12.06.2015
Humboldt Forum
The topping-out ceremony for the Berlin Palace/Humboldt-Forum will take place on 12 June 2015. On the weekend of 13/14 June the construction-site open days will be held from 10:00 to 18:00.
The topping-out ceremony and construction-site open days of the new Berlin Palace are, in the words of Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, an ideal opportunity to raise awareness of the outstanding collections of art and cultural artefacts from Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas that are soon to find a new home in the future Humboldt-Forum: 'The Ethnologisches Museum and Museum für Asiatische Kunst, two world-class institutions, are poised to fill around 80 percent of the new Humboldt-Forum. They will form the heart of the new art venue. It's not just the building that's under construction, the museums are too. The collection objects will start being relocated as early as 2017! Over the coming open-site weekend anyone can drop by and take a look at the areas that will eventually house the revamped non-European collection displays, due to open their doors to the public in 2019.'
In the two large cubes reserved for the South Sea boats and houses of Oceania, large video projections will give visitors an impression of what the future interior design and major exhibits will look like. The Humboldt Lab Dahlem will be showcasing its projects in the space where the museums' future specialist research library will be. The displays will show the areas in which Lab projects have a bearing on the future conception and design of the museum exhibitions. Guides and museum organizers will be on hand to receive questions all weekend, at the construction site and in the Humboldt-Box.
The core idea for the future museum displays in the Humboldt-Forum is multiperspectivity. The exhibitions will try to break the Eurocentric mould and incorporate the knowledge and ideas of people in the source countries. Moreover, uncomfortable truths relating to the history of the collections will not be concealed, but integrated into the display and the discourse surrounding them. Given the special challenges surrounding the treatment of non-European collections, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation has recently issued a set of general principles regarding the handling of human remains.
Admission to the construction site open days is free. The topping-out ceremony is an invite-only event.