12.12.2025
Ethnologisches Museum
Starting in May 2026, Henrietta Lidchi will become the new director of the Ethnologisches Museums (Ethnological Museum) and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst (Asian Art Museum), as well as director of the Humboldt Forum Collections. She succeeds Lars-Christian Koch, who has taken over at the Staatliche Ethnographische Sammlungen Sachsen. Her contract initially runs for five years.
In her new position, Henrietta Lidchi aims to further develop the Humboldt Forum as an open narrative space in which curatorial, societal and political issues are given equal weight and where new target groups are reached.
Born in London, she studied anthropology at Durham University. Later, she earned her PhD at the Open University in Milton Keynes (UK) with a thesis on “All in the Choosing Eye: Charity, Representation and Developing World”. Lidchi began her professional career in 1994 at the British Museum in London, where she held various positions until 2002, including curator of the Asian and North American collections, head of the museum management central planning office, and deputy head of the ethnography department. From 2005 to 2017, she worked at the National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh, including as chief curator of the Global Arts, Cultures and Design department, where she was also responsible for the “Revealing Cultures” project and for designing the World Cultures galleries. After working at the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen in the Netherlands, Lidchi joined the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe, United States, as executive director in 2022.