Dr. Markus Speidel

Dr. Markus Speidel studied European Ethnology as well as the History of Science and Technology in Berlin. After completing a museum traineeship and earning his doctorate, he moved from the Deutsches Museum in Munich to the planning department of the Stuttgart City Museum.

There, he was responsible for developing the permanent exhibition and worked on the migration history of Stuttgart through various participatory collecting formats and exhibitions. In 2017, he joined the Landesmuseum Württemberg, where he led the Museum of Everyday Culture until 2024, focusing on diversifying both the collection and exhibition program.

Since October 2024, he has headed the Urban Culture Collection at the Munich City Museum. Markus’s approach is strongly audience- and community-oriented: he aims to develop the Munich City Museum into a “place of exchange and representation” for the city’s diverse society, positioning the museum as an active civic forum rather than only a display space.

Dr. Markus Speidel will be speaking at the Digital Exhibitions Summit 2026 :

Rethinking Experience, Space and Presence in Museums and Exhibition Design in the age of AI

It starts from a simple question: why do people come to museums, and what do they seek there that cannot be found elsewhere?
In an age of artificial intelligence – where imaginary worlds are generated in seconds, information is abundant, fiction and fact blur, and attention spans are under pressure – this question is key to understanding AI’s potential and risks in exhibition design for museums.

Approaching the topic from an exhibition design and spatial experience perspective, the talk draws on international case studies. It examines how AI reshapes the showing, mediating, narrating, and expanding the experience of content in museums.