From 3 July to 5 September 2025, the Centre for Advanced Study presented the exhibition “case study #2: Re:Set: From Slide to Database – Media Change in Art History” – an exhibition by students of the Institute of Art History. It took media change in art history as its starting point to illuminate the historical, aesthetic, and epistemological dimensions of art-historical image practices. Among other things, poster presentations and an installation by artist Dr. Philipp Goldbach featuring historical glass slides were on display. On 27 August 2025, Georg Imdahl reported on the exhibition in the arts section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung under the headline “Glass behind glass – students in Münster exhibit the tools that art historians used to learn to see”.

On 25 August 2025, the book “Every Monument Will Fall: A Story of Remembering and Forgetting” was published. In it, Dan Hicks, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Oxford and Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum, takes a critical look at the origins of contemporary conflicts surrounding art, cultural heritage, memory and colonialism. On 4 September 2025, he presented some of the book’s main themes in his keynote lecture “Militarist Realism: Some Thoughts on Copies, Colonial Legacies, and Cultural Restitution” as part of the Centre for Advanced Study's workshop “Digital Restitution: Bridging Access, Conservation, and Ethical Challenges”. “Every Monument Will Fall” joins the dots between the building of statues, the founding of disciplines like archaeology and anthropology, and the acquisition of stolen art and ancestral human remains. The work traces a line from British country houses to Caribbean plantations and from the battlefields of the Crimean War to British colonial outposts in Ireland. Through the analysis of cultures of memory and historiography, a picture emerges of inheritance, loss, collective mourning, and the possibility of a reconciliation. The book calls for the fragments of history to be reassembled and to value life and humanity above material things – and to rebuild a new kind of memory culture.

From 3 to 5 September 2025, the Centre for Advanced Study held a workshop entitled “Digital Restitution: Bridging Access, Conservation, and Ethical Challenges.” The workshop engaged in rethinking restitution in the digital age—where heritage, ethics, technology, and sustainability converge to shape the future of cultural preservation. It brought together scholars, museum professionals, heritage practitioners, and digital technologists to participate in this interdisciplinary discourse on digital heritage preservation and the ethical dimensions of cultural digitization in the field of restitution policies.

Prof. Dr. Ossi Naukkarinen has been the new vice rector for research at the University of the Arts (Uniarts) Helsinki (Finland) since 1 September 2025. He was vice rector for research in 2018–2023 and the vice dean for the School of Arts, Design and Architecture in 2012–2018, both at Aalto University Helsinki. In his own research, Ossi Naukkarinen specializes in questions of everyday aesthetics, environmental aesthetics and the nature of aesthetics as an academic discipline. He has also written about visual arts, artification and aesthetic footprints. Currently, he is interested in the possibilities offered by digital humanities.

A week of researching and teaching, learning and living in (the middle of) the museum: from 21 to 26 July 2025, the Institute of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology organized a one-week practical course on current topics and tasks of museums together with the LWL Open-Air Museum Detmold (“Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Alltagskultur”) and the Centre for Advanced Study “Access to Cultural Goods in Digital Change”. Participants gained in-depth insights into the museum as a field of practice, as a place of research, as a collection and educational institution and much more. The Summer School was headed by Prof. Dr. Lioba Keller-Drescher, In-House Fellow of the Centre for Advanced Study. Guest curator was Hon.-Prof. Dr. Birgit Johler, Senior Fellow of the Centre for Advanced Study.

On 14 July 2025, Dr. Christopher Nixon (Hamburg) gave his Fellow Lecture on the topic “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Bild und Soziale Gerechtigkeit in digitalisierten Konsumgesellschaften” (“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Image and social justice in digitalized consumer societies”): In his lecture, he discussed the relationship between social movements and audiovisual images, which shaped the Black civil rights movement in the US with its protest images and image protests. However, their struggle for social justice was not reflected in contemporary theory, as demonstrated by Jamaican philosopher Charles W. Mills’ critique of John Rawls’ theory of justice, which was outlined in the lecture. Nixon also explored the question of whether digital capitalism today promotes deficient forms of society that make the success of social transformation movements impossible.

On 7 July 2025, Dr. Susanne Thurow (Sydney) gave her Fellow Lecture on the topic “Reimagining Access: Immersive Media for Transforming Cultural Engagement”. The lecture explored the impact of digitalisation on the frameworks of engagement, representation and epistemology within cultural institutions using the example of the experimental installation Victorian Reality. The installation combined interactive 3D visualisation and spatial sound with the physical representation of historical objects and was the centrepiece of a research project by the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and the iCinema Centre at the University of New South Wales on new, multi-sensory forms of storytelling in cultural institutions.

