Centre for Advanced Study
“Access to Cultural Goods in Digital Change”

The digital transformation has fundamentally changed the possibilities and conditions of access to cultural goods — i.e. to works of art, but also to the holdings of archives, collections and museums and to such “subjects” as the results of scientific research — and will continue to require new forms and practices of production, reproduction and reception of such goods in the future.

The Centre for Advanced Study Access to Cultural Goods in Digital Change (KFG 33), funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) explores — especially with art as an example — both the new forms of access to cultural goods and the new forms of access restriction and access control made possible by digitalisation. In doing so, it also takes into account the fact that the digital transformation ties the production and reception of many cultural goods to technological preconditions that can be characterised as second-order access conditions.

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© Natascha Unkart

Fifth Summer School Museology

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 organizes 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 will gain 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 is headed by Prof. Dr Lioba Keller-Drescher, In-house Fellow of the Centre for Advanced Study. Guest curator is Dr. Birgit Johler, Senior Fellow of the Centre for Advanced Study.

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© Julia Guo

Fellow Lecture: “Reimagining Access: Immersive Media for Transforming Cultural Engagement”

On Monday, 07 July 2025, Dr. Susanne Thurow (Sydney) will give her Fellow Lecture on the topic “Reimagining Access: Immersive Media for Transforming Cultural Engagement”. The lecture will explore 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 UNSW on new, multi-sensory forms of storytelling in cultural institutions.

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© Universität Münster | Stefan Klatt

Fellow Lecture: “Zugang FAIR gestalten: Was sind und was können Referenzontologien?”

On Monday, 30 June 2025, Prof. Dr. Ludger Jansen (Brixen) will give 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 will examine reference ontologies as a way of giving data a semantics and making access to data reliably FAIR – i.e. Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Re-Usable.

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© Nii Kwate Owoo & Arsenal (Nii Kwate Owoo, YOU HIDE ME, 1970)

Film series: “Access and Return: Restitution in films”

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” investigates the struggle for cultural self-determination, dealing with continuing colonial power relations and the question of what restitution means and can mean today on three Tuesday evenings 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), each starting at 7 pm. It aims to look at where objects are absent – and thus understand restitution not only as a gesture of reparation, but also as a social challenge. (Venue: Auditorium of the LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Domplatz 10, 48143 Münster; admission: 5 euros per evening)