Show HN: Ex Situ – Open-source spatial index of displaced cultural artifacts • Hacker News Board

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

#1

Post by hbyel » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 4:48 AM UTC

Hi, I designed and developed a spatial index that maps museum artefacts as connecting arcs/hyperlinks from their origin site to institutional location/sources. The Index specifically looks at western/euro-american institutions and maps their collection categorised by them under Islamic art, Asian/African art, ethnological collections, Middle East, South America etc.

Started as my MA thesis in 2022, kept building since, mostly solo with a little funding. Fully open source, self-hosted, AGPL-3.0, Next.js + Deck.gl on the frontend, Strapi backend, Python ETL pulling from museum open-access APIs. Currently indexing over 100k artifacts from all over the world, across 8 collections (Met, V&A, SMB Berlin). Recently added an md export so researchers can download provenance data for a filtered set of artifacts.

The infrastructure is conceptualized as an indexer, not a hoster. Even images are kept as URLs pointing to the source institutions. It's connective tissue between archives that were never designed to speak to each other, with an origin-first search UI concept. The data model is on purpose flat, to avoid encoding problematic taxonomies, and routes researchers directly to the source giving responsibility to the source institutions rather than duplicating institutional data. It indexes the relationship between origin sites and destination collections.

Coming from a design background, taking this project from prototype to production app has been incredibly rewarding, but honestly it’s getting a little bit overwhelming to scale alone. I would love community’s feedback on performance scaling, any code contributions, data pipelines for missing museum apis or general feedback.

Repo: https://github.com/hburakyel/ex-situ

Live: https://exsitu.app

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

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

#2

Post by theroadnotbacon » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 6:12 AM UTC

Huh! Was hoping to get, for example, a sense of scale of cultural artifacts stolen from Korea by the Japanese. But I don't see any provenance descriptions for Japanese institutions. Either way, this is super cool. Thank you for sharing this.

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

#3

Post by iamacyborg » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 6:23 AM UTC

One day I really should dig up my great great great great grandfather’s[^1] diaries to see first hand how he justified bringing back so much stuff to the UK.

[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Richard_Hamilton

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

#4

Post by txzl » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 6:55 AM UTC

I think much more lines should go to Moscow. At least from such places as Crimea. But I see you covered only western/euro-american institutions.

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

#5

Post by warpspeedchic » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 7:00 AM UTC

holy gosh, this is brilliant. i've been toggling around this site for a good 40 minutes now. learning so much!!! arrrgggh, i love the internet.

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

#6

Post by fkdk » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 7:02 AM UTC

iamacyborg wrote: post #3

One day I really should dig up my great great great great grandfather’s[^1] diaries to see first hand how he justified bringing back so much stuff to the UK. [^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Richard_Hamilton

“To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man’s character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.”

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

#7

Post by robintiman11 » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 7:06 AM UTC

Very cool

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

#8

Post by hbyel » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 7:34 AM UTC

txzl wrote: post #4

I think much more lines should go to Moscow. At least from such places as Crimea. But I see you covered only western/euro-american institutions.

Correct, scoped to western/euro-american museums as noted in the post, it’s just where I started. Open to expanding if there’s good open data to pull from.

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

#9

Post by hbyel » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 7:37 AM UTC

theroadnotbacon wrote: post #2

Huh! Was hoping to get, for example, a sense of scale of cultural artifacts stolen from Korea by the Japanese. But I don't see any provenance descriptions for Japanese institutions. Either way, this is super cool. Thank you for sharing this.

Fair catch, it only pulls from institutions with open access APIs (Met, V&A, SMB Berlin, AIC). Not aware of an equivalent from Japanese museums, if you know one, happy to add it.

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

#10

Post by potamic » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 7:41 AM UTC

This is fantastic visualization!

I couldn't figure out from the UI but is there a way to filter the map? Say, I only want to see things going out of Cusco or I only want to see where things end up in Berlin?

It would also be nice to have some directionality to the lines to indicate source and destination, perhaps a colour or lightness gradient or something.