In 2018 the museum started a renewal process initiated by the new director Barbara Plankensteiner. Parallel to the name change the exhibition „Erste Dinge. Rückblick für Ausblick“ (First Things - Looking Back for Looking Ahead) was designed to reflect on the museum's own collection in a different way. It dedicated itself to the founding phase of the ethnological museum with exhibits from the initial holdings in order to look back on its own history. This installation lead to a comprehensive reorganization of the permanent exhibition and to more intensive research into the collection and its colonial past.The objects on display, a selection of the things that were first recorded in an inventory of the ethnographic collection in 1867, included a wide rage of objects. To tie them together, we decided to immerse them in a „sea“ of bright blue color, also reflecting an the path they had taken, as most objects arrived with trade goods and on passenger ships.