Museum for the Future
“Diversiteum”—a digital display collection for the natural history museum
“If you want to read the future, you must leaf through the past,” the French writer André Malraux once said. And where better to leaf through our past than in museums? They collect, preserve, conduct research, exhibit, and educate, thereby making a significant contribution to our understanding of the past. Yet this is precisely why museums are often viewed as stuffy and boring—a widespread perception that natural history museums, in particular, struggle with today. But why is that? And how can this be changed?
At the Diversiteum, visitors are invited to digitally explore the unimaginably vast collections and to understand what makes natural history museums particularly relevant to society and worthy of protection today.
1.5 million properties
These days, the collections behind the scenes at museums fill halls that few people ever get to see. The Natural History Museum in Mainz also has such a collection. With the Rhineland-Palatinate State Collection, the museum houses approximately 1.5 million objects, which are stored at four different locations in Mainz. From herbarium specimens to fossils, skeletons, minerals, and specimens preserved in alcohol, the collection offers an extraordinary variety—yet most of it remains hidden from the public.
As part of my bachelor’s thesis, “Diversiteum,” I developed a concept for an exhibition space at the Natural History Museum in Mainz that opens up this process. In the Diversiteum, visitors are invited to digitally explore the unimaginably vast collections and gain an understanding of what makes natural history museums particularly relevant to society today and worthy of protection. Research suddenly becomes something you can experience up close.
As part of the project, the old refectory was transformed into a special exhibition space for one week. Furnished with carpeted floors and comfortable seating, the square room invites visitors to take a seat and linger. A projection spanning three walls allows visitors to marvel at the objects in the Mainz museum’s collection. A narrator uses brief examples to explain how physical databases like this one are used to find answers to today’s research and societal questions.
Nature's Databases
Visitors can interact with the projection via the centerpiece of the room—a central table—using figures made of Plexiglas and concrete. Using RFID technology, the table recognizes each figure and sends a command to the projection. When one of the figures is placed on the table, the corresponding group of objects appears on the wall. Certain figures allow visitors to sort the displayed collection objects by criteria such as size, color, age, or weight. Other figures filter, for example, by existing objects, local objects, or those of the greatest natural-historical value. Visitors are thus invited to collaboratively shape the displays on the walls.
To date, 310 objects have been digitized as part of the project. The process involved capturing photographs and metadata such as title, type, size, location, and date. The museum, however, is continuing to work on digitizing the countless objects. Anyone interested can follow the progress on the museum’s Instagram profile.
Through my collaboration with the museum, the project evolved into an interdisciplinary endeavor, which turned out to be both exciting and multifaceted. I drew most of my inspiration from the collections and all the objects they contain. I hope that outsiders will also be able to view my concept through this lens of interdisciplinary exchange.
Natural history collections are databases of nature that are becoming increasingly important in today’s era of massive species decline. Opening up these collections to various fields—such as research, medicine, art, startups, and education—not only offers boundless inspiration but also holds the potential to drive innovation.
Let’s preserve this diversity for the future as well!