Linden-Museum Stuttgart Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde

With around 160,000 everyday objects, works of art and sacred objects from Africa, the Islamic Orient and Siberia, North and Latin America, the Caribbean, Oceania as well as East, Southeast and South Asia, the Linden Museum Stuttgart, which opened in 1911, houses one of the important ethnological collections in Europe.

Through exhibitions and a multi-faceted events and communication programs, the Linden Museum enables encounters with other living environments and promotes understanding between different worldviews. The museum sees itself as the guardian and mediator of cultural heritage; it explains, differentiates and connects.

The museum is currently confronting former practices of ethnographic collecting, its own colonial history, the provenance of its collections as well as the colonial structures and their consequences in the present. It is furthermore reflecting on the contemporary role of ethnological museums. Projects are created in participatory processes together with representatives and stakeholders from the societies of origin, citizens of Stuttgart as well as international experts

As part of a realignment, the Linden Museum is currently developing and testing new forms of museum knowledge production, communication and presentation within the framework of the “LindenLAB Project”, funded as part of the initiative for ethnological collections of the German Federal Cultural Foundation (Kulturstiftung des Bundes). In addition, the museum participates actively in international networks.