On 2 July 2025, the workshop “Droste Digital – A New Approach to Literature?” (for members and fellows only) of the Centre for Advanced Study took place at Burg Vischering (in German). The workshop was a joint project with Burg Hülshoff – Center for Literature. The exhibition “Droste Digital. Manuscripts – Spaces – Installations” („Droste Digital. Handschriften – Räume – Installationen“) makes the digitized manuscripts of the poet Annette von Droste-Hülshoff accessible for the first time. Using the example of “Droste Digital”, the workshop focused on the specifics and consequences of digital access to literature in the context of exhibitions.

Since January 2025, the German Documentation Center for Art History – Bildarchiv Foto Marburg (DDK) has been offering free access to 1.2 million photographs from its collection in the “Bildindex Kunst & Architektur” (Art & Architecture Image Index). Prof. Dr. Hubert Locher, Director of the DDK and Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study, emphasizes: “With the implementation of this groundbreaking recommendation, the DDK is positioning itself as a pioneer for open scientific practice.” The picture archive is thus following the global OpenGLAM initiative (GLAM = Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums), an initiative in Hessen, and the opportunities offered by a reform of German legal protection of works in 2021. When using the images, the image archive relies on personal responsibility in accordance with fair use rules, which include, for example, naming the author and source and treating culturally sensitive content with care.

What does it mean when a piece of history is missing and cultural identity has been stolen? The film series “Access and Return: Restitution in films” investigated the struggle for cultural self-determination, dealing with continuing colonial power relations and the question of what restitution means and can mean today, focusing on “Restitution as an Act of Recognition” (17 June 2025), “Counter Voices and Rhythms of Resistance” (24 June 2025) and “Reparative Practices of Remembrance” (1 July 2025). It aimed to look at where objects are absent – and thus understand restitution not only as a gesture of reparation, but also as a social challenge. The film series was a cooperation with the LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur).

Leonie Spielbrink has been a new junior fellow of the Centre for Advanced Study since 1 July 2025. She studied philosophyas well as cultural and social anthropology in Münster and has been working as a student assistant at the Centre since March 2024. In her dissertation project, provisionally titled “Cultural Practices and the Constitution of Cultural Goods”, she examines the connection between previously established social patterns of action, attribution and reference practices, and the ontology and sematization of cultural goods.

On 30 June 2025, Prof. Dr. Ludger Jansen (Brixen) gave his Fellow Lecture on the topic “Making access FAIR: What are reference ontologies and what can they do?” (in German). Based on the observation that working with digital data often leads to a Babylonian confusion of languages due to different file formats and differently coded descriptions, the lecture examined reference ontologies as a way of giving data a semantics and making access to data reliably FAIR – i.e. Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Re-Usable.

From 26 May to 22 June 2025 the exhibition “case study #1: Access to Curatorial Networks – Postcards from Kasper König” was presented by the Centre for Advanced Study. The exhibition was designed by students of the colloquium course taught by Ursula Frohne and Berit Hummel. It featured collaged cards that Kasper König (1943–2024), co-founder and long-time artistic director of Skulptur Projekte Münster and director of the Museum Ludwig, sent to artists, colleagues and companions. The personal messages are a unique testimony to his curatorial practice.

On 16 June 2025, the Centre for Advanced Study welcomed Dr. Susanne Thurow as new Senior Fellow. She is a theatre scholar with a focus on immersive media, interactive visualisation and the artistic examination of social challenges of the 21st century. She currently heads the “Climate Aesthetics” research programme at the iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research at University of New South Wales, Sydney (Australia), whose strategic development she also coordinates as Associate Director Research.
 

On 16 June 2025, Prof. Dr. Henry Keazor (Heidelberg) gave his Fellow Lecture on the topic “Gästebücher digital – Ein bislang vernachlässigtes Kulturgut?” (“Digital guest books – A cultural good that has been neglected until now?”): Guest books are a genre that so far has been left virtually unstudied. What can be gained by analysing them can be illustrated by the example of a planned project that aims to deal with the guest books of the brothers Nicola (1886-1967) and Franz Moufang (1893-1984). Over the decades, a large number of prominent representatives of art, culture and politics signed the guest books, often leaving behind previously unknown works of art. The project sees digital cataloguing in particular as an integral part of the editing process, as it is the only way to enable comprehensive analysis and exploration of the guest books.

