Provenance research in municipal and local history museums town and regional in Brandenburg. Follow-on project

According to research by Brandenburg Association of Museums, 28 municipal and local history museums still in existence today were founded prior to 1945. They contain holdings that entered the collection before 1945. Three of these museums carried out provenance research before 2012; seven others underwent an Initial Check in 2012 as part of the Museum Association’s pilot project. Of these, six received a recommendation for in-depth research. Taking part in this project are the museums in Bad Freienwalde, Brandenburg (Havel), Luckau, Perleberg, Prenzlau and Schwedt/Oder. The collections in these museums contain between 30,000 and 130,000 objects. They all cover a variety of subject areas (archeology, art, history).

Further activities:
The aim is to achieve greater transparency with regard to the history of object acquisitions and collections in the museums in Brandenburg. The Association of Museums wants to motivate all museums to pursue provenance research. A meeting of the provenance researchers working in Brandenburg took place in July 2013. On September 16, the Association of Museums provided a central training event for museum staff on provenance research in Brandenburg. A final meeting was held with each of the six participating museums and their sponsoring bodies. Provenance research was also the key topic in the 23rd issue of the journal “Museumsblätter. Mitteilungen des Museumsverbandes Brandenburg” (total size 64 pages).

(c) Museumsverband des Landes Brandenburg