Musikethnologie im Museum

The Media Department of the Ethnologisches Museum comprises the fields of ethnomusicology, the Berlin Phonogram Archive and visual anthropology. From the beginning of the 1970s, the so-called »Department of Ethnomusicology« was characterized by diverse efforts to reach a broad public. In addition to record and book publications, it regularly organized concerts and workshops. Various special exhibitions substituted the permanent exhibition, which was not set up until 1996. Later on, further tasks were assigned to the department. Since the turn of the millennium, the digitization of the holdings has come to the fore. Until the 1980s, the film archive was mainly based on film series produced by the Göttingen Institute for Scientific Film (IWF, Institut für Wissenschaftlichen Film) and shown primarily for research purposes. Since then, the approach, content, scope and visibility of the archive in the public space have changed. [keywords: ethnomusicology, media, sound archive, musical instruments]