Josina Dehn, Junior Fellow of the Centre for Advanced Study, was a panel guest at the “Lunch Talk: Rethinking Curatorial and Museum Approaches: Current Challenges” at Kunsthaus Dahlem on 15 June 2025. Together with María Fernanda López-Canaán (moderator and translator), Izaira López Sánchez, and Philine Pahnke (from left to right), she discussed current curatorial challenges in museums. The event took place as part of the Kunsthaus Dahlem's anniversary festival “10 YEARS – 10 DAYS!” and was a collaboration with “ARENET – The Americas Research Network.”

 

Dr. Thomas Kater, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study, is a guest at the podcast “Digitalgespräch” hosted by the Centre Responsible Digitality (ZEVEDI) at the Technical University of Darmstadt. He talks about his research topic “Simplifying literature – with AI? Digitality and cultural participation.” Access to cultural goods and works of art should be open to as many people as possible. “Access” here means both the sensory experience of essential aspects of the work and the opportunity to understand what one is confronted with. In the case of literature, however, sophisticated written language is a barrier for many people. Should we intervene here by changing the literary works themselves—perhaps even using AI? A passionate debate has arisen around the approach of radically simplifying literature, which Thomas Kater gives an overview of.

On 2 June 2025, Dr. Isabel Hufschmidt (Vienna) will give her Fellow Lecture on the topic “Ur & Alexandria: Counter-narrating museum history to access diverse heritage”: “Ur & Alexandria” is a project about unlearning museum history that has been established as a meta-narrative by the Global North since the 19th century. Museum history is a pivotal catalyst in the obliteration and loss of diverse heritage and heritage practices. The project offers a counter-narrative for the unlearning process, particularly to deconstruct gender bias and Occidental monopoly in museum history.

On 26 May 2025, Prof. Dr. Ludwig D. Morenz (Bonn) held a lecture on the topic “Copying as adaptation” (in German). He reported on various methods of epigraphic copying of ancient stone inscriptions from Pharaonic Egypt, including hand copies, tracing, and digital recording and editing. Additionally, he discussed the curious fact that the images and alef-bet inscriptions from southwestern Sinai can be understood as imitations of Egyptian original images.

On 19 May 2025, Prof. Dr. Eric Steinhauer (Hagen) held a lecture on the topic “Structural problems of digital cultural memory – using the example of the new law on deposit copies in Lower Saxony” (in German). In his lecture he dealt with the question of how digital publications, and especially online publications, can be permanently archived and made accessible. Based on the recently passed law from Lower Saxony, the challenges for the digital collection obligation of libraries were highlighted; in a broader sense the focus was on the tensions between the cultural obligation to preserve, legal control and digital transience.

What does decolonisation of the arts mean? Restitution or repatriation of plundered works? Or contextualisation? And how can the opportunities offered by digitalisation be used for decolonisation? Lisa Marei Schmidt (Director of the Brücke Museum, Berlin) and Prof. Dr Reinold Schmücker, director of the Centre for Advanced Study, discussed these questions on 16 May 2025, in the workshop “Decolonising of the Arts / by the Arts” with the fellows of the DFG-funded Graduate School “Normativity – Critique – Change” at Freie Universität Berlin.

On 13 May 2025, the “Art on the Campus” tour took place for members of the Centre for Advanced Study. Dr. Eckhard Kluth, head of “Zentrale Kustodie & Kulturbüro” at the University of Münster, provided an insight into the works of art on the Old Town Campus. In everyday university life, we encounter works of art on a daily basis. Contemporary artworks were created, for example, as art in architecture or as part of the “Skulptur Projekte” exhibitions. This has resulted in a heterogeneous collection of artworks that is constantly challenged by everyday life as “art on the campus”. When encountering the various works, questions of access, participation, and use in the analogue world also become relevant.

The North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Arts (AWK) has accepted Prof. Dr. Ursula Frohne, co-director of the Centre for Advanced Study, as a new member. At the academy’s annual celebration on 14 May 2025, the AWK Executive Board welcomed twelve new members who stand out for their expertise and research. Since 2015, she has held the professorship for art history at the University of Münster, focusing on modern and contemporary art. Her research interests include contemporary art practices, including technological art practices such as photography, film, video, installation art and digital art forms.

