Apart from collection, conservation, and communication, one of the main tasks of a museum is investigation and research. The research work at the Jewish Museum Vienna has four aspects.
The investigation and research into the collection is the main focus of the Museum’s work. The Jewish Museum object database contains round 20,000 datasets.
The datasets covering the following:
Provenance research is an important part of the Museum’s research work and involves investigation of the provenance of the objects in its collection and identification of possible legal successors of the former owners.
Ideally exhibition projects provide an opportunity not only for communication but also for basic research. Exhibitions focusing on cultural or social history in particular have repeatedly given rise to constructive research projects, whose findings are permanently available in the exhibition catalogs even after the exhibition has closed.