The Lindenau Museum wants to reach the public with its digitization offensive. But it’s also about science.
To date, the Lindenau-Museum Altenburg has digitized more than 6,000 of its collection items. In the long term, the goal is to make the collections of the house all over the world tangible with a mouse click, according to a statement from the museum on Wednesday.
So far, the digitized works have been mainly about paintings, graphics, ceramics and pieces of porcelain. Among other things, the Lindenau Museum houses a renowned special collection of early Italian panel paintings – by Fra Angelico and Sandro Botticelli, among others.
This year, experts are also scheduled to begin mapping library content and the modern sculpture collection. To do this, the museum relies on the newly established digitization center. The objects are photographed for digitization and scientifically described. In the end, an online collection should be created. Interested laypersons can then use them, but also the international research community.
According to the statement, an actual visit to the museum cannot be replaced by a collection that can be viewed on the Internet. However, the fact that digital access to the holdings is becoming increasingly relevant for the public was shown not least during the corona pandemic, when many museums had to close and potential visitors only came into contact with the exhibits via internet applications .
In addition to provenance research, the digitization of collections is one of the currently important tasks of many cultural institutions, not only in Thuringia. The federal and state governments are making several million euros available for this until 2027.
