Rainer Hatoum is Head of Ethnographic Collections and Provenance Researcher at the Städtische Museum Braunschweig. He developed the SMBS’s new permanent exhibition, which opened on October 8, 2023. Before, Hatoum has worked on several collaborative research projects, including with the Navajo Nation in the American Southwest and the Kwakwaka’wakw on the Northwest Coast. These projects have included various collections of song, object and archival manuscript material. In that context, Hatoum came to work intensively on Franz Boas and his shorthand field notes, which he deciphered for the first time.