The painting is a panel painting painted on oak wood, whose high status in art history in northern Germany has long been known; However, due to its precarious condition, it never received the attention it deserved in the gallery. The work has been widely published as the earliest illustration of the Ten Commandments in the medium of the panel painting; the commandments that are missing today were originally shown on the folding wings of the work. As part of the preparations for the new art worlds, the panel created in Göttingen was extensively restored.

How did some people become poor and how did some people become rich? Most researchers see an important developmental step in the transition from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic in the Near East. While a largely egalitarian society is assumed for the Neolithic, the first complex societies, such as chiefdoms, can be identified in the following Chalcolionic. These then also form the basis for the first states.

The central settlement of Tel Tsaf in Israel, located on the middle Jordan, not far from the Sea of ​​Galilee, has been excavated by Israeli and German researchers since 2012. The team is investigating a very early phase of this development between 5200 and 4600 BC. BC

The focus of interest is a silo concentration in which large quantities of grain could be stored. Far more than the people in the neighboring houses could ever have eaten. Is this a case of the monopolization of food by a family group that used this to establish their rule? Or why was an entire village's worth of food collected and stored here?

The excellent preservation conditions also allow the researchers in Tel Tsaf to make a whole series of discoveries that are apparently related to social differentiation, for example the emergence of complex foods and drinks, which was achieved in Tel Tsaf oldest evidence to date of the consumption of alcoholic beveragesOr Trade networks that reach all the way to Ethiopia.

The Hanover State Museum preserves six panels depicting the life of Saint Francis. The scenes, now sawn into individual panels and painted on poplar wood, originally belonged to a large altarpiece in the Franciscan Church in Perugia. When the ensemble was dissolved, the individual fields gradually found their way onto the art market. In addition to the six panels in Hanover, components of the former retable are now in various collections in Perugia, the United States and in private collections in Holland. Through the collaboration with the exhibition organizers in Perugia, essential insights into the former composition of the retable were gained through the precise examination of the various components. With the support of the Friends of the Landesgalerie Hannover, the paintings have been undergoing careful restoration since 2022.

The two medieval panels are undergoing extensive restoration work: This includes the preservation of loosened layers of paint, the removal of numerous old, heavily darkened coatings, layers of dirt and color-changed overpainting, as well as the structural and color integration of the old missing areas. In order to observe the movement behavior of the painting carried out on oak wood, a back measure tailored to the objects was developed. Using photogrammeticr The specific curvature behavior was made measurable using macro photography. Various examinations were carried out in advance to analyze the damage: X-ray and infrared images were taken of all image fields. Microchemical analysis is used to determine materials.

Since 2004 Katja Lembke, director of the Landesmuseum Hannover, has been in charge of projects in the necropolis of Tuna el-Gebel in central Egypt. With its diverse tomb structures made of mud bricks and local shell limestone, the cemetery on the edge of the desert provides a unique view of a burial culture between the Orient and the Occident. The first tombs were made around 300 BC. BC, but most were not built until Roman times (1st-3rd centuries AD). At that time, the complex also received its structure with main and side streets, so that the term necropolis is very appropriate here.

The starting point was excavations in the 20th century, which brought to light multi-story buildings made of mud brick and limestone. Many of the adobe buildings, also called house tombs, were brightly painted, but the murals are often in poor condition today. Thanks to restorations sponsored by the Federal Foreign Office, the around 2000-year-old building has been brought into better condition in recent years. With the support of the German Research Foundation, new excavations have been taking place here since 2018, during which 12 grave structures were discovered. The investigations provide new insights into their architecture, furnishings and use as burial sites and provide important information about the celebrations that regularly took place at the graves.

After 2 million years of feeding on hunting, gathering and fishing, the peasant economy has made it possible to target food, feed more people and save surpluses. In Central Europe, the Neolithic with the Linienbandkeramischen Kultur (LBK) spread very quickly and brought agriculture and livestock by about 5.500 v. Chr. To the northern edge of the low mountain range. The subsequent Neolithisierung of the Northern European low level took place only much later around 4.200 v. Chr., But then with high dynamics. The reasons for this are controversially discussed in research, but have only recently been answered by new branches of science such as paleogenetics. A problem that has long been regarded as unsolvable has once again become highly topical: Who established cereal farming, domestic animals and house construction in the lowlands and thus laid the foundation for rural life right up to the Industrial Revolution?

For this question, the site Hüde I am Dümmer, whose finds are kept in the Landesmuseum Hannover, central. Based on new perspectives on these and related finds, the centuries-long coexistence of early farmers and "native" hunter-gatherer fishermen is discussed. It is also asked why these parallel societies disappeared so suddenly and were largely replaced by a very similar in terms of ceramics and grave customs ideology - the funnel beaker culture.

The origin of ethnological collections from colonial contexts has been the focus of media attention for several years. This discussion is primarily promoted by demands from the communities of origin. The need to research and disclose the origins of colonial collections was recognized early on in Lower Saxony. The PAESE joint project was developed at the Hanover State Museum and was funded by the Volkswagen Foundation from 2018 to 2022.

