Dr. Anne Luther
Dr. Anne Luther is a specialist for digital heritage and a digital humanities scholar. Her work applies technology, design and humanities research for the interaction, exploration and opening of cultural heritage preserved and represented in digital data. She is the founder of The Institute for Digital Heritage and Principal Investigator for Digital Benin, leading the development of a digital platform which brings together rich documentation from collections worldwide to provide a long-requested overview of the royal artworks looted in the 19th century from the Kingdom of Benin.
She holds a PhD from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, where she developed a pioneering interactive data visualization software for qualitative research. Between 2013 and 2015 she brought a research focus in data driven humanities research to the Parsons Institute for Information Mapping and between 2015 and 2018, she established an emphasis on the analysis of museum data, leading data sprints, workshops, international research collaborations and software development as research coordinator at the Center for Data Arts at Parsons School of Design in New York. She is Andrew W. Mellon Fellow for 2021-22 at the Price Lab for Digital Humanities at UPenn and serves in the program committee of INFO+ 2021.
She secured grants for the Museum am Rothenbaum, MARKK (1.2mio Euro by the Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung), Chair of Modern Art History at TU Berlin (30.000 Euro by the VW Foundation) and Fordham University ($30.000 by the NEH) amongst others. She taught Art Theory as a TA for Professor Boris Groys at NYU between 2014 and 2017 and translated his book Logic of the Collection published with MIT Press/Sternberg Press (2021). She worked in several arts institutions internationally including MoMA PS1, the House of World Cultures, Front Desk Apparatus and for Antonia Josten Art World Recruitment.
As a project leader for Digital Benin, her work has been featured in Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Art News, The Art Newspaper amongst other local and international news outlets. She was selected as an expert on Digitization, digitization strategies and digital collection management for the MuseumsLab, a platform for joint learning, exchange and continuing education regarding the future of museums in Africa and Germany, financed by the German Federal Foreign Office in close cooperation with the African consultancy group The Advisors. She was invited to present and consult on digital strategies in museums, team management in digital projects and data-driven research by the German Federal Cultural Foundation, the German Museum Federation and RUSTlab at Ruhr University Bochum among others.
Recent Public Speaking
German Museum Association
With the 2021 annual conference, we focused on digital collection work and discussed how digital collection work affects the museum as a whole and what opportunities arise from it.
The annual conference of the German Museum Association is the largest museum conference in Germany. It offers specialist lectures and an exchange of experiences on current museum topics as well as the opportunity to network with museum experts and speakers from Germany and abroad.
German Federal Cultural Foundation
How can cultural institutions react to the diverse technological innovations? What forms of artistic production, mediation and communication do you advance? Which methods and working methods support the digital change in institutions? The Digital Fund ( Kultur Digital program ) supports cultural institutions in implementing trend-setting digital projects and experimenting with digital aesthetics and formats. The Federal Cultural Foundation organizes accompanying academies - the Digital Labs - to provide the sponsored houses with professional support and to promote mutual exchange.
The Museums Lab
Digitization, digitization strategies and digital Collections Management
The Museums Lab is a platform for joint learning, exchange and continuing education regarding the future of museums in Africa and Germany. The primary aim of the Lab is to establish close and lasting networks between future shapers of museum concepts on both continents. The project was developed by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and the Masters Programme in Museum Management and Communication at the University of Applied Sciences (HTW) Berlin, in close cooperation with the African consultancy group The Advisors. Ten museums - as well as several other cultural institutions - are partners with the program. The project is financed by the German Federal Foreign Office and supported by the German Minister of State for Culture and the Media as well as the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.