On 1 May 2025, the Centre for Advanced Study welcomed Dr. Christopher A. Nixon as new Senior Fellow. He received his doctorate from the University of Mainz in 2021 with a thesis on postcolonial aesthetics entitled ‘Returning the Gaze: Epiphany and Aesthetics in Postcolonialism.’ As curator for colonial past and postcolonial present at the Hamburg Historical Museums Foundation, Nixon also realised a major special exhibition project in 2020/21. His research combines image theory, postcolonial perspectives and questions of social justice in digitalised societies.
 

On 18 April 2025, the Goethe-Institut Kyoto (Japan) hosted a lecture by Prof. Dr. Reinold Schmücker titled “Is there such a thing as a just war?” followed by a panel discussion. The event explored the question of whether there can be a just war at all. What would it look like? And how can a war be ended, even if it were completely just? Professors Satoshi Kodama (Kyoto University), Takuya Nakamura (Doshisha University) and Johannes Waßmer (Osaka University) were members of the panel.

On 15 April 2025, the workshop “Cultural Participation in the Future Society” took place at Osaka University (Japan). Prof. Dr. Reinold Schmücker, director of the Centre for Advanced Study, gave the keynote lecture on the topic “Access to Cultural Goods in Digital Change”. Further information can be found on the Osaka University website.

Can we still talk about the autonomy of art today? And does the concept of autonomy still apply in an age of art created with the help of artificial intelligence? Master's students and doctoral candidates discussed these questions on 11 April 2025 at Tōdai University in Tokyo (Japan) with Prof. Dr. Reinold Schmücker, director of the Centre for Advanced Study, who had advocated a new conception of artistic autonomy in his lecture.

The Center for Advanced Study Access to Cultural Goods in Digital Change's master class “Access to Contested Collections – Digital and Analog” took place on 2–4 April 2025. Master’s and doctoral students, postdocs, and research trainees working at museums or art institutions who are engaged with collections with colonial backgrounds or artworks and artifacts with sensitive content were invited. The masterclass offered them the opportunity to discuss, together with colleagues from museums and art institutions in an interdisciplinary environment, which new perspectives or challenges arise from digital access to contested collections.

Since 1 April 2025, Dr. Dorothea Schöne has been a new Senior Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study. For her research, she received the Robert R. Rifkind Scholar-in-Residency Grant (2019), the Doina Popescu Postdoctoral Fellowship from Ryerson University Toronto (2015), the Getty Library Research Grant and a DAAD travel grant (2011). In 2012 she was a fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington D.C. and in 2018 guest curator at the HOW Art Museum in Shanghai. In 2021, she was awarded the Hans and Lea Grundig Prize, which honours research and exhibitions on persecuted and ostracised artists.

On 1 April 2025, the Centre for Advanced Study welcomed Greta de León as new Senior Fellow. A cultural diplomat, curator and researcher with a background in art history and museology, she heads the Americas Research Network (ARENET) with offices in Washington, D.C. and Mexico City. Her work focuses on transcultural programmes at the intersection of research, social justice and curatorial practice.

On 1 April 2025, the Centre for Advanced Study welcomed Prof. Dr. Henry Keazor as new Senior Fellow. He teaches modern and contemporary art history at Heidelberg University. Keazor has been a full member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences since 2015; in 2020, he was awarded the ‘Prix du Rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature françaises’ by the Académie française. His research interests include French and Italian Baroque, early modern representations of America, contemporary architecture, the aesthetics of music videos, and questions of art reception and forgery.
 

On 1 April 2025, the Centre for Advanced Study welcomed Prof. Dr. Ludger Jansen as new Senior Fellow. He is Cusanus Professor of Philosophy at the Philosophical-Theological University of Brixen and adjunct professor at the University of Rostock. His research focuses on the interface between metaphysics and scientific theory. In particular, he works on the question of how structures of classical Aristotelian metaphysics can help to make research data, scientific knowledge and digitised cultural assets more accessible today.
 

On 1 April 2025, the Centre for Advanced Study welcomed Dr. Isabel Hufschmidt as new Senior Fellow. She obtained her doctorate from the University of Cologne in 2009 with a thesis on the commercialisation of French small-scale sculpture in the 19th century. Since 2007, she has worked as a curator, researcher and publicist. Her research focuses on provenance and collection history, museum history, media transformations in art production, sculpture, digital technologies in cultural institutions, and queer and decolonial perspectives.
 

On 1 March 2025, the Centre for Advanced Study welcomed Josina Dehn as new Junior Fellow. She completed her bachelor's degree in Art, Media, Aesthetic Education and Cultural Studies at the University of Bremen and her master's degree in Art History at the University of Münster. Her dissertation project is titled ‘Technoheritage and Digital Restitution Concepts: The Transformation of the Concept of the Object in the Digital Age.’

