Aspects of Analysis
© Universität Münster | Stefan Klatt

The Centre for Advanced Study addresses its three guiding research perspectives through fourteen aspects of analysis. Many of these combine several perspectives and are examined through interdisciplinary collaboration between art history, cultural and media studies, philosophy and law.

I. The Art-Historical Perspective

  • 1. Changes in the possibilities and conditions of access to art and other cultural goods through digitization and media change

    How are digitalisation and media transformation changing access to art? The work of the Centre for Advanced Study has confirmed and elaborated on the thesis that digitality ties production, distribution and reception to second-order technological access conditions. Using the example of an archiving project at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2000–2009), four structural factors were identified that cause works of digital net art to become inaccessible rapidly: technical obsolescence, loss of context, institutional compatibility issues and legal restrictions. Digital art remains accessible only if, beyond data and storage media, continuous maintenance, migration, emulation and reinterpretation are also ensured. It has also been demonstrated that digital forms of participation blur the boundary between specialist scholarly cataloguing and the interested public. In light of AI-generated images, older debates concerning the authenticity of photographic images are taking on new urgency. The digital commemoration of the Holocaust illustrates just how far-reaching this is: Digital archives such as the Arolsen Archives open up new ways of accessing the life stories of persecuted and murdered people; at the same time, AI-generated images, presented as supposed evidence of Nazi crimes, can fuel historical revisionism, anti-Semitic propaganda and the denial or trivialisation of the Holocaust – with consequences for the ethical and curatorial responsibility of archives, museums and memorial sites.

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  • 2. Access as a prerequisite for artistic production and curatorial mediation

    To what extent has access to cultural goods been, and continues to be, a prerequisite for artistic production and curatorial mediation? In particular, the discussion centred on issues of authenticity, representation and institutional responsibility, the opportunities and risks posed by artificial intelligence in curatorial processes, and the environmental costs of digital infrastructure – all brought together at the international conference “Digital Curating: Ethics of Access and Sustainability” (2026). The changing role of the museum – from a venue for exhibitions to a participatory partner in education and research – was also described. The Summer Schools in Museology have shown that, in the face of changing materialities, curatorial practice is itself an act of methodologically reflective improvisation.

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  • 3. Research into the artistic reflection of access-ethical problems and norms

    Artistic practice reflects on access conditions, but can also actively help to shape them and yield insights that are not readily accessible to academic discourse. This was demonstrated by exhibitions featuring works by Oliver Laric and Philipp Goldbach, the exhibition of Kasper König’s postcards (also accessible online) and an online exhibition on Meissen porcelain, as well as conferences on artists’ publications and artist’s books that reflect on computer technologies. Works by media artist Nora Al-Badri, which combine activist digital appropriation with institutional critique, illustrate how contemporary art can use digital means to engage in postcolonial institutional critique – without thereby resolving the issue of physical restitution. They raise questions that are central to decolonial museum practice: regarding digital access to collections, cooperation with communities of origin, the status of digital objects and the role of artificial intelligence.

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  • 4. Consequences of digital change for art theory and aesthetics

    Changing access regimes are forcing art theory and aesthetics to rethink fundamental concepts such as the artwork, autonomy, authorship and creativity. On the one hand, research has shown that access alters not only the recipients but also the works themselves – such access dynamics can be observed in numerous examples from the visual arts; that art theory, in the face of AI-generated artefacts, should consider defining art more strongly through practices of engaging with objects; on the other hand, that the modern understanding of aesthetic autonomy has normative presuppositions which digital change calls into question, without terms such as “work” or “performance” becoming obsolete. Using the example of theatre, it was also demonstrated that, within the framework of aesthetic cognitivism, the concept of understanding is more crucial than that of knowledge: Theatre can foster an understanding of personal phenomena such as justice, love or loneliness by depicting human action in concrete situations and inviting the audience to empathise with the perspectives of those acting and those experiencing the events. The doctoral thesis by Finn Marz, produced as part of the Centre for Advanced Study, argues that creativity can be understood as a commendable form of non-compliance with rules.

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II. The Curatorial Perspective

  • 5. Access to museum and archive collections through digital reproductions

    To what extent should access to collections be expanded through digitised material or 3D models? The Centre for Advanced Study has established that digitisation is no substitute for the preservation of the physical original: precisely because digital reproductions are easy to forge, originals remain indispensable as “anchors of authenticity”. Using Pakistan as an example, the doctoral thesis by Arslan Sheikh, produced as part of the Centre for Advanced Study, has shown that, particularly in the Global South, high hopes are pinned on Open Access and Open Science – as a means of enabling broader sections of the population to access higher education. At the same time, the idea of “open access for all” raises fears amongst indigenous and marginalised groups that they may lose exclusive access to cultural assets and bodies of knowledge that are fundamental to their own culture. There is therefore a need for fair access rules that take diverging interests into account. A German-Sri Lankan project, which has resulted in proposals for a library law in Sri Lanka, is investigating how such rules can be legally ensured.

