18.07.2017
Museumsinsel Berlin
The Staatliche Museen zu Berlin today hosted twelve international experts who were invited to exchange ideas with colleagues from Germany. The event’s theme was cultural preservation and the protection of cultural heritage, undertaken as part of a week-long study trip organized by the Goethe-Institut. Following an introductory speech by Christina Haak, the Deputy Director-General of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, guests were given a tour of the conservation studios located at the Archäologisches Zentrum and on the Museumsinsel itself.
The objects held by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin form part of humankind’s cultural heritage. The protection of cultural heritage therefore constitutes a central duty of all collections in which works are held, preserved, and digitally documented.
A particularly important example of this is the ‘Syrian Heritage Archive Project’, a partnership between the Museum für Islamische Kunst, part of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, and the German Archaeological Institute. The project’s central task is to create a digital archive of Syrian cultural heritage, with the aim of preserving academic documents, but also to serve as a basis for Syria’s reconstruction. The central database for the project’s digital archival work is provided by the DAI’s ‘Arachne’ object database for images. In 2016, 29,000 additional digital records were filed on this database (with the total project comprising approx. 130,000). During the initial project phase of 2017, further important collections are being archived – primarily from Syria itself, in work undertaken in collaboration with UNESCO in Beirut.