2025 PA MUSEUMS SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS NOMINATIONS OPEN NOW
Deadline: May 31, 2025
Each year, PA Museums recognizes the special achievements of museums and historical organizations in Pennsylvania.
PA Museums Special Achievement Awards:
- Serve as public recognition of staff and volunteers doing exemplary work
- Encourage member institutions to establish and maintain standards of excellence
- Provide a vehicle to promote institutional achievement and individual professional success
- Reinforce statements attesting to the quality of an institution's work in grant applications and development activities
- Publicly honor awardees with peers at an awards ceremony during the PA Museums annual conference
Nominations must be submitted through the appropriate online forms.
Institutional Award Nomination Form
Individual Award Nomination Form:
A list of award winners from previous years can be found here (scroll down).
Eligibility:
- A nominee for an award must be a member of PA Museums.
- Anyone may submit a nomination, including staff of the nominated organization.
- Nominations for joint projects may be submitted if all major partners are PA Museums’
- members.
- PA Museums’ business affiliate members and individual members who are full- or part-time
- consultants are eligible for an award when the project has benefited a PA Museums’ Groups of volunteers are not eligible for individual achievement awards.
Primary consideration will be given to projects completed within 18 months before the May 31, 2025 deadline. The review panel may also consider nominations for exceptional programs or individual volunteer activities extending over a longer period of time.
Institutional Awards of Merit are awarded in recognition of exemplary projects or uses of best practices in the museum field.
Examples of projects include, but are not limited to:
· An exhibit and related interpretive programming that presents an event/topic, or tells a story in an innovative and compelling fashion;
· A successful cultural tourism program with marketing and media components that resulted in community development and collaboration;
· A publication or a school program that reaches and engages a previously underserved audience;
· A model earned-income program that has strengthened fiscal independence; or
Some examples of uses or development of best practices may be:
· Exemplary implementation of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice policies and practices;
· A creative outreach initiative to broaden audiences (in-person or online);
· An exemplary or new housekeeping routine;
· A state-of-the-art volunteer or docent-training program; or
An innovative collections conservation or interpretive plan.
Individual Awards of Merit recognize the lifetime achievements of career professionals and volunteers for leadership, scholarship, and lifetime contributions in the museum field. This award may only be given to an individual once in their lifetime.
PA Museums recorded our 2024 webinar about submitting awards nominations, and we encourage members to check it out on our Youtube channel because it addresses many frequently asked questions.
To check the status of your membership, please contact Rusty Baker, Executive Director, PA Museums.
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