On 1 February 2025, the Centre for Advanced Study welcomed Jolanda Saal as new Junior Fellow. She studied art history and history in Münster, where she also obtained her master's degree. In her dissertation project, provisionally titled ‘The Restitution Question of the 1970s as a Transnational Negotiation Process,’ she examines political continuities and debates surrounding access to cultural heritage in a postcolonial context.

On 27 January 2025, Prof. Dr. Johannes Grave (Jena) gave his Fellow Lecture on the topic of “Access Dynamics of Romantic Art: Two Spotlights on French Painting” (in German). Based on the realisation that access to cultural goods has a considerable influence on their production and reception, especially in the visual arts, the lecture examined the concrete dynamics of access using two examples from French Romantic painting.  

On 20 January 2025, Dr. Regine Ehleiter (Berlin) gave her Fellow Lecture on the topic “’Page Not Found‘: On the (in)accessibility of artistic publication and exhibition projects in the digital age – a stocktaking”. In her lecture, she reconstructed striking examples of digital artistic publishing from the 2000s and raised the question of the extent to which the ideal of a ‘dematerialisation’ of art that emerged in conceptualism has been realised in the digital age, to the point of making it untraceable. The lecture suggested breaking new ground in the documentation and preservation of digital practices of making art public by drawing on findings from neighbouring disciplines.

On 9 December 2024, Prof. Dr. Sophia Prinz (Zurich) held a lecture on the topic “Die Ausstellung als Interface. Analoge und digitale Displays” (“The exhibition as an interface. Analogue and digital displays”) (in German). Using the example of the exhibition ‘Mobile Worlds’, the lecture showed the extent to which digital forms of exhibition offer opportunities that go far beyond the usual, one-sided digitisation of the analogue and thus also offer the possibility of questioning the museological order of knowledge and practice together with its immanent power relations. At the centre of the considerations is the display, which should be conceived not as analogue, but as digital and therefore interactive. Succeeding, this could be understood as a central step towards a post-digital ‘pluriversal museum’.

On 26 November 2024, as part of the lecture series “Making of: Rethinking Places of History” of the Villa ten Hompel, Prof. Dr. Lioba Keller-Drescher (Münster) spoke on “Fülle und Leere. Kuratieren als Ermöglichen” (in German). The lecture used historical and current examples to examine the changing tasks and practices of curating. In recent years, curating has become a kind of buzzword for cultural action. On the other hand, curating has become a sophisticated programme term for extended exhibition practice in cultural institutions. If we translate ‘curating’ as ‘enabling access’ to cultural heritage, the culture of remembrance and cultural artefacts, then a broad field of possibilities and demands on the activity of curating and on the people and institutions working in this field becomes apparent.

On 25 November 2024, Prof. Dr Hubert Locher (Marburg) gave his Fellow Lecture on the topic “Art for all? Art history, the concept of art, the canon – accessibility and questions of value in the digital age”. The lecture aimed to show how ‘digitalisation’ has already changed the practice of art history in order to then attempt outlining the effects the ubiquity of the digital has had on the concept of art that is effective today. In the context of the Centre's topic, the lecture will focus especially on questions of ‘accessibility’ in relation to ‘works of art’ and in general with regard to cultural goods, problematizing questions of selection and evaluation from the perspective of the history of science and media. The lecture will be held in German.

On 20 November 2024, Prof. Dr. Ossi Naukkarinen (Helsinki) gave his guest lecture on the topic “Slow humanities and computerized sciolism”. The talk focused on the question of how the unavoidable and positive slowness of the humanities can be preserved and even strengthened in the age of digital technologies and how we gain the skills and patience to use fast tools slowly. Both academic humanistic education and research as well as memory institutions such as museums and archives play a crucial role in this.

On 18 November 2024, Dr. Johanna Laakkonen (Helsinki) gave a guest lecture on the topic “Does digitalization force us to forget? Performing arts as an example”. In her presentation, she examined the issues of documenting and preserving the cultural heritage of the performing arts from the perspective of practical museum work. She asked what kinds of demands memory organisations storing intangible cultural heritage face in the digital age and whether the material turn will change the practices and ways of documentation.

The conference “Zugänge zum Textilen. Wissenschaftliche, kuratorische und digitale Perspektiven.” (Approaches to Textiles. Scholarly, Curatorial and Digital Perspectives. Conference of the Commission for Material Culture and Museum in the DGEKW, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Empirische Kulturwissenschaften e. V.) took place from 11 to 12 November 2024 at the Erbdrostenhof in Münster (in German). Among other topics, it addressed the following questions: How can access to textile collection areas be regained or re-established, and what role can digitization play in the scientific and curatorial re-examination? How does digitality change access to textiles? The conference was organised by Prof. Dr. Lioba Keller-Drescher (Institute for Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology, Inhouse Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study “Access to Cultural Goods in Digital Change”) and Dr. Kirsten Bernhardt (LWL-Museumsamt für Westfalen, Münster).

Since 1 October 2024, Prof. Dr. Hubert Locher has been a new Senior Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study. He is Professor of History and Theory of Visual Media at the Philipps University of Marburg and Director of the German Documentation Centre for Art History – Bildarchiv Foto Marburg. Hubert Locher’s research interests include art literature and theory of the modern and contemporary era, the history of art history and its methodology, word-image relations since the early modern era, reception aesthetics and history, museum and exhibition history, theory and history of photography as a medium of documentation and art, theory and use of the digital image.

Since 1 October 2024, Dr. Thomas Kater has been a new Senior Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study. Dr. Thomas Kater’s research focuses on literary theory and aesthetics, German literature of the 17th and 18th centuries and contemporary literature. After working at the University of Münster, he was a research assistant at the Chair of Modern German Literature with a systematic focus at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, most recently substituting the junior professorship for children’s and young adult literature. His work focuses on publishing and distribution practices as well as the materiality and mediality of literature.

Since 1 October 2024, Prof. Dr. Johannes Grave has been a new Senior Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study. He is Professor of Modern Art History (with a focus on European Romanticism) at Friedrich Schiller University Jena. In 2023, he was elected a member of the Academia Europaea; since 2024, he has been one of the vice presidents of the German Research Foundation (DFG). Grave’s research focuses on questions of image theory and historical image concepts; temporality of the image and image reception; practices of comparison; art, art theory and art history around 1800; Italian painting of the early Renaissance, and French painting of the 17th to 19th centuries.

Since 1 October 2024, Dr. Regine Ehleiter has been a new Senior Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study. She was previously a research associate at the Cluster of Excellence “Temporal Communities. Doing Literature in a Global Perspective” at the Freie University Berlin, the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig and the University of Hildesheim. Her work focusses on modern and contemporary art. Her research interests include transnational exhibition history, artistic writing and publication practices and ecological discourses.

A week of researching and teaching, learning and living in (the middle of) the museum: from 22 to 27 July 2024, the Institute of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology organized a one-week practical course on current topics and tasks of museums together with the LWL Open-Air Museum Detmold (“Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Alltagskultur”). Participants gained in-depth insights into the museum as a field of practice, as a place of research, as a collection and educational institution and much more. It was headed by Prof. Dr Lioba Keller-Drescher, in-house fellow of the Centre for Advanced Study. Guest curator was Dr. Birgit Johler, Senior Fellow of the Centre for Advanced Study.

On 8 July 2024, Prof. Dr. Thomas Gutmann held his Fellow Lecture “‘Cultural Appropriation’. Questions about a concept“. In his lecture, he  discussed whether cultural appropriation is suitable as a tool of criticism, how other concepts are important to be differentiated from it and what makes a group a possible legal entity with regard to cultural property and inheritance. Thomas Gutman’s lecture was followed by a vivid discussion containing both positive comments as well as critical questions.

On 17 June 2024, Dr. Fatmeh Masdari presented in her lecture titled “Embodied Aesthetics – Exploring the Creation and Perception of Artistic Works in the Realms of Human Cognition and Artificial Intelligence” some theses from the project of her second doctoral thesis, dedicated to the investigation of AI-based art. In addition to discussing the societal impacts of AI-generated artworks on the accessibility of art in general, Masdari also explored how AI art could alter our understanding of human aesthetic experience.

In her lecture “The Sculptural in the (Post-)Digital Age” on 13 May 2024, Prof. Dr. Ursula Ströbele discussed if it is still possible to give a definition of the sculptural in times of digital art (and art permeated by the logic of the digital). To this end, she examined traditional dictums from art theory with regard to their validity in relation to artworks based on augmented, virtual or mixed reality technologies. Ströbele also pointed out the institution-critical potential of digital technologies in art – especially with regard to questions of access to artworks.

