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General inventory
The general inventory has been successfully completed. Between 2021 and 2025, the 435,000 objects in our collection were fully recorded, documented and checked for conservation measures.
About the project
All objects in the museum’s nine storage facilities and three exhibition spaces have been registered, catalogued, photographed, measured, documented in terms of their condition, and linked directly to the collection database via QR codes. This provides us with an excellent data foundation for our future work with the collection.
Explained by the project manager
in german
Facts and figures
The general inventory was completed within the planned timeframe and budget.
- 3 exhibition venues
- 9 storage facilities
- 435,000 collection objects
- 150,000 data records
- 20 staff members
The originally estimated number of 300,000 collection items was significantly exceeded. This is primarily due to a more precise recording system: multi-part items – such as a tea service – are now consistently recorded as several individual items within a single data record, to ensure that their completeness and condition can be tracked in the long term.
Cultural and historical heritage at the heart
The general inventory stems from the operational analysis carried out in the summer of 2019. The analysis concluded that the Historical Museum cannot fulfil its core mandate with the funds and resources currently available. A central task of the Historical Museum is to catalogue and conserve the collection carefully and in accordance with international standards. In doing so, the statutory mandate (Section 3 of the Museums Act) must be fulfilled and Basel’s unique cultural and historical heritage must be protected and safeguarded against damage or even loss. For this reason, both the cantonal government and the cantonal parliament approved the planned course of action and authorised a total sum of CHF 6.62 million over five years from 2021 to 2025.