The Municipal Museum of Loulé (MML) received, together with the National Museum of Archeology, the public recognition of the Portuguese Association of Museology for the project "Loulé. Territories. Memoirs. Identities ". The awards were held at the Museu Nacional dos Coches, in Lisbon, and was attended by the Mayor of Vítor Aleixo.
The local museum was awarded the "Best Partnership" and "Best Catalog" awards and an Honorable Mention in the area of "Cultural Mediation and Education". Loulé was thus in a ceremony in which around 70 prizes were awarded in several categories, distinguishing the best from museology in Portugal, among agents and institutions that did a remarkable job throughout the year 2017.
Inaugurated on June 21st, 2017, at the National Archaeological Museum, at the Jerónimos Monastery, in Lisbon, the Exhibition "Loulé. Territories. Memoirs. Identities "has achieved a remarkable success not only by the number of visitors, more than 170 thousand so far, but also by the various activities that have been developed from this show that shows the more than seven thousand years of History of the territory of the County of Loulé.
With the title "Happy Partnership", the first prize awarded to the two institutions highlights the fruitful partnership established between the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and the Loulé municipality. This protocol of collaboration was based on the presence of this Algarve city in the founding collection of the National Museum of Archeology, an institution that has as programmatic line 20 years ago the holding of temporary exhibitions, in partnership with the Portuguese municipalities in order to make known to the public the work that has been developed in the area of national archeology.
Emphasis is placed on the intense two-year work of the teams of both institutions, which in unison have developed stocktaking, selection, conservation and restoration activities for around a thousand cultural goods, as well as the design and production of Exhibition. It should be noted that, due to the work carried out in the framework of "Loulé. Territories. Memoirs. Identities ", the archaeological sites of the Endovélico database were located and relocated, with the Municipality of Loulé, together with the center of Lisbon, the only geographic areas being updated.
In addition to this multidisciplinary team made up of members from both institutions, this initiative was attended by 5 scientific commissioners representing several generations and decades of work in favor of scientific knowledge in the municipality of Loulé, from three universities in Portugal, as well as several specialists in area of accessibility, architecture and exhibition design, among others. In total there were about 200 people collaborating in this project.
The second prize with the "Best Catalog", the distinction is related to the quality and diversity of scientific articles produced that bring together the knowledge of archaeological research of the county of Loulé over the last century. Having counted on more than 40 authors in the construction and gathering of a scientific knowledge that has been developed over several decades, I now express in about 660 pages. It was born of a combination of efforts, namely between the Directorate General of Cultural Heritage and the National Press House Mint which resulted in "a monument in paper", as mentioned by Duarte Azinheira (INCM), in the presentation of the catalog held in Loulé, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the city of Loulé.
Finally, the importance of the Honorable Mention "Education and Cultural Mediation" for the Museums Educational Services teams, which have made a pioneering and excellent work of accompanying the students of the county to the exhibition, as well as of the local associations and Boards of Parish, aiming to take all the Louleans to Lisbon to strengthen the Loulean identity based on the common cultural heritage. At the same time, a joint programming has been carried out in Lisbon and Loulé, which allows the exhibition to be dynamized and decentralized.
"Loulé. Territories, Memories, Identities "is an exhibition created in an integrated way for the valorization of a territory, its cultural heritage, its communities, as well as a review of the historical and archaeological research carried out since the 19th century.
