World Treasures of the Past and World Citizens of Today | Steven Engelsman | TEDxViennaSalon

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. The ethnographic museum was invented 200 years ago. Its purpose was to come to grips with peoples and countries far away, and help European colonial empires to make the best of them. This setting has long gone, but the treasures have remained. What purpose can they have now, in the city of the future?
Dr. Steven Engelsman studied mathematics, did research in the history of mathematics and spent most of his life working in museums in Leiden, the Netherlands. He has come to Vienna in 2012 with a brief to reposition and rebrand the Museum für Völkerkunde and to see it through a grand renovation. It is the Weltmuseum Wien now and will be ready the end of 2016.
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