The Landesmuseum Natur und Mensch is a multi-disciplinary museum in Oldenburg. Parts of the collection date back to the 1770s. It includes objects from archaeology, natural history and ethnology. The unique permanent exhibition was designed in collaboration with artists as one of the first exhibitions in Germany to be consistently scenographic. It serves as a model for many archaeological exhibitions in Germany. Changing special exhibitions are dedicated to supra-regional topics - often interdisciplinary and with a focus on the museum's main collection areas: archaeology, natural history and ethnology.
In society and thus also in museums, the next few years will be determined by migration, immigration and demographic change, as well as increasing participation of everyone in cultural events. This requires not only a broader opening of the museum in its offerings, but also the positioning as a place for current issues and debates. Museums compete in credibility only with universities, but they are considered to be of a much lower threshold. Therefore, the Natur und Mensch museum will seize the opportunity to develop into a centre of competence for the region. One focus will be on collection-related research and questions of biodiversity and provenance. In addition, data will be made available and the population will be involved in citizen science projects.
The Natur und Mensch museum conducts its own research, but also enables research by others by making the collection available as a research infrastructure. The important collection is currently the subject of provenance research, for example. The ethnological and natural history objects from the colonial period are made accessible to the societies of origin via a multilingual database. This creates transparency with regard to the collection.