CoMuse – The Collaborative Museum is an initiative by the Ethnologisches Museum and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst in Berlin that proposes new paths in transcultural museum work. It develops multi-perspective approaches to collection-based research and tests new formats of international collaborative processes to intensify the decolonisation and diversification of museum practices in sustainable ways. To realise this collective endeavour, the museums have launched new projects and a fellowship program. The CoMuse Fellowship program invites cultural practitioners, artisans, conservators, educators, curators, visual artists, filmmakers, musicians, journalist and cross-disciplinary early career researchers to engage critically with the collections of the museums.

The way museums interact with the cultural belongings in their collections, colonial legacies, and other violent histories of appropriation – together with Western conceptions of museum work – have led to an imbalance. Renegotiating hierarchies of interpretation and ownership of the objects forms part of a broader paradigm shift that the Ethnologisches Museum and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst proactively seek to engage in.

CoMuse Fellows 2023 – 2024: Adeju Thompson / Alice Mestriner & Ahad Moslemi / Taiye Idahor / Godfrey Ekhator / Mio Okido / Ifunanya Madufor / Gonzalo Rodriguez / George Tamihana Nuku / Mabel Oviahon / Gabriela García García / Augustine Moukodi / Prem Kumar Mallick / Radhey Shyam Sharma / Baptist Coelho / Deepak Tolange