Claudia Feigl

University of Vienna, Collections Coordinator

Yesterday's Collections as Potentials for the Future

The research of material cultural objects holds an infinite variety of questions issues/topics that often arise in the course of dealing with objects. Provenance, production context, acquisition and use contexts of objects offer entry points into understanding past cultural practices. This lecture will focus on the conditions that must be fulfilled in order to be able to study collections in the first place. Using "accessibility" and "usability" as guiding concepts, the expectations and demands on collections by current researchers will also be addressed.