    Further inormation about the research area “Digital Access to Library Content – Legal Frameworks in Germany and Sri Lanka”

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  • 6. Regaining access to withdrawn cultural heritage

    From the very outset, this aspect has developed into a key area of work for the Centre for Advanced Study. Drawing on current debates about the decolonisation of museums, the Centre for Advanced Study examined – using the Foundation of Prussian Cultural Heritage as an example – the decisions, networks and cultural-political stances on which the rejection of restitution claims in the 1970s and early 1980s was based; it became apparent that a systematic obstructionist stance lay behind the official rejections. The international conference “Digital Restitution” (2025) made it clear that “digital restitution” is not an actual return of artefacts and cannot replace it, but it can, however, highlight the significance of looted artefacts in their countries of origin. In the international PERFORM project, of which the Centre for Advanced Study has been a partner institution since 2026, the link between restitution issues and forms of digital access is being further explored using the example of collection holdings from the Cameroon Grasslands. An important normative reference is provided by the first-ever reconstruction of the right of access, enshrined in international law, as set out in UNESCO documents since 1945 – including the terms used therein for culture, cultural property and tangible and intangible heritage, as well as the conditions under which access may legitimately be restricted.

    Further information on the research area “PERFORM – Performing Provenance: Contemporary Art, Digital Spaces, and Things from the Cameroon Grasslands”

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  • 7. Participation in art by people with impairments and other access barriers

    As the Centre for Advanced Study has demonstrated, claims to cultural participation must find solutions within the structural trilemma of normalisation, empowerment and deconstruction that take account of the interests of those affected in each case: digital infrastructures expand access, but at the same time exacerbate the tensions between inclusion goals, not all of which can be fully achieved simultaneously. Building on relational egalitarianism, it was therefore argued that equitable cultural participation cannot be achieved either through technical accessibility or through the one-sided prioritisation of an inclusion strategy, but rather requires a reflective approach to these conflicts. Using the example of simplified contemporary literature for people with reading difficulties, it was demonstrated how the conflict between the right to participation and the rights of authors could be resolved; two possible solutions are discussed in terms of access ethics. Using the example of audio description in museums, the study examined why access to cultural goods for blind and visually impaired people falls far short of the requirements of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: museums implicitly cater to a sighted audience; examples of curatorial practice demonstrate alternatives to this ocularcentrism. Furthermore, accessible infrastructure only leads to genuine participation if the relevant stakeholder groups are involved in a appreciative manner. Finally, from the perspective of empowerment theory, it was argued that digital availability does not in itself constitute empowering access: one can only speak of equitable access when people also possess the skills they need to make use of cultural goods. The conference “Kulturelle Teilhabe im digitalen Wandel” (“Cultural Participation in Digital Change” (2026) brought these lines of discussion together.

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  • 8. Epistemological and aesthetic demands on museums, archives and collections in the digital age

    What requirements arise from the changed access conditions for museums, archives and collections? The research carried out by the Centre for Advanced Study shows, first of all, that the museum’s Enlightenment-era aspiration to provide everyone with access to cultural goods has not yet been fulfilled by digital accessibility: even in the digital realm, access remains the result of institutional decisions. They therefore suggest that, in the context of digital change, the museum should be understood as an institutionally accountable space for negotiation, in which universalist aspirations and particular identity-based references are reflexively related to one another. Using the example of crowdsourcing projects, it was demonstrated that the incorporation of lay knowledge – for instance, in improving metadata or interpreting works – can broaden the epistemic scope of museum collections whilst simultaneously securing public support for cultural institutions. Through open online catalogues, public domain or IIIF-compliant image data, and the provision of their collection data as research data, museums ultimately become fully-fledged research partners.

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III. The Ethical Perspective

  • 9. Access and (private) ownership as modes of cultural participation — justification options for an ethics of access to cultural goods

    Ownership is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for cultural participation – and yet it plays a central role in many conflicts over access. Reinold Schmücker is therefore working on a monograph that justifies the legitimacy of ownership in a new way, different from that of John Locke, and clarifies the relationship between ownership and access. Furthermore, a philosophical and legal analysis has shown that the concept of “cultural appropriation” is based on barely justifiable notions of “ownership” of cultural forms of expression, is inherently contradictory and of limited use as a tool for criticism – and, in particular, obscures what might actually be wrong or harmful about certain acts of appropriation. The tension between Access to Culture and Cultural Self-Determination was also examined. In this context, a distinction was made between three normative functions of cultural goods: equal participation, communal self-determination, and cooperative use and shaping. Fair participation therefore requires neither an indiscriminate opening up nor the unconditional protection of cultural boundaries; the proposed institutional principle of “procedural respect” can mediate between these two claims.