On 6 May 2024, Dr. Jiang Jun presented the curatorial concept of the China Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale in his lecture “Physical Loss and Digital Reclamation – The Curatorial Concept of the China Pavilion at the Venice Biennale”. At the China Pavilion, digital access is provided to ancient Chinese paintings which would otherwise be lost for the public. Dr. Jiang Jun is curator, art critic and postdoctoral fellow at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai, and co-curator of the China Pavilion of the 60th Biennale di Venezia.

From 4 to 6 April 2024, the Centre for Advanced Study hosted the workshop “Protecting and accessing cultural goods in wartime – Case Studies and Lessons from Armenia and Ukraine”. War not only threatens the lives and physical integrity of people; cultural goods are also at risk of damage and total loss during war. Protecting them in the event of war is an important task for every community, and digitalisation enables new forms and modes of preserving cultural goods or their blueprints that give people access to them in times of war and even more so afterwards. Based on examples and experiences from Armenia and Ukraine, the workshop discussed practical questions and ethical aspects of the protection of cultural goods during war.

In the winter semester 2023/24 the study project “Kunststoffalltage” of the Institute of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology presented its results with an exhibition. Plastic artefacts were presented as “roommates” of student daily life: Objects such as remote controls and toothbrush mugs were used to interpret the everyday dimensions of plastic use. The project was directed by Prof. Dr. Lioba Keller-Drescher, Professor for European Ethnology and in-house fellow of the Centre for Advanced Study. This video provides an insight into the exhibition.

Further information on the exhibition can be found on the homepage of the Institute of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology.

Students from the University of Münster learned how access to art is created in museums at the students' day at the Bremen Kunsthalle on 23 January 2024. In tours, lectures and discussions with curators, they gained insights into museum work and were able to find out how an exhibition is created – from the initial idea to the installation of the pictures shortly before the opening. Jule Welling, Adelina Meyer and Felix Bomkamp, who are studying at the Institute of Art History at the University of Münster, talk about their experiences at the students' day in a TV report on SAT.1 (in German).

On 15 January 2024, Prof. Dr. Mariya Rohozha, Professor of Philosophy at Taras Shevchenko University in Kiev, was a guest of the Centre for Advanced Study. Her lecture “Memes in Transformation of the Ukrainian Media Landscape in the Context of War” took place as part of the sub-project “How to Deal with Cultural Goods in War and Post-war Times: An Ethical Analysis. Also a Contribution to the Foundation of an Ethics of Access to Cultural Goods in an International Perspective”.

Prof. Dr. Ruben Apressyan has been a new member of academic staff at the Centre for Advanced Study since 1 January 2024. He is heading the sub-project “How to Deal with Cultural Goods in War and Post-war Times: An Ethical Analysis”. The project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the Centre.

Arslan Sheikh is a Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study from 1 January 2024. He is based at the Junaid Zaidi Library, COMSATS University, Islamabad, Pakistan. He is currently a PhD student at the Institute for Library and Information Science, Humboldt University, Berlin. His research topic is “Open Science in the Pakistani Perspective”, which is being supervised by Prof. Dr. Eric Steinhauer, who is a Fellow of the Centre for Advanced Study.

On 4 December 2023, Prof. Dr. Erhard Schüttpelz gave the Fellow Lecture „Die Öffnung des Museums und das Geheimnis der Sammlungen“ (“The opening of the museum and the secret of the Collections”). In his lecture, Erhard Schüttpelz contested the most famous founding myth of the modern museum which is attributed to the French Revolution, in the course of which the iconoclastic vandalism of the revolutionaries turned into the public display of national cultural assets. The former secret of feudal, monastic and scholarly collections became the public trusteeship of several modern institutions: Museum, academia and the art trade. The lecture aimed to counter this reduction to a single European history and its generalisation through the perspective of a Long Duration („Lange Dauer“), including Christopher Bayly’s characterisation of an archaic globalisation and Mary W. Helms’ theory of a fundamental exoticism of all cultures and the anchoring of its passion for collecting in their respective religious and political centres of power.

Jon Wiggermann, student of art history and philosophy, explains the special features of Oliver Laric’s “Reclining Pan” in the video – and what questions the artwork raises. From 4 to 30 October 2023, Oliver Laric’s sculpture “Reclining Pan” was on display at the Archaeological Museum of Münster University. The exhibition was a cooperation between the Centre for Advanced Study and the museum on the occasion of the conference „Zugang gestalten! Hindernisse überwinden“.

