The Museum of Ethnography won two awards at the F@IMP festival in Dubai, which recognizes the world’s best digital projects: the digital development of the new collection exhibition won the ICOM Dubai Special Award, while the museum’s EthnoFusion project won the Education and Communication Award.
This year, the Museum of Ethnography’s activities, which also include content-related elements, have been recognized with numerous domestic and international awards, said Lajos Kemecsi, Director General of the Ethnographic Museum, at a press conference held on Monday.
He said that at the Dubai festival, the official committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) awarded the Museum of Ethnography’s new permanent exhibition’s multimedia network, bringing the stories of more than 3,600 original objects to life on 3,000 square meters interactive maps, animations, and films, as well as the EthnoFusion application, which combines the experience of musical creation with folk music heritage.
He emphasized that
the victory in Dubai was the highlight of the year, as the Museum of Ethnography closed a record year. In 2025, it won two Red Dot Awards, was among the finalists for the Luigi Micheletti Award, the exhibition Székelyek – Örökség mintázatok (Székely People – Patterns of Heritage) won the Exhibition of the Year 2025 title, and its publication, the ZOOM catalog, received three international design awards.
“The achievements of the Museum of Ethnography to date are impressive, but I am confident that the temporary exhibitions we plan to hold will be equally attractive,” he added.
The latest prestigious international recognition perfectly confirms the objectives of the Liget Budapest Project to create 21st-century, innovative content in the park’s new, world-class contemporary buildings that are outstanding on an international level, emphasized Benedek Gyorgyevics, CEO of Városliget Zrt.
He added that he is proud that, after the numerous professional awards won by the Museum of Ethnography building, the professional work and innovative cultural content taking place inside it are now also recognized among the best in the world.
Zsolt Odler, Head of the Registration and Digitization Department at the Museum of Ethnography, said that after the physical relocation in the analog space, the institution also carried out the largest digital relocation in the Hungarian museum sector to date, as it transferred the entire collection database to a modern, international platform, the MuseumPlus integrated collection management system.
More than 580,000 records, approximately 97,000 dictionary entries, and more than 700,000 multimedia files were converted during development, and the system was fully adapted to Hungarian and technical terminology.
The museum’s online collection database is available to anyone in the world free of charge and without registration, and currently contains more than 120,000 published records of the cultural assets of the Museum of Ethnography,
added Zsolt Odler.
“A generation has grown up for whom searching for information means something completely different than it did for previous generations. Institutions must respond to this and think reflexively,” he said.
The museum’s EthnoFusion project won the Education and Communication Award in the mobile application category for the way it brings musical heritage to life, making it personal and accessible through the experience of music mixing.
The spectacular, intuitive interface encourages creative learning, discovery, and community sharing, allowing users to mix original folk instruments with modern music bases and effects, and then download or send their mixes.
Via MTI; Featured image: MTI/Bruzák Noémi
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