The position of Germany’s art history and museum research within the structure of German research
MúzeumCafé 38.
It is a general belief that museums have to rethink their future roles in society and answer questions concerning what kind of museum structure will be appropriate for the future, what kind of social tasks they should undertake, and what financial resources will be required. Within this perspective museum research has assumed high priority in Germany, on both the federal and the regional level. The structure of German art historical and museum research is such that a museum positions itself as a research institute; namely whole territory or professionally-based museum organisations define themselves as a research institute network. Thus the system involving traditional, so-called independent research institutes, university research centres and museums is being transformed. The demands of working together in the increasingly compact network of the German institutional system involves an intensification of research, with the aim of creating and transmitting new scholarship. The increasing significance of research units is clearly seen in the new, expanding financial forms. Interdisciplinary thinking is more and more characterising art historical and museum research. One of the most often quoted concepts of Germany’s museum policy returns to the ideal of Humboldt, in the spirit of which related research in the fields of science and the principle of “education through research” increasingly come to the forefront. The aim of museums, research institutes and universities truly fits the creation of a knowledge-based society, and this reinforces the intensification of network relations. In recent years Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research has been stressing that the most important basic task of museums is collection-based research leading to new knowledge.