NATIONALISM and unionism both emerged triumphant yesterday when Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin and a museum telling the history of the Shankill Road in Belfast took the major prizes in the fifth annual Gulbenkian Museums of the Year awards.
The new visitor centre at Kilmainham Gaol, developed by the Office of Public Works, won the Best Larger Museum Award for "its imaginative use of technology in the exhibition on prison life and for its courageous interpretation of Irish nationalism".
Though the judges were impressed by the museums refusal to deal with its subject in a "fashionable and revisionist manner", they felt the museum should also stimulate a debate on "the modern relationship between nationalism and unionism".
The Best Smaller Museum Award went to the People's Museum at Fernhill, in west Belfast, for "its robust assertion of community identity displayed in a variety of imaginative ways", which would help to develop a more self confident "loyalist identity".
The Down County Museum, in Downpatrick, won the award for Best Museum Education Project, with the National Gallery of Ireland as runner up. Trinity College, Dublin, won a commendation for the Book of Kells exhibition.
The National Maritime Museum in Dun Laoghaire was named as the Most Improved Voluntary Museum. All of the awards were presented by the President, Mrs Robinson.
Eighteen museums entered this year's competition, which is sponsored by the Gulbenkian Foundation in London and organised by the Northern Ireland Museums Council.