Internship: German Art Archive Nuremberg
From July to September 2024, our fellow Noran Omran completed an internship with Dr. Susana Brogi (Head of the Art Archive and cooperation partner of the GRK “Literatur und Öffentlichkeit”) at the German Art Archive of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.
The German Art Archive is located at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, the largest museum of cultural history in Germany, and is therefore, like the museum itself, a research institution of the Leibniz Association. The archive was founded in 1964 as the “Archive for Fine Arts”. The German Art Archive collects archive material such as personalia, correspondence and documents relating to professional and artistic life as well as memorabilia from artists, researchers and art institutions. Over the years, the archive developed into an important institution for art historical research and was therefore renamed the “German Art Archive”. It comprises 1,400 holdings, consisting of estates from the 19th century and pre- as well as posthumous estates from the 20th century to the present day.
During her internship, Noran Omran was primarily involved in epistemic activities aimed at the target group-oriented and professional preparation and transfer of knowledge of cultural and artistic information for a broader public. She was engaged in the recording and archival and material-related maintenance of written materials – correspondence, personal documents, journals and artistic artifacts. The archival materials of German-speaking art historians and artists of the late 20th and 21st centuries are thus prepared for digital and analog availability for scholars and interested parties. For this purpose, the research fellow examined the collections and questioned them with regard to their contextual embedding, cultural, political and historical statements and identified networking connections between the artifacts, people and institutions of art, culture and science. While the German-speaking world, especially the Federal Republic of Germany, often provided the heuristic starting point, the investigations showed the influence of and exchange between other European and transatlantic artists and scientists. On the one hand, the analyses and determination of this information served to record the information compiled in the digital inventory list and the online catalog of the art archive, which also included the digitization of correspondence and drawings by artists such as Franz Mark. On the other hand, conclusions can be drawn about the role and relevance of German-language art and its exploration in a global context and in political discourses, and interdisciplinary perspectives and research can be driven forward. In this way, the internship enabled the fellow to contribute to the promotion of research and cultural education and to gain knowledge in the field of archiving.