GLAM/Newsletter/March 2026/Contents/Germany report

This Month in GLAM – Volume XVI, Issue III, March 2026

Germany report

Art History Loves Wiki 2026 – digital/local. collection loves wiki

A little background on the KuWiki Working Group

The full name is kuwiki.AG Kunstwissenschaften + Wikipedia. There is an English Language page that will give you some background: kuwiki.Working Group Art History + Wikipedia.

For me as an art loving Wikipedian, without an academic background in Art History the unique feature of our group is the eye-level exchange between experts and volunteers. The initial members were students and PhD students who wanted to introduce the tools of our Wikiverse into academia, but also improve the quality of the depiction of art and art-history in Wikipedia with the fruits of their studies. In these last five years kuwiki.AG has brought Wikipedia and its sister Projects behind the ivy covered walls. In addition to the chapter coordinated GLAM-activities where we largely approach GLAM-institutions from our side (outreach), the members of the kuwiki.AG are working from within their various institutions, whether as students, staff, emeriti, to amateur/dilettants, like I, but always in the role of a volunteer Wikipedian. Not embedded like a Wikipedian in Residence, nor in the role as a payed editor.

The working group gets together in bi-monthly online-meetings to coordinate their activities.

kuwiki's activities

The initial and still defining project was the Living handbook a Vademecum to familiarize Wikimedians with the concepts of Art History and Art Historians with the concepts of Wikipedia when writing articles about art-related topics.

Various topics are picked up, presented, discussed, explained in an open to all interested parties on-line forum called tips & tools on an irregular, but frequent basis on Thursday nights.

kuwiki presents their work at various congresses hosted by arthistorical societies like the "deutscher verband für Kunstgeschichte", at the "Tag der Provenienzforschung", or "Kongress für Kunstgeschichte". But also at WikiCons and Wikimanias.

But it also organizes own congresses, like Provenance loves Wiki in 2024, where the focus was on Provenance Research and whether Wikidata is a suitable and persistent tool for mapping ownership of artwork. Collections, Archives & Research Data in 2025 focused on how Wikidata and research data from various institutions could be reconciled. This year's Art History Loves Wiki 2026 – digital/local. collection loves wiki put into focus how especially museums could utilize the potentials of the different Wikimedia projects.

Art History Loves Wiki 2026 – digital/local. collection loves wiki - Cologne, March 27-29 2026

The meeting at Museum Schnütgen was organized by kuwiki in collaboration with the museum and with financial and logistical support by Wikimedia Germany (WMDE).

On Friday afternoon we started with an introduction to the 360° Tour of the Museum Schnütgen. And how the museum is planning to further enhance this with explanatory links to the exhibitions.

Next a project was introduced that is trying to map Early Modern Hospitals in European Cities.

An example of the organization of a local edit-a-thon at a local museum with a local community to enhance the visibility of women artists in this institution was presented, as well. Whereas this might not be new to our community of Wikimedians, the audience of this conference reaches beyond our community.

ECHOLOT was introduced next. A project that aims to reconcile various cultural databases with the Wikimedia Ecosystem.

A choice of various guided tours through the museum and an adjacent church on Saturday morning helped to get the participants get into conference-mode again.

The Museum Schnütgen presented their digitized inventory books, which are archived in the Heidelberg Accssion Index (HAI).

The Prometheus-Bildarchiv is just as old as Wikipedia. It has 4.150.000 images of art, culture and history from 136 databases.

Wikipedia:Museen BW was an initiative of the Baden-Württemberg official coordinating organization for museums and the Wikipedia Community to built 1:1 partnerships between Wikipedians and local museums to bring their content into the Wikipedia projects.

The LVR Industrial Museum which unites the industrial museums in the Rhineland reported on their outlooks and referred to best practice experiences with Wikipedians in the past.

A Wikipedian's rabbit hole project about how a side-remark in a book by a local historian inspired a Wikipedian to follow through. He had written about a temporary art-depot on the Hohenzollern Castle during WW II to safeguard artworks from Cologne museums, among them the Schnütgen Museum. The remark was, if it wouldn't be possible to recreate this collection, if only just virtually, and the Wikipedian said, "can try“.

A follow up on last years Bringing together Collection Data and Wikidata via AI followed.

The following presentation focused on the intercultural interpretation of descriptions on Wikidata. Are we really talking about the same thing (item) when we see it translated in other languages? But this takes on an even graver dimension if we uncritically adopt phrases and terms from historical data that was put down reflecting the biases of the creators. A "transfer" of an object could be a voluntary, gift, a sale, but also been part of an extortion process, robbery, or loot. The latter of course almost always put down in the more euphemistic terms. One of the projects tackling this problem is Wikidata:WikiProject TheRoK.

The project Gotha transdigital couldn't be presented in person. Since the end of 2024 there are growing efforts to bring the results of these digitization efforts into the Wikipedia projects to enhance their visibility and reuse.

usefulQueries was introduced as a new tool to foster art historical approaches to Wikidata in the future.

Saturday ended with traditional local Kölsch food and nice talks, sponsored by WMDE, but because of their sponsoring restrictions the Kölsch tap had to be taken individually.

Sunday morning was taken up with two 60-minutes bar-camp sessions where the lessons learned in the last two days were taken to the practical tests and potential applications by the participants.

Follow the Documentation Page of the Conference as more and more of the presentations and results will appear.

Just around the corner

Le donne di Villa Massimo (April 10 - 12, 2026) at the Villa Massimo in Rome and hybrid.

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