Federal government funds "Museum 4.0" pilot project
Press release from 11/15/2016
At the end of last week, the Bundestag's Budget Committee approved funding for the "Museum 4.0 - Digital Strategies for the Museum of the Future" project. The project, which is being led by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, also involves the Deutsche Aus-wandererhaus Bremerhaven, the Deutsches Museum München, the Langenstein and Bad Dürrheim carnival museums with other museums of the Swabian-Alemannic carnival and the Senckenberg Museum für Naturkunde Görlitz as partners.
Museum 4.0 is a visionary pilot project in which innovative applications of digital technologies for museum work are developed and trialled in a shared virtual space. The focus is on the topics of mediation, communication, interaction and participation. The various possible applications are also to be prepared for flexible subsequent use by other museums. The project is scheduled to run for three years and is initially being funded with 5 million euros.
Hermann Parzinger, President of the SPK, says: "We are in a decisive phase of change on the way to becoming the digitally competent museum of the future. Together with our project partners, we are looking for new ways for museums to tap into additional target groups, enter into a stronger dialogue with visitors and develop individualised educational offerings. In this way, museums can develop a completely new impact, which will also be of decisive importance for the new presentation of our collections in the future Humboldt Forum. All collections will be linked in a completely new way in the virtual space and made accessible in an innovative way."
Project manager Markus Hilgert, Director of the Vorderasiatisches Museum of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, adds: "The digital transformation is currently one of the greatest challenges for cultural institutions. Museum 4.0 will enable us to develop and test digital tools that open up new museum experience spaces and allow the museum of the future to interact even better with its visitors."
Project partners
The institutions involved in "Museum 4.0" are representative of the range of museums in Germany in terms of their collections and institutional profile. They therefore also represent the spectrum of opportunities and challenges that arise from the use of new digital technologies for museum education work.
The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and its National Museums in Berlin are involved in "Museum 4.0" in close cooperation with the Humboldt Forum's founding directorate and are responsible for the scientific management, coordination and administration of the network.
The German Emigration Centre Bremerhaven is Germany's only migration museum: it presents 300 years of the history of German overseas migration as well as that of European immigration to Germany. It collects biographical collections of emigrant and immigrant families, which are also supplemented by oral history interviews. The museum is not only in close contact with the immigrants, but also increasingly teaches intercultural communication skills for living together in an immigration society.
The German Museum of Masterpieces of Science and Technology is the world's largest technology museum and a leading international centre for research into scientific and technological culture. In addition to the main building on Munich's Museum Island, which opened in 1925, it has several branch museums. The museum's research infrastructure includes collections of well over 100,000 objects, the leading specialised archive on science and technology in the German-speaking world and the library, which has the largest international collection of original and secondary literature on the history of technology and science.
The Langenstein Castle Carnival Museum was opened in 1969 as the first of its kind and offers a comprehensive insight into carnival and customs. With an exhibition area of 1,200 square metres, the "Narrenschopf" carnival museum in Bad Dürrheim is probably the largest of its kind. The museum describes the history of the Swabian-Alemannic carnival and displays its figures. The two museums are to enter into collaborations with other smaller museums of the Swabian-Alemannic carnival to implement the "Museum 4.0" project in order to show the diversity of the intangible world cultural heritage "Swabian-Alemannic carnival".
The Senckenberg Museum für Naturkunde Görlitz (SMNG) has around 6.5 million objects in its collection, while the Senckenberg network has over 40 million, mainly from the fields of zoology, botany, palaeontology and geology. The SMNG operates a modern natural history museum, which has produced successful international travelling exhibitions with innovative media presentations, primarily on natural science topics, but also on historical topics with a natural science background.