Born from a cooperation between the Institute for Art Studies of the Berlin Technical University and Wikimedia Germany, it is open to museum staff, provenance researchers and data scientists concerned with documentation on the presence of African belongings in German museums that have been acquired through violent means.
The workshop will be led by Yann LeGall (TU Berlin) and Lucy Patterson (Wikimedia Deutschland) founding members of the Wikidata Project TheRoK in 2022.
Three different approaches to research data on colonial context provenances will be evaluated:
- models structured around historical figures (officers, so-called “collectors”)
- research departing from significant events (“punitive” expeditions, thefts)
- the potential of open platforms like Wikidata for collaborative knowledge production on colonial histories
Concretely, the organisers have chosen three case studies that exemplify the diverse challenges posed by data modelling for looted African heritage and colonial contexts:
