Six Turkish museums to vie for international prize

Six Turkish museums have been nominated for the prestigious 33rd European Museum of the Year Award (EMYA) for 2010. The Culture and Tourism Ministry's Cultural Assets and Museums General Directorate nominated two state-run museums and four private museums for the award, with the winner to be announced during next year's European Museum Forum (EMF) convention in Tampere, Finland. The archaeology museum in the coastal Black Sea city of Sinop, whose vast collection includes more than 10,000 artifacts, and the Corum Museum in central Anatolia, which houses relics uncovered in the Neolithic sites of Alacahoyuk and Bogazkoy, are the two ministry-run museums nominated for the EMYA prize. The four private museums rounding out the list, all located in Istanbul, are the İş Bankasi Museum, which opened in 2007 in the Karakoy quarter; the Istanbul Toy Museum, founded by poet-author Sunay Akin in an old mansion in the Goztepe neighborhood on the Asian side of the city; the SantralIstanbul energy museum and contemporary art space, founded in 2007 at Istanbul's oldest power plant in Silahtaraga; and the Besiktas Gymnastics Club (BJK) Museum, Turkey's first private sports museum, located inside the İnonu Stadium in Dolmabahce.