The Collaborative Museum? Navigating Bureaucracy, Structure and Hope at the Ethnological Museum and Asian Art Museum, Berlin

Abstract

This article examines the complexities and structural challenges of collaboration in ethnographic museum work through a case study of the Collaborative Museum (CoMuse) project at the Ethnologisches Museum and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst in Berlin. In response to the growing demands for decolonization, inclusivity and epistemic justice, CoMuse aims to operationalize collaborative practice not merely as an ethical ideal but also as a structural intervention. Drawing on ethnographic observations and institutional analysis, the article situates collaboration within broader institutional entanglements such as contract law, labour regulation, digital infrastructure and administrative procedures, showing how these shape and often constrain relational forms of knowledge production. The paper argues that if collaboration is to be more than symbolic, it requires sustained engagement with the material and procedural infrastructures of museum work. The paper also highlights the tensions between bureaucratic regimes and relational accountability and explores how new roles, workflows and digital strategies can enable more equitable institutional transformation. Rather than presenting a model, CoMuse is offered as a situated attempt to rethink authority, co-authorship and institutional responsibility under the pressures of historical accountability and global entanglement.