Eleven German museums of world cultures, delegates from the Interministerial Committee for the Return of Illegally Removed Cultural Property and representatives of traditional royal houses from Cameroon spoke at the “Dialogue Meeting: Cameroon and Germany” at the Linden-Museum Stuttgart from January 14 to 16, 2024, on possible ways of returning cultural property to Cameroon and on sustainable cooperation. The meeting was attended by German representatives from museums in Berlin, Bremen, Braunschweig, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hanover, Cologne, Leipzig, Mannheim, Munich and Stuttgart. Joint intentions were agreed in the “Stuttgart Communiqué”.

Communiqué de Stuttgart (French version, pdf)

Press Release: Dialogue Meeting Cameroon and Germany (pdf)

Since October 2023 the PhD program “A Doctorate in the Museum: The Local and Global Dimensions of Objects in Anthropological Museums in Baden-Württemberg Today” (DIMA), has been running. DIMA is an innovative scholarship program for doctoral studies in the research field of “Museums and Collections”. The program funds three scholarships for research into the ethnographic collections of the University of Tübingen and/or the Linden-Museum Stuttgart. The three funded doctoral projects are anchored within the disciplines of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Historical and Cultural Anthropology, and History. The program is funded jointly by the Ministry of Science, Research and Arts of Baden-Württemberg, the Linden-Museum Stuttgart and the University of Tübingen and provides three scholarships running for three years from October 2023 to September 2026.

The three current scholarship holders are Sophie Eckhardt, Katharina Nowak and Judith Zweck.

Sophie Eckhardt’s project has the working title of “Exhibition-making in the 21st century. A process-accompanying research of an exhibition of the Linden-Museum Stuttgart”. It ties in with current debates on renegotiating the role and relevance of ethnographic museums in the 21st century.

Katharina Nowak’s PhD project, entitled “The Decolonial Knowledge Production of Ethnographic Collections: Rethinking Museums”, focuses on ethnographic objects that were taken from the Pacific Ocean island states to Stuttgart and Tübingen during the colonial period.

Judith Zweck’s thesis, entitled “Blank Spaces in the Museum: Purchases and Sales of Museum Holdings to the Art Trade in the Period from 1945 to 1973 at the Linden-Museum Stuttgart”, examines the collections of the Linden-Museum that were acquired in that particular time period, as well as the museum’s relations with various art dealers.

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The aim of the project is to develop a guidance system through the museum’s permanent exhibitions that enables interaction with the exhibitions, the exhibits and the museum space. A particular focus is on accessibility for people with mental and physical disabilities.

A hands-on replica of an exhibit will be available at several stations, serving as an anchor for further content. However, our concept should above all be adapted to the needs and requirements of the intended visitor groups, which is why we are initially keeping the result, which is worked out in workshops, flexible.

Through this project, we hope to make our museum more accessible to people with inclusion needs. At the same time, we want to gather experience in order to develop more inclusive offers in cooperation in the future.