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Call for Co-Curation

Museum für Naturkunde Berlin

The exhibition team of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin is looking for co-curators to bring in new perspectives on two collection depots with colonial holdings: antlers, horns & mammal skulls.


The project

The Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin houses an extensive collection of zoological, geological and palaeontological specimens. To this day, the museum's collection forms the starting point for research and the museum's exhibition. At the same time, it reflects the imperialist history of the institution. Between 1884 and 1919 in particular, collections from the German colonies were brought to Berlin. Up to now, these have been dealt with from a Eurocentric perspective. Expertise and narratives from the countries of origin have not been presented.

In the coming years, new exhibitions and collection depots at the museum will be opened to the visitors. In the course of this renewal, we aim to open up our curatorial work as well. We are starting this process with two collection depots: Antlers and horns as well as mammal skulls. Both parts of the collection contain animals from former German colonies that came to the museum during colonial rule. These specimen and their presentation will be the focus of this project.

A multi-perspective view on natural history collections is central to the new approach. For the exhibition, we are particularly looking for contributions that show different ways of reading the collection and open up new perspectives or challenge the interpretation and meaning of the presentation of nature.


Who are we looking for?

We are looking for experts from the regions of origin of the specimen (Burundi, Cameroon, Ghana, Micronesia, Namibia, Papua, Qingdao, Rwanda, Samoa, Tanzania, Togo), who see an overlap between their previous work or research interests and the thematic areas that are connected to the collection depots (antlers, horns & mammal skulls).

We invite co-curators to come up with their ideas on possible thematic focuses, which they would like to work on for the exhibition.

Thematic focuses could be for example: Interpretation and meaning of nature; hunting, killing and trophies; colonialism; contexts of injustice and violence; ecology, adaptation and biodiversity; biodiversity crisis and loss of species; nature conservation; relevance to everyday life; collecting, collection and history of collecting; ethics; knowledge


Project schedule

  • Submission deadline for the application: 4 March 2025, 23:59 CET

  • Afterwards: Selection of the co-curators (All applicants will then receive feedback as to whether they have been selected)

  • Co-curatorial process (3 months, remote via Zoom): 4 April 2025 until 30 June 2025

The co-curation runs over a period of three months, during which time active participation must be guaranteed. The selected co-curators will each work on one topic area for the exhibition. Together with the exhibition team, the content will be processed in approx. 6 digital workshops (+ preparation and post-processing) and transferred to the exhibition. The collaboration concludes with the final approval of the exhibition texts by the co-curators.


Honorarium

Co-curators will receive an honorarium of up to EUR 3,000 net. Therefore, the co-curator applicants must submit a quotation as part of their application. You can find an example of how a quotation could look like:

Quotation example

The selected co-curators will submit their invoice after completion of the project (on the basis of the commissioned quotation).


How to apply

Deadline: Tuesday, 4 March 2025, 23:59 CET

  1. Fill out the application form

  2. Send your quotation and your CV (including a list of relevant work experiences, qualifications, projects and/or publications) to the following e-mail address: ausstellung@mfn.berlin

Research material

The following materials can be provided to give a first overview of the collection objects and as a basis for finding and working on topics. Please note: The documents and lists provided contain terms and language that date back to the time when the objects were brought to the museum and may therefore contain racist wording and errors. We do not want to publish historical photographs of colonised people without consent. However, images from our archives can be made available to the co-curators for the content-related research of the topic in the course of the project.

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