BERLIN.- The final phase of the opening of Berlin’s Humboldt Forum will take place on Saturday 17 September 2022, making it possible for the first time to experience in full the great collections of the Ethnologisches Museum (Ethnological Museum) and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst (Asian Art Museum) of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (National Museums in Berlin).

The objects on display offer a survey of the world’s cultures and have been chosen to place a new emphasis on the importance of art from Africa, Oceania, Asia, and the Americas. Located on the second and third floors of the Humboldt Forum, approximately 20,000 objects are displayed in state-of-the-art exhibition spaces across 16,000 square metres.

Among the new collection highlights at the Humboldt Forum are:

· An unprecedented reconstruction of the Cave of the Ring-Bearing Doves, a sixth-century Buddhist cave temple from Kizil, located near Kucha on the Northern Silk Road in China.

· Traditional buildings and houses from different regions of Oceania, showcasing various construction techniques and uses, including a meeting house from Palau from 1907 and a replica of an Abelam cult house from Papua New Guinea.

· A newly restored historic manuscript dating from the sixteenth century. Mixtec, Nahuatl, and Chocho artists illustrated the 16 square meters’ large cloth with inscriptions in the Coixtlahuaca Valley, in what is now the Mexican state of Oaxaca, recording social events spanning a period of more than 500 years.

· The fascinating art of the Khmer, including full-sized, 23-metre-long casts of the reliefs from the monumental Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia.

· An exhibition of textiles and ceramics from Central Asia, exploring the relationship between arts and crafts, identity, materiality, and a state’s political and structural organisation.




· An Iranian Dervish patchwork robe sewn from hundreds of differently sized, coloured scraps of cotton, felt, and fur.

· Closely co-ordinated with Nigerian partners, two exhibition spaces will be dedicated to art from the Kingdom of Benin and its history. Insights will be offered into the transfer of ownership of the world-famous Benin objects from the Berlin collection and a discussion area offers space for educational activities and workshops.

Five collaborative exhibition projects with communities from Tanzania, USA, Canada, South America and India will also be unveiled.

The completed Humboldt Forum will not only include the full opening of the Ethnological Museum and the Asian Art Museum with around 20,000 exhibits in 16,000 square metres of space. Representing a pioneering partnership between four experienced partners from the cultural and academic field, the Humboldt Forum offers a huge range of experiences under one roof including exhibitions, most of them free, with great historic museum collections, insights into the latest scientific and environmental issues of the day, an immersive exhibition on the city of Berlin as part of a connected world and a wide range of performances, events, educational and digital offerings which demonstrate the full vision of the Humboldt Forum as a place for international cultural dialogue across nations and continents.

Housed in the partially reconstructed Berlin Palace located in the heart of Berlin’s Museums district, the Humboldt Forum with its shops, cafés, restaurants, and relaxing outdoor space to enjoy and meeting friends is a compelling new addition to the cultural offer for local residents and visitors to Berlin.

Since its initial opening in July 2021, the Humboldt Forum has already welcomed more than 1.5 million visitors to experience the spectacular building, and a wide range of exhibitions, with many cultural education offers for families, children and young people.

The Humboldt Forum is a collaboration between the Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss; the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz for collections from the Ethnologisches Museum and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin for the Humboldt Lab; and the Stadtmuseum Berlin for the BERLIN GLOBAL exhibition.

Humboldt Forum General Director, Hartmut Dorgerloh, said: “We look forward to celebrating the moment when the whole of the Humboldt Forum is fully open for the people of Berlin, our international partners and the many visitors to the city. The Humboldt Forum will finally be fully open! It has been a joy to witness how, over the past year, the diverse communities of Berlin and visitors to the city have taken up the venue with its exhibitions and its vibrant cultural and scientific programme as an urban space, discussing it and also shaping it as a place of democratic, open-minded debate. The new spaces to be opened with the many international cooperation projects are a further milestone in this process and another starting point for a wide range of programme work in the coming years.”

Herman Parzinger, President of the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation), said: “Finally, we can fully open the Humboldt Forum, this place of world cultures, together with our partners from all over the world. It is completed, and yet it is still at the beginning. This house was created through dialogue and exchange, and on this basis it will continue to evolve and develop. Our commitment to openness and transparency, the recognition of colonial injustice with resulting restitutions, and various new ways of cooperation and co-production will continue to define our work in the future. This also involves overcoming still dominant Western perspectives and gaining a better understanding of how people from different parts of the world live today and what is important to them. The Humboldt Forum can only unfold this power if it sets topics together with our partners from all over the world and also creates a forum for their diverse questions of today. I hope that all visitors will discover new perspectives on this one world as they stroll between the Museum Island and the Humboldt Forum.”