Sybilla Prize
Herbst Palace Museum was also the laureate of the 34th edition of the Museum Event of the Year Competition Sybilla 2013. The jury awarded the novel system of Prompts, which enables the blind and heavily sight impaired persons to independently visit the space of the museum. The MPH renovation project received a distinction.
Sybilla Prize is the most important prize for Polish museums. It has been awarded by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage for more than 30 years. This year prizes and distinctions were allocated in eleven categories.
Innovative system of „Prompts” available in Herbst Palace Museum won the main prize in the category of „Digitalisation and new technologies”.
The „Prompts” system is the first one in Poland to give visually impaired persons the opportunity to independently and safely visit all spaces in the museum. The system consists of not only audio description but also of several dozen markings distributed across the space of the museum: in the garden, in Old Masters Gallery, and in the Herbst Palace. Markings are placed in the interiors and in the vicinity of selected objects but also in the most sensitive spots within communication routes, such as the box office, routes junctions or corridors.
While visiting the museum, blind people receive a special transmitter and an audio-guide. They can hear navigation messages and especially developed audio-description. This is the heart of the system that makes all the exhibits of the Old Masters Gallery and rooms of the palace accessible to visually impaired persons. Recordings describe the buildings and their interiors, give details of exhibits and safely navigate across the garden.
The second project filed with the Competition: Renovation of Herbst Palace Museum, received a distinction in the „Investment” category.
The effects of almost 2-year modernisation can be admired since last September. At the cost of almost PLN 20 million, half of which was provided by the European Union, rooms in the palace have been brought closer to the original of the days when the Herbst family lived here. Many details and elements of interiors have been restored, the furniture has been renovated. As a result, we can enjoy an extraordinary exhibition of interiors from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Part of the investment was a complex modernisation and adaptation of the former carriage house in the palace to host exhibition functions. Currently, it is the Old Masters Art Gallery exhibiting masterpieces of Polish painting and including the works of Jan Matejko, Piotr Michałowski, Aleksander Gierymski, Leon Wyczółkowski, and Stanisław Wyspiański.