Open Calls for CoMuse Fellowships

Nov. 1, 2024

The Ethnological Museum and the Asian Art Museum of Berlin have launched two open calls for a total of three fellowships as part of ‘The Collaborative Museum’ (CoMuse) project. International artists, researchers, community representatives and cultural workers are invited to apply to the program, which is a key component of the museums’ collaborative effort to re-explore their collections, test out new formats for working together with international museums and academics and representatives of communities of origin.

Two calls are aimed at internationals for 3-month fellowships beginning in July and October 2025, respectively. Desired are research projects that critically examine the collections and their contexts, experiment with research strategies or collaborate with existing staff to reinvigorate transcultural museum work. Think: knowledge sharing and access, provenance research, decolonial critique, conservation, community building. A fully-equipped studio at Künstlerhaus Bethanien will be made available to the participants, as well as coverage of travel expenses, access to the work studios of the museums in question and an on- and offline platform for presenting the research.

A related fellowship runs from June to November 2025 but is aimed specifically at early-career researchers or cultural practitioners based in Berlin. Applicants should have interests similar to the ones outlined above in addition to explicitly engaging with decolonial museum discourse and the current debates in Germany’s cultural landscape. High proficiency in spoken German is required in addition to moderate proficiency in spoken English. The 6-month program includes a monthly stipend of €3,000, access to work studios of the museums, hands-on research support by staff members and a platform for presenting the final projects.

All applications should include a letter of motivation, a detailed project proposal and CV.