Jump to language menu, manin menu, main content
Logo of the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin
Art Project
SMB digital

Some texts are currently available in German only. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Collections / Institutes

Servicemenü

Institute

Hauptbereich

Institute for Museum Research

The Institute for Museum Research is a national institute of research and documentation concentrating on aspects of museum life which span the totality of collections.

The Institute for Museum Research performs services for the museums in Germany in the areas of research, application-oriented mediation and documentation. For further details on workscope and research achievements please see section "Tasks". The institute complements the work of the regional, sometimes mandatory museum departments and special information centres of the federal states. It performs no mandatory task in the sense of a centralised national institution; it therefore has no impact on the states' independence in cultural matters.

Research projects are drawn up in co-operation with specialists from the academic disciplines relevant in each individual case (social sciences, educational sciences, engineering and natural sciences etc.). The projects are geared to research demands of the museums as well as to general domains of museum sciences and questions of practical experience. The Institute for Museum Research was founded in 1979. As a new department of the National Museums in Berlin it was put under the management of the general director.

During recent years, a very noticeable shift in focus has taken place from a mainly national perspective to a European or international one, from pragmatic individual solutions to the development of guidelines and standards. Already, a "global village" exists in the planning of research projects and the learning from partners who may have been working on certain questions for some time already. The introduction of new media speeds up this process. And not least, the museums themselves are seized with the general structural changes (key words: new models of financing and responsibility, budgeting, privatisation, business economics instead of fiscal accounting). In this way, new tasks are created for the Institute for Museum Research.

Website Institute for Museum Research