As part of the project, selected holdings from six Lower Saxony collections at the Hanover State Museum, Braunschweig Municipal Museum, at the Ethnological collection of the Georg-August University of Göttingen, at Roman and Pelizaeus Museum Hildesheim, State Museum of Nature and People Oldenburg as well as on Ev.-Luth. Hermannsburg Mission examined. This was done in close exchange with universities in Hanover, Göttingen and Oldenburg as well as in cooperation with experts from Cameroon, Namibia, PNG, Tanzania and Australia.

In addition to basic research into the origins of colonial-era holdings in the largest ethnographic collections in Lower Saxony, the project's goals were to establish a dialogue about the future handling of the objects. The prerequisite for this is the greatest possible transparency. For this purpose, among other things, a Object database built, which went online in 2020.

Together with the German Center for Losses of Cultural Property became the workshop in 2019 Perspectives of Transnational Provenance Research in Ethnographic Collections in Germany carried out. The international final conference Provenance Research on Collections from Colonial Contexts – Principles, Approaches, Challenges took place in June 2021 as a hybrid event with over 300 participants from all over the world. The results were published open access in 2023 in the series of the Provenance Research Network in Lower Saxony.

The Golden Table, the former high altarpiece of the Benedictine monastery church of St. Michaelis in Lüneburg, is one of the most valuable works in the state museum. From 2012 to 2015, the Golden Table was the subject of an interdisciplinary research project. In cooperation with the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, the Städel Cooperation Professorship at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and the University of Applied Science and Art in Hildesheim, restorers, art historians and historians have fundamentally examined the object. The four large wings of the once convertible retable were then restored in a publicly accessible workshop in the exhibition collection until 2018. Conservation problems were resolved, later coatings, layers of dirt and old retouches were removed and finally new retouches were applied. In collaboration with a team of engineers and designers, a vibration-isolated base was also designed for the work. As a result, the paintings, sculptures and small architecture are now presented with their original, astonishingly well-preserved colors and in a previously unimagined quality.

The contributions to the international colloquium as well as the detailed documentation of the research project have been published in the Low German Contributions to Art History series:

Antje-Fee Köllermann / Christine Unsinn (ed.): The Golden Table from Lüneburg. Files from the scientific colloquium, volume of results of the research project, in: Low German Contributions to Art History NF 5/6, 2020/2021

Eliza Reichel: Research and restoration of the Lüneburg Golden Table: the projects for the Golden Table, in: Journal for Art Technology and Conservation 33, 2020, pp. 205–216

Kerstin Binzer and Ewa Kruppa: The coatings on the paintings on the Golden Table and their removal, in: Journal for Art Technology and Conservation 33, 2020, pp. 217–225

Gabriele Schwartz: On the restoration of the sculptures of the Golden Table, in: Journal for Art Technology and Conservation 33, 2020, pp. 241–252

KENOM is about developing a “virtual coin cabinet” across countries and collection types. Coins, medals, paper money and found coins from antiquity, the Middle Ages and modern times are to be recorded and made accessible there. The aim of the project is to significantly increase the digital presence of scientifically prepared coin holdings and to enable the long-term development of numerous other holdings by providing appropriate tools. The large-scale, cross-border networking of collections in Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony and Thuringia as well as the integration of different collection types is intended to ensure a broad spectrum of reusability. The project aims to develop an infrastructure and define a consistent workflow that will enable even small institutions without trained numismatist to offer inventory information online via the newly developed platform with reasonable effort.

After the Second World War, around 60 paintings, mainly on loan from the state capital of Hanover, ended up in the state gallery's stacks. They were confiscated in the steel chamber of the former municipal wage office at Friedrichstrasse 4 and burned there in October 1943 due to extreme heat. The majority were deleted from the inventories after 1945 as war losses and were therefore not processed scientifically. As part of a research project funded by the Kunstfreunde Hannover, the provenance of some works was traced back to the original owners and secured by the State Gallery's restoration department; more comprehensive restoration concepts were implemented for selected pieces.

The copper engraving cabinet of the Hanover State Museum preserves European hand drawings and prints from the 15th to the early 20th century. In 1979, the works from the state and the graphic works from the city, which had previously been looked after by the August Kestner Museum, were placed in the care of our house. A third complex was added a little later with the older masters from the collection of the Hanover Artists' Association. Since then, all older graphic works from public ownership have been brought together in the Hanover State Museum. From 2012 to 2015, as part of a research and inventory project, the entire holdings of the copper engraving cabinet were recorded according to scientific standards and, for the first time, all drawings were documented photographically. The results are stored in the museum's in-house database and will be successively published via the Lower Saxony Cultural Heritage portal.

The Göttingen Barefoot Retable from 1424 was created for the high altar of the church of the Göttingen Franciscan Convent, which was demolished in the 19th century. Today the altarpiece is one of the main works in the collection of medieval art in the Hanover State Museum. A restoration and research project carried out from 1999 to 2005 restored the retable to its original shape and versatility and made it comprehensively scientifically accessible. The results of the research and restoration project were presented at an international colloquium and published in the Low German Contributions to Art History series:

Cornelia Aman/Babette Hartwieg (eds.): The Göttingen Barefoot Retable from 1424. Files from the scientific colloquium, volume of results of the restoration and research project, in: Low German Contributions to Art History NF 1, 2015