Show HN: Ex Situ – Open-source spatial index of displaced cultural artifacts

Category: other

Tags: cultural-heritage, spatial-index, provenance, open-data, nextjs, deck.gl, strapi

Score: 6.7/10 (Innovation: 7, Technical: 6, Documentation: 5, Utility: 7)

Ex Situ is an open-source spatial index that maps displaced cultural artifacts from their origin sites to Western museums, using connecting arcs and hyperlinks. It aggregates over 100k artifacts from major institutions via open-access APIs, offering an origin-first search UI and provenance data export for researchers. The project is notable for its ethical data model, which avoids problematic taxonomies and redirects users to source institutions.

Target audience: researchers, historians, museum professionals, data journalists, cultural heritage advocates

Repository: https://exsitu.app/map

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