Humboldt Forum, opening ceremony with protests. It's looted art

After more than a decade for its realization and two years of postponement due to construction delays and pandemic from Covid-19, theHumboldt Forum, Berlin’s large new ethnological museum housed in the Berliner Schloss that brings together the collections of two museums-the Berlin Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian Art-has officially opened to the public(in digital form from December 2020).

Thus, objects from all over the world can be seen inside, but its vast collection has already caused much discussion since the project was first conceived, since most of the objects on display here date back tocolonial times.The result has been strong debates on the issue of cultural decolonization, so much so that Germany decided to return the bronzes from Benin, which belong to the Ethnological Museum’s collection, to Nigeria.

To mark the opening of the new museum, six exhibitions were opened on the ground and second floors of the building, including one that investigates the history of the global ivory trade, a topic to which colonial exploitation is linked; another focuses on climate change and the biodiversity crisis in society and yet another explores themes that link Berlin to the rest of the world, such as revolution, war, entertainment, and fashion, as well as another exhibit on the brothers Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt (the former was one of the best-known geographers and explorers of the nineteenth century, the latter a philosopher, linguist, and diplomat) for whom the museum is named. The completion of the building’s second and third floors will have to wait until the end of September: these will house Berlin’s ethnological and Asian art collections, African, Afro-Brazilian and Islamic collections.

Prior to the opening ceremony demonstrators protested against the new museum: in fact, the Decolonize Berlin association had invited large numbers to join on Tuesday, July 20, at 1 p.m. in the protest against the opening of the museum building. The object of the protests is the display of looted colonial-owned objects: the association argues for the return of all objects that came to Berlin in a colonial context. Underlying the Defund the Humboldt Forum! is in fact the idea that we should protest against the opening of a museum consisting mostly of looted art, which should then be returned to its rightful owners.

Humboldt Forum, opening ceremony with protests. It's looted art

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