Museen Dahlem: Preparations for moving to the Humboldt Forum

03.12.2015
Humboldt Forum

Advance preparations for the transfer of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin's non-European collections to the new Humboldt Forum will begin in Dahlem in early January, when work starts on preparing some of the exhibits from the Museum für Asiatische Kunst and the Ethnologisches Museum for refurbishment and transport to Berlin's historic city-centre.

To ensure that operations at the Humboldt Forum site remain on schedule, initial dismantling and removal of museum exhibits will begin on Monday 11 January 2016. Some 17,500 objects in total will pass through the hands of curators, conservators and storeroom managers: every object will be inspected and cleaned, undergo conservation treatment if necessary, and packed securely for transport. Large objects such as the Silk Route caves and the South Sea boats will be moved into the shell of the Humboldt Forum as early as 2018: because of their size, it would be impossible to install them at a later stage.

Which exhibition areas in the Museum für Asiatische Kunst and the Ethnologisches Museum will be closed from 11 January 2016?

Because preparations for the transfer to the Humboldt Forum will require a lot of space and large areas will have to be cleared to allow items to be moved, the South-, Southeast- and Central Asian galleries of the Museum für Asiatische Kunst and the South-Sea and North-American galleries of the Ethnologisches Museum will no longer be open to the public from 11 January 2016.

The Ethnologisches Museum's Junior Museum will also be closed from 11 January 2016. The Museum Europäischer Kulturen is working on plans for using the building as a future new intergenerational museum space.

The Museen Dahlem's visitor entrances in Lansstraße and Arnimallee will remain open as usual until the end of 2016.  

What happens in 2017?

Preparations for the removal of further galleries will mean that both the Museum für Asiatische Kunst and the Ethnologisches Museum will be closed altogether from 2017. From then on, access to the Museum Europäischer Kulturen, which is remaining at the Dahlem site, will be via the entrance at Arnimallee 25. More information will be available towards the end of 2016.