OMA Award Spotlight - Kent State University Museum
On Sunday, April 19, the Ohio Museums Association held our Annual Awards dinner to recognize the winners of our 2025 Awards of Achievement and 2025 Visual Communication Awards, in conjunction with the 2026 Annual Conference in Columbus.
During the ceremony, OMA celebrated the outstanding achievement of Ohio museums in Visual Communications, individual and institutional achievement, and the tireless work museum professionals undertake to help to advance Ohio’s museum community both locally, and on a national level.
Over the next few weeks, we will be highlighting our 2025 OMA Award of Achievement winners with our OMA Award Spotlight.
OMA Award Spotlight - Awards of Achievement
The Awards of Achievement are presented to reflect the outstanding quality and caliber of work by Ohio museums and their professionals in two categories: Institutional Achievement Awards and Individual Achievement Awards.
Nominations for these awards are incredibly detailed. This in-depth process helps to illustrate how these institutions and individuals have gone “above and beyond” the normal call of duty to support their institution, serve their public and advance the cause of the museum community.
Each year, the review panel is overwhelmed by the outstanding projects, innovative programming and dedication to our field as exhibited in each of the institutional and individual nominations. Congratulations again to each of our award winners!
Today, we'll be featuring our winner for the 2025 award for Best Exhibition Catalog (organizational budget over $500,000).
Kent State University Museum
A Meeting of Cultures: Fashioning North Africa is a landmark 150-page exhibition catalogue organized in direct dialogue with the exhibition of the same name, focusing on contemporary fashion designers and influencers across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, regions rarely examined together in fashion scholarship. Lavishly illustrated, the catalogue was published and distributed internationally by Hirmer Verlag, a German art book publishing house based in Munich, extending the project’s reach well beyond the gallery. (In fact, one designer who was featured in the exhibit stated in a letter of support: I was so impressed by the book that I provided a copy to the Crown Prince of Morocco on the occasion of a recent meeting.)
Structured around the exhibition’s three thematic sections, Disruptors, Our Land, and Threads, the publication documents and contextualizes North African fashion practitioners who sustain cultural distinctiveness while responding to contemporary social, political, and aesthetic concerns. The catalogue challenges the assumption that globalization produces cultural homogenization, and instead demonstrates how place, history, and local knowledge continue to shape fashion practice. This pathbreaking work of scholarship broadens the scope of research on fashion history beyond its customary focus on American and European designers. By documenting designers working in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, the catalogue reframes global fashion discourse and deepens both academic and public understanding of contemporary fashion.
Because the catalogue is being distributed globally, Ohio is thus not only the home of this new and rigorous scholarship, but the catalogue then shares these accomplishments around the world. The catalogue succeeds not only as documentation, but as a visually engaging and conceptually coherent work that reflects the originality, depth, and cultural richness of North Africa.
Does your museum have an amazing, emersive exhibit catalog planned for the 2026 season? Be sure to nominate it for the 2026 award for Best Exhibition Catalog! Learn more here.