CIMAM Announces the Three Awardees of the 2025 Outstanding Museum Practice Award
Within the framework of the 57th CIMAM Annual Conference, taking place from November 28–30 in Turin, CIMAM – International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art – announced the winners of the fifth edition of the Outstanding Museum Practice Award (OMPA) 2025.
This year’s edition received 48 nominations from museums across the globe, reflecting the creativity, innovation, and resilience of institutions working in highly diverse contexts.
Since its creation in 2021, the OMPA has sought to celebrate and highlight exemplary museum practices, recognising projects that can serve as an inspiration for the international museum community. The award aims to honour practices that are not only innovative but also context-sensitive, replicable, sustainable, and capable of fostering lasting structural change.
The OMPA Committee carefully considered these criteria in recognising excellence in the nominated museum practices. After deep consideration and discussion, the Committee identified as the recipients of the Award for 2025 the Museo Barda del Desierto (mBDD) (Northern Patagonia, Argentina), the Bergen Kjøtt Foundation (Bergen, Norway), and The Palestinian Museum (Birzeit, Palestine) for their clearly intentioned and impactful practices that reinforce the core values and purposes of museums through creative collaboration with museum professionals, communities, artists, and the public.
Suzanne Cotter, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and Chair of the CIMAM’s OMPA Committee, declares: “We are excited to announce this year's CIMAM Outstanding Museum Practices Award and the inspiring models for museums that are in action across the globe. At a time of immense uncertainty and challenges in the world, the Award is a celebration and a signal of promise for museums as institutions that can make a difference to people and communities and be agents of affirmation and our shared humanity.”
The Committee emphasised that each of the awarded museum practices enacts new and alternative models for how a museum can function in diverse contexts and remain true to the core principles of preservation and display as vital forms of storytelling for people and cultures. Museums remain spaces of cultural memory, for reflecting on the present and imagining our collective futures. Safeguarding this role lies at the heart of the awarded projects.
Main Image: OMPA Awardees 2025 and Members of the OMPA Steering Committee