in Ljubljana.

This year’s competition was of a particularly high standard, and the nine-member jury of experts from across Europe had an extremely difficult choice. Jury chair Samuel Gallacher said the jury looks every year for art museums that go beyond superficial impression and seek a genuine, lasting connection with the public; the curatorial practice of the six shortlisted museums is a model of excellence in addressing the concerns of contemporary society. The award jury members were: Bernhart Schwenk, Danièle Wagener, Delphine Munro, John Leighton, Karen Holdaway Grøn, Louisa Leventis, Samuel Gallacher (chair) and Tijana Palkovljević Bugarski.

The European Museum Academy (EAM) is a non-profit institution that represents museums internationally and promotes research in museology, with representation in 40 countries. The “Art Museum Award” honors projects that place art in innovative, pioneering and creative contexts to critically address contemporary social issues, highlighting the social role of art museums, as ProtoThema reports.