30 Jul 2025 - 01 Aug 2025  |  Rosemary Joyce, Nicola Lercari, Philipp Schorch & Carolyn A. Smith

Digital baskets in motion

One of the most pressing issues facing global museum practice today is the relationship between museums and the communities whose cultural and historical resources were collected during colonial or imperial expansion. The Museum Fünf Kontinente in Munich, for example, houses historically significant and unique collections stemming from Indigenous societies in present-day California. LMU Munich and UC Berkeley collaborate in setting out to reactivate these hibernating collections with the goal of addressing their postcolonial legacies and inspiring their future reinterpretation and use through digital means. By leveraging object digitization and creating "digital twins" of physical objects, digital techniques can help restore and extend access to materials.

This workshop focuses on the history of German ethnographic museum collections, the relationship between digital and physical artifacts, and strategies for effectively reviving specific Indigenous California collections in Germany. The aim of this three-day event is to find answers to the questions: What is the epistemic value and gain of remobilizing objects and collections via digital means? What kind of genealogical relationships can digitized collections (re)mobilize? What are the consequences of such collaborative knowledge production for collecting institutions, Indigenous communities, and the sciences? To answer these questions, the workshop gathers a diverse group of scholars from the fields of art history, historical and visual anthropology, digital heritage, material culture, and museology. 

For more information, download the workshop program.