Study-Lab in the Lenbachhaus: Students of the Leuphana und University St. Gallen in Munich

03. Nov - 07. Nov

How can museums organize themselves in the light of social change and global challenges? And how can this transformation work? From November 3 - 7, 2025, an international learning lab will offer students from Lüneburg and St. Gallen (Switzerland) the opportunity to work together with the Lenbachhaus Munich on the challenges facing contemporary museums and to exchange ideas with experts.

©Lenbachhaus München/Guido Radig
The event will be held between the 3rd and 7th of November in the Lenbachhaus, Munich.

Besides the university, the museum of art is one of the oldest forms to think about and effectuate the organization and representation of knowledge, its history of ideas and its repertoire of artifacts and objects. Art museums are currently undergoing an enormous shift in how they perform their own functions. These organizational changes are propelled by different developments such as the broader societal shift towards an experience economy and the culturalization of urban life, new practices of audience participation and exhibition formats, debates and demands around more inclusive and decolonial ways of collecting, exhibiting and reflecting art, and– cutting across all of these developments– the ubiquity, everydayness and agencies of digital infrastructures, information technologies and media platforms. In short, the contemporary art museum is an exemplary site of organizational 
change. Yet how does this change take place? How is the museum organized (differently)?

The learning objectives of this course are: To understand the changing positions and organizational approaches of contemporary museums; to identify and reflect on site-specific organizational challenges and responses based on field research; to learn to think visually, spatially and performatively, and to conceive and realize an exhibition.

In collaboration with the Lenbachhaus, Munich, this course will explore the organizational challenges museums face and reflect on responses and new practices of organizing. Students will have the unique opportunity to empirically engage with a leading art museum as well as the institutional landscape of organizing art and culture from 03.11. - 07.11.2025. As a site-specific course dedicated to teaching and learning on site, participants will be able to take a look behind the scenes, explore the processes, technologies and atmospheres of the museum and engage with curators, technicians, administrators, educators and managers.