The Culture of Tradition

Cultural institutions today collect and archive material according to very different principles. A cultural historical or historical museum makes both quantitative and qualitative collections differently than does an international art museum. The one tends to archive tremendously broad areas; the other to collect rather selectively; while archaeology in turn assembles its documentation differently from a museum of natural history. “What can we hand down to the ‘future’” is a question that, in view of the wealth of produced objects and the lacking overarching structures for museum collections, has become urgent. Strategies for collection and transmission need to be developed that purposefully steer the activity of preservation towards the future. The first part of the conference will analyze the past; the second part will treat the present and the future. The course of the conference will afford the opportunity to become acquainted at the ZKM with examples of the problems of preserving high-tech products, and finally to cast a glance into the past at the exhibition “The Most Ancient Monuments of Mankind” at the Badisches Landesmuseum.