COINS: Visualisation of a Numismatic Collection

With over half a million coins and medals, the Münzkabinett Berlin is one of the most important numismatic collections in the world. The Münzkabinett has invested considerable resources in digitisation processes over the past ten years, focusing on the semantic annotation of historical coins and publication via web portals. Despite these efforts to make the collection more widely accessible, the physical and digital representation of the collection has been relatively limited. The coins almost always end up in grids: whether in the drawers of the depot, in the showcases of the exhibition or in the miniature pages of the online collection. These static and rigid arrangements, while ubiquitous in all collecting institutions, do not have the potential to convey the semantic relationships and physical patterns of this large collection.

The overarching goal of this research project at UCLAB is to design alternative arrangements that do justice to the multidimensional and material richness of the collection while providing a playful means of access.