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  • 10. Conflicts between access interests and access restriction interests, especially with regard to access to art

    The analysis of access conflicts on the basis of legal disputes, regulatory proposals and typified constellations of interests (stakeholder analysis) is a key methodological tool of the Centre for Advanced Study. During a Research Retreat with the “Zentrum für Legistik” project at the Federal Ministry of Justice (2024), this approach was used to develop proposals for improved regulation of copyright disputes; this work is being continued in cooperation with the DFG Pilot Phase “Digitalisierung und Bereitstellung (noch) rechtebewehrter Objekte”. A practical guide to the use of images in art history explains the copyright framework and demonstrates that, even under current law, many images may generally be used in publications without the need for paid licences.

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  • 11. Normative implications of the expansion and change in the possibilities of granting, controlling and limiting access through digitization and media change (DRM, copy protection, online lending, etc.)

    What ethical questions do technical access control mechanisms raise – and the emergence of access-granting monopolies that they facilitate? How can legitimate claims to cultural participation and open access to cultural goods, such as scientifically relevant information, be responsibly structured under conditions of comprehensive AI-supported content monitoring and analysis? Under the leadership of Centre for Advanced Study Fellow Paul Klimpel, a comprehensive commentary on the Creative Commons Public Licence was drawn up, exploring the possibilities for the controlled release of images, texts, music and datasets through Creative Commons licences (open access via Carl Grossmann Publishers, Berlin 2025, DOI: 10.24921/2025.94115974). The question was also raised as to whether knowledge needs to be protected from AI: open science does not require general access to sensitive individual data; however, it cannot be expected that AI-based software will reliably respect such boundaries – or copyright law. The article therefore discusses reasons that may today argue in favour of restricting the openness of science.

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  • 12. Global digital divide and access divide as touchstones of an ethics of access to cultural goods

    Apart from the global digital divide, which has been the subject of debate for decades, is there a specific global access divide – and how can both serve as touchstones for an ethics of access? This question is becoming even more pressing in light of the emerging restrictions on access to AI-based software.

  • 13. Normative principles of an ethics of access to cultural goods

    What domain-specific principles can be established for an ethics of access? One illustrative example is the principles of an ethics of access to audiovisual content: according to these, geo-blocking is only legitimate if it is the only available means of securing the financing of a work, and circumventing illegitimate geo-blocking is morally permissible. These principles have since been applied to media regulation within the EU single market: neither broadcasting and video-on-demand quotas nor the legal measures designed to create a single market for audiovisual content effectively promote the cross-border availability of European works. It is therefore proposed that a publicly funded safety-net mechanism be established to open up digital markets once commercial exploitation has ceased.

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  • 14. Access to Cultural Goods in War and Post-War Periods – An Ethical Analysis. At once a Contribution to Establishing an Ethics of Access to Cultural Goods in International Perspective

    This aspect was added in 2024 through an additional project that was successfully applied for. It broadens the scope of the research to include the acute situation in which it is not the granting of access, but rather the physical and digital safeguarding of the accessibility of cultural goods themselves that becomes precarious. The international conference “Protecting and Accessing Cultural Goods in Wartime” was dedicated to this topic, featuring lectures by speakers from Armenia, Ukraine and the USA, amongst others. An analysis of UNESCO’s conventions, declarations and recommendations on the protection of cultural property in armed conflicts has shown that legal rules alone do not guarantee effective protection: Respect for cultural heritage must be permanently embedded in humanitarian training, professional ethics and ethical education within the armed forces. The fact that the issue of access and preservation in wartime also applies to genuinely digital cultural heritage is demonstrated by two studies on internet memes from Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine: One interprets these memes as a modern form of folklore with entertaining, therapeutic and politically empowering functions; the other, using the example of the SUCHO Meme Wall – a freely accessible digital archive – discusses how such ephemeral, digitally created artefacts can be preserved in the long term. From the perspective of the theory of just war, the study also examined whether military interventions to protect cultural goods can be justified – concluding that they are hardly justifiable, as the loss of human life outweighs the loss of cultural goods in most cases.

    More information about the project “Access to Cultural Goods in War and Post-War Periods – An Ethical Analysis”

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