50667 Köln
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The Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum (RJM) in Cologne was founded in 1901 and has been located in a new building in the city centre since 2010. In addition to special exhibitions, the RJM presents a large permanent exhibition with a comparative approach that will be revised and developed in the coming years in cooperation with experts from the Global South and diaspora communities.
The collections comprise about 70,000 everyday and ritual objects as well as around 100,000 historical photographs from Oceania, Asia, Africa and the Americas. The RJM's founding history dates back to the colonial era and an important part of the collections date from before World War I. Based on these predominantly historical holdings, the focus will be on discussing colonial heritage, institutional history and acquisition contexts of the RJM’s holdings. Interdisciplinary approaches for communicating complex issues and involving visitors with or without prior knowledge will be sought.
The collections of the RJM have been successively entered into an Access based database since the end of the 1990s. Since the transfer to the MuseumPlus composite database of the City of Cologne in autumn 2020, data have been cleaned up, thesauri have been developed and missing data – if available – have been added. The City of Cologne is currently working on the technical requirements as well as an IT infrastructure for publishing data online planned for 2022.