Lindiwe Breuer
- Name
- Lindiwe Breuer
- Status
- Research Assistant
- l.breuer (at) hu-berlin.de
- Institution
-
Faculty of Humanities →Department of History →History of Science Specializing in History of Education and Organisation of Knowledge in the 19th and 20th Century
- Visiting address
- Institutsgebäude, Georgenstraße 23 , Room 6.19
- Phone number
- +49 30 2093- 65867
- Mailing address
- Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin
Current research
Constructing Provenance:
Attribution Practices in Prussian Museums, 1889–1914
Over the past three decades, research on the provenance of museum collections has gained wide visibility in politics, the media, and activism, while also emerging as a distinct scholarly field. Yet the history of provenance practices—the concrete ways in which authorship and origin were attributed to constitute the very museum objects now at the center of provenance research—remains underexplored. My praxeological study focuses on Berlin museums in a period that marks a fundamental shift in museum politics and collection practices. Analyzing how provenance was constructed and deployed within museum work, it seeks to illuminate the epistemic and institutional conditions that shaped modern notions of cultural heritage.
Selected publications
ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-4342-0041
2023
- “Der ‘erste deutsche Elefant’: Ein kamerunischer Elefant auf Bestellung.” In Atlas der Abwesenheit: Kameruns Kulturerbe in Deutschland, edited by Mikaél Assilkinga et al., 185–95. Heidelberg: arthistoricum.net.
2022
- “Der ‘erste deutsche Elefant’: Eine Geschichte der Extraktion.” Boasblogs DCNtR, November 1.
Recent Activities
2025
- “Emanzipation und Technik? Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Haushalt und Frauenrollen in der DDR am Beispiel von Frau P.” (podcast, in cooperation with Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin). TGTUBlog, April
2024
- Presentation of the publication Atlas of Absence (panel member). Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle (Saale), March 3.
2023–2024.
- Exhibition of geographical maps taken from the research publication “Atlas of Absence” withing the format Rapid Response (co-creation and co-planning of an exhibition). GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde, Leipzig. https://www.facebook.com/reel/1709380516250997. Sep 2023 – Oct 2024.
2023
- “Ein kamerunischer Elefant auf Bestellung” (conference presentation). Cameroon's Cultural Heritage in Germany. Findings and Perspectives, Technische Universität Berlin, June 2.
- “Im Keller.In Leipzig bemüht man sich um Wiedergutmachung und um Transparenz. Ein Besuch im Depot des Grassi-Museums mit den ‘Atlas’-Forschenden Mikaél Assilkinga und Lindiwe Breuer” (interview). Art: Das Kunstmagazin, 12/2023: 75–79.