The Collections of the Weltkulturen Museum

The Weltkulturen Museum holds a collection of 65,000 objects from Oceania, Africa, Southeast Asia as well as from North, South and Central America. This is complemented by the collection visual anthropology of some 120,000 historical and contemporary photos and films.
Due to spatial limitations, the Weltkulturen Museum exhibits exclusively changing special exhibitions.

Depot visits
We appreciate your interest in our collections! As a museum without a permanent exhibition, we consider depot visits to be a central part of our work. They enable direct engagement with the cultural heritage we preserve, especially for interested parties and scholars from the countries of origin of this heritage and from the corresponding diasporic communities. Depot visits are generally possible by prior arrangement. In order to ensure careful preparation – including restoration checks and organisational planning – we ask that you submit appointment requests at least one month in advance. Appointments are allocated according to availability, and we ask for your understanding that we cannot accommodate every request submitted within the deadline. The collections from the African continent are currently in particularly high demand. We therefore recommend that you contact us as early as possible.

1. Accessibility and general conditions
   Not all objects can be viewed without restriction. Conservation status, ethically sensitive contexts or agreements with creator or successor societies may impose restrictions. We thank you for your understanding and will inform you individually in advance of any conditions that may apply.
2. Application
   To request an appointment, please fill out this form completely and send it to the following address:. We will forward your email to the appropriate contact person at our institution. Only completely filled out requests can be processed.
3. Safety information
   Some of our storage rooms contain harmful substances. You will therefore receive a safety information sheet before your visit. For health reasons, access to these areas is unfortunately not permitted for pregnant or breastfeeding women or young people under the age of 16.

Collection enquiries
Enquiries regarding the collections of the Weltkulturen Museum can currently be made centrally via weltkulturen.collections@stadt-frankfurt.de.

The collection data is continuously catalogued, reviewed and expanded. We are committed to making this process transparent and ensuring that the current status of each enquiry is clear.

As historical documentation is not always complete or unambiguous, the scope and processing time of enquiries may vary.

We look forward to receiving your enquiry and engaging in professional dialogue.

Digital collection cataloguing and accessibility
The Weltkulturen Museum is constantly working to make its collections digitally accessible. The aim is to provide communities of origin, researchers and the interested public with responsible access to the collection holdings.

Digital cataloguing is guided by current professional standards, in particular the FAIR and CARE principles. In doing so, we aim to record collection data on an event-based basis in order to provide a traceable account of the contexts in which items were created, acquired and used. As historical collection documentation is often incomplete or needs to be recontextualised from a contemporary perspective, its revision is a long-term process and an important foundation for collaboration with communities of origin. Parts of the Weltkulturen Museum’s collections are already accessible digitally as part of collaborative projects. Further information can be obtained from the Department of Digital Collection Management (Leonie Neumann). An overview can be found here:

1. Digital Benin
   This database provides an overview of Benin bronzes held in German museums. The database is updated regularly: https://digitalbenin.org/institutions/146
2. Mapping Philippine Material Culture
   The project is a visual inventory of Philippine objects from the mid-20th century held in museums and private collections outside the Philippines: https://philippinestudies.uk
3. International Inventories Programme (IIP) 
   The IIP database catalogued 32,321 Kenyan objects held in 30 institutions in 7 countries. This groundbreaking inventory, which is currently no longer accessible online, made Kenya's dispersed cultural heritage searchable and accessible while raising important questions about the objects' history, provenance and cultural restitution. Further information at www.inventoriesprogramme.org