Fairness in art and culture
Fair cooperation in all areas of life is essential for mutual success and is strengthened by a cooperative atmosphere of appreciation and mutual respect. The Natural History Museum Vienna therefore welcomes the Fairness Codex published in May 2022 by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport (BMKÖS).
The values formulated in the Fairness Codex coincide with the goals of the Natural History Museum Vienna: in our daily work, we are committed to respect and appreciation towards each other and towards our guests. To ensure the quality of the museum visit for our visitors, the Natural History Museum Vienna has implemented the EU quality standard ECHOCAST for a qualified and motivated visitor service.
Since 2020, in line with our vision and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, we have been actively working on changing our operational processes and have committed ourselves to improved climate protection and sustainability. An important intermediate step on this path to an environmentally friendly future is the award of the Austrian Ecolabel (Österreichisches Umweltzeichen), which was achieved in July 2021.
The Natural History Museum is committed to diversity and opposes any discrimination against people based on perceptible or imperceptible characteristics. Our Equity Statement, published for the first time in January 2021, and the annual raising of the rainbow flag are publicly visible expressions of our commitment against discrimination.
Through the active participation of all our employees in change processes and the further development of our operations, we strengthen transparency in decision-making. In the area of research, we are improving transparency through free access to research data (OpenData) and by increased efforts to make our scientists’ publications accessible through Open Access. The Open Science Strategy of the Natural History Museum, published in April 2022, is a public commitment to more transparency. In research projects such as KolText, we are actively researching the provenance of our collection holdings to ensure the transparency of acquisition contexts.