The Humboldt University’s scientific collections played a key role in the opening exhibition “After Nature” at the Humboldt Forum. In addition to the presentation in the exhibition rooms, the collections were digitized. A total of around 75,000 object units were described and digitized between 2021 and 2023.
They are published on the portal https://sammlungen-digital.hu-berlin.de/. A selection of the collections is presented on the Humboldt Forum’s “Collections Online” website.
The selected university collections belong to various disciplines ranging from physics, geology and ethnology to rehabilitation science, philology, archaeology and cultural studies. A wide variety of sources such as maps, archive and estate materials, books, crystallographic models and various image and photo collections have been processed.
In addition to the Humboldt-Universität, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK)) and the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, which are also present in the Humboldt Forum, are involved in the project. By digitizing and publishing collection data, a basis is created for the examination of cultural heritage and the associated questions of provenance, object history and contexts of injustice.
The project was funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
Project page “Maßnahme zur Digitalisierung und Visualisierung objektbezogener Sammlungsdaten”
