HAMBURG.- On 6 October 2015, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG) placed its collection at the disposal of the public on MKG Collection Online at sammlungonline.mkg-hamburg.de/en. Good-quality photos of the digitalized holdings whose copyrights have expired and which are legally considered works in the public domain are now available for downloading for every type of use. As the first museum in Germany to offer the free use of image data of its objects, the MKG is here playing a pioneering role. The data is not only available for private, scholarly and commercial use, but may also be changed and combined with other contents for the design of new creative constellations. This idea of sharing corresponds to the museum’s pathbreaking founding charter: the MKG opened in 1877 with the aim of offering persons working in the arts and crafts examples for study and imitation. The museum is conceived as the guardian of a cultural legacy that, ranking as a public asset, belongs to society.

On the occasion of the exhibition “When We Share More Than Ever” the museum investigated how it – in its role as a public cultural institution – can make its holdings visible and accessible and share them with as many people as possible. The exhibition, which ended on 20 September, showed that the sharing of images fulfils an important function regarding the confirmation and transfer of knowledge and cultural identity. Comparison between historical and contemporary works reveals that the practice of image-sharing has always influenced how photography is used. All that changes are the image carriers, the technical possibilities and the networks. In addition to information on and illustrations of the objects, the online presentation is therefore also offering a means of sharing that data by way of social media functions so as to draw the attention of an ever wider public to the MKG’s works.

In its beta version, the MKG Collection Online offers public access to many museum objects not placed on permanent display. In keeping with the concept of the exhibition “When We Share More Than Ever”, it will initially focus on the photography and new media collection and the holdings of approximately 3,000 objects examined in the context of the show. Selected highlights from all of the museum departments are also available for investigation by simple means and can be compiled in a personal online album. In the future, the platform will also serve as a research tool with which questions concerning the dating, techniques or attribution of a work can be answered. The same applies to research on artists whose works are copyright-protected. In consultation with them or their legal successors, illustrations of these works will be presented in conformance to the respective rights. The source of the MKG Collection Online is the museum’s collection database, which will release new works weekly. In the context of the inventory project launched in 2012 and funded by the Hamburg culture department, the entire MKG holdings, comprising some 500,000 objects, are being catalogued. Over the coming years, the MKG is planning to make its data holdings accessible for public use in stages, and to pass them on to regional, national and international culture portals. This will make enable Europe-wide dissemination and networking. By way of these portals, the object information will also be made available in machine-parsable form so that developers can use the data for further innovative applications.