Digitization is accompanied by a loss of control and authority of interpretation for established cultural heritage institutions, but at the same time it also offers new opportunities for participation. How can this opportunity be used and at the same time prevent the spread of “powerful lies”? The lecture “Access and loss of control – The new dependencies in the age of AI” by cultural studies expert Dr. Michael Seemann as part of the “Zugang gestalten!” conference is available as a video here.

From 4 to 30 October 2023, Oliver Laric’s sculpture “Reclining Pan” was on display at the Archaeological Museum of Münster University. The exhibition was a cooperation between the Centre for Advanced Study and the museum on the occasion of the conference „Zugang gestalten! Hindernisse überwinden“. Based on the idea of scanning and digitisation, Oliver Laric measures archaeological finds such as sculptures and reliefs and transfers the 3D data into a digital archive, thus providing the opportunity to participate in the production, dissemination and interpretation of his works.

From 4 to 6 October 2023, the Centre for Advanced Study “Access to Cultural Goods in Digtal Change” hosted the conference “Zugang gestalten! Mehr Verantwortung für das kulturelle Erbe”. The 13th edition of the conference series was dedicated to the topic “Hindernisse überwinden (Overcoming Obstacles)”: What prevents the digitization of cultural heritage, what hinders accessibility? More than 50 speakers contributed their expertise both in lectures and in parallel working groups. Director of the conference series is Prof. Dr. Paul Klimpel, who is fellow at the centre in 2023.

Africanist Dr. Katrin Pfeiffer (Hamburg) reported on the project “National Digital Archive of The Gambia – Digital Archive Bakari Kebba Sidibe” of the National Centre for Arts and Culture (NCAC), The Gambia, and the University of Hamburg in her lecture “Cultural Memory and Decolonization: The Digitization of the National Archive in The Gambia” on 14 September. The archive with 5,000 tape and cassette recordings as well as 1,200 transcriptions is a true cultural treasure for The Gambia and unique in Africa. The lecture was a cooperation of the Centre for Advanced Study “Access to Cultural Goods in Digital Change” and the association “Afrikanische Perspektiven e. V.”

The art historian Dr. Elisha Masemann (University of Auckland, New Zealand) is a fellow of the WiRe programme (Women in reasearch) at the Centre for Advanced Study from 1 May to 31 July 2023. Her research field is contemporary urban and visual art, with an interest in the intersections of art, architecture, urbanism and socio-cultural theory in the context of today’s rapidly changing cities. In Münster, she will analyse an emerging aspect of this field, the “smart city” by way of artistic praxis

With a lecture by Leibniz Prize winner Prof. Dr. Johannes Grave (University of Jena), the Centre for Advanced Study celebrated its opening on April 25, 2023. Prof. Dr. Reinold Schmücker (speaker) and Prof. Dr. Ursula Frohne (co-speaker) presented the centre. Dr. Niklas Hebing (German Research Foundation), and Prof. Dr. Johannes Wessels, (rector of the University of Münster) gave welcoming speeches. The formation "KySe DrüB feat. Anna Lytton" performed with electronic music, saxophone and live visuals. Afterwards, the guests had the opportunity to talk and exchange ideas at the get together in the foyer of the "Schloss".

With the renowned art historian Prof. Dr. Hubertus Kohle, the Centre for Advanced Study can already welcome its second Fellow in its first month. He holds the Chair of Middle and Modern Art History at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich and was one of the first experts to address the significance of digitalization for art history. Since then, Hubertus Kohle has illuminated the tensions between art and digitality from numerous perspectives. In the Centre, he will conduct research on the consequences of the digital transformation for art theory.

On 1 April 2023, the Centre for Advanced Study “Access to Cultural Goods in Digital Change” commenced its work. We would like to cordially invite you to the festive kick-off on 25 April 2023 at 6 pm c.t.. At the event in the Botanicum, Leibniz Prize winner Johannes Grave will give the keynote lecture on the topic "Changing states of matter. How the way we access art can change works". Afterwards, there will be a reception in Münster Castle.

The Centre is pleased to welcome Prof. Dr. Paul Klimpel, a proven expert on questions of copyright and the digitisation of cultural assets, as a Fellow right from the start. The lawyer has contributed to several statements dealing with the fundamental organisational, technical and legal changes in memory organisations as a result of digitisation. He also chairs the conference series "'Shaping Access! More Responsibility for Cultural Heritage". Paul Klimpel will conduct research on copyright issues of digital reproductions at the Centre in the summer semester 2023.