Collaborations

Niederösterreichische Kulturwirtschaft GesmbH
Toward the end of the 1990s, Lower Austria started seeking out new strategies in arts and cultural management. Niederösterreichische Kulturwirtschaft GmbH, a private holding company, has been responsible for the operational part of the arts and cultural sector since 2000. Various operating companies of Niederösterreichische Kulturwirtschaft GmbH (NÖKU) are responsible for the operational management of important Lower Austrian museums and exhibition halls, each of which presents a selection of the collection holdings of the Lower Austrian State Collections.

Museumsmanagement Niederösterreich
Museumsmanagement Niederösterreich (Museumsmanagement of Lower Austria) is part of the Kultur.Region.Niederösterreich and acts as a documentation, service, education, and information center for about 750 regional, local, and special museums as well as collections, memorials, exhibition halls, theme trails, and museum associations in Lower Austria.

The main focal points of Museumsmanagement Niederösterreich are the assessment and documentation of Lower Austria’s diverse museum landscape, providing practical education for employees of museums and collections and handling the financial support for museums of the Province of Lower Austria.

Center for Museum Collections Management at the University for Continuing Education Krems
The Center for Museum Collections Management in cooperation with the State Collections of Lower Austria is tasked with scientifically developing and researching the collection strategy of the State Collections of Lower Austria according to the standards defined by the International Council of Museums (ICOM).

The collection holdings of the State Collections of Lower Austria determine the main focal points of the research conducted by the Center for Museum Collections Management. The research subjects are developed across collections and in close cooperation with other universities and non-university research facilities and museums.

European Union
Thanks to the EU-funded digitization project “Kulturerbe digital”, 21,000 new digital copies from three collection departments were created. Currently, around 800 3D digital copies are being produced. The object data is available via the website of the State Collections of Lower Austria, the Austrian “Kulturpool” and Europeana.

Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport
The Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport supports digitization projects through the funding program “Kulturerbe digital”, a project financed by the EU. With the “Digitalisierung ausgewählter musealer Bestände der Landessammlungen Niederösterreich” (Digitization of a Selected Range of objects from the State Collections of Lower Austria) project, the collections were able to create 21,000 new digital copies from three collection departments within one year, starting in the summer of 2023. The object data is available via the website of the State Collections of Lower Austria, the Austrian “Kulturpool” and Europeana.

Kulturpool
The “Kulturpool” is the central search portal for digitized cultural heritage from museums, libraries, and archives in Austria. The comprehensive search allows users to explore digital copies of objects in images, text, sound, video, and 3D formats from various institutions and to research cultural treasures in detail.

The Kulturpool expands the digital capacities of the Austrian cultural heritage sector, enabling cross-institutional exchange and access to digital art and cultural heritage resources from museums, archives, collections, libraries, catalogs, and scientific databases. It also serves as the national competence center and platform for the digital transformation and documentation of cultural heritage and is continuously being developed and expanded. It helps the cultural heritage sector actively address the opportunities and challenges of digital change. It promotes networking and collaboration among cultural institutions across Austria and supports, as an interface to the European digital library Europeana, common standards for digital cultural heritage.

The search portal is part of the “Kulturerbe digital” strategy of the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service, and Sport (BMKÖS) and is being implemented at the Natural History Museum Vienna (NHM). The establishment of the Kulturpool is funded by the EU's NextGenerationEU fund and simultaneously implements two measures from the “Kulturerbe digital” strategy.