A new World Culture Museum is to be built in Berlin, and judging by the concepts that those responsible presented at a press conference on Monday, it could become a great new cultural institution. It is still too early to say how much can be achieved in the end. But maybe one day people from all over the world will actually get into conversation here, discover their many similarities and learn from each other.
The makers have not yet announced any specific dates for completion. You spoke of “one day” or “sometime”, of “in a few years” or even “in 191 years”. That is how long, said provenance researcher Christine Howald, it will take until the origin of all 20,000 objects that are to be shown there is clarified – provided the four researchers are not on vacation.
The trouble is, and now: All jokes aside, the museum will open this Wednesday. Although the project, which has been planned for 20 years, has already worn out a generation of cultural politicians, ethnologists and curators, although it has swallowed 690 million euros, the speakers at the press conference introduced every second of their sentences with “we want”, “we will” or “we will.” have to”. They probably hoped that if they presented the project as “work in progress”, as “work that will never be completed”, they would be able to translate the incompletion into a modern “procedural” quality. In fact, they asked for mitigating circumstances.
They created some confusion with their opening strategy. A “virtual opening” was celebrated last December, and special exhibitions have been on view since July. And the current opening of the western part of the second and third floors is not the last. The east wing will follow in a year. However, the collections from the Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian Art can now be seen for the first time, a large part of the objects about which a debate has been held over the past four years that has deeply shaken the Humboldt Forum and on which it is concerned has not yet found an answer. General director Hartmut Dorgerloh admitted: “This exhibition is crucial for the success of the overall project.”
At the opening, the Federal President wants to deal with Germany’s coming to terms with colonialism
So far, the project has only become productive through the criticism and debates that sparked it. This is likely to continue on Wednesday, when Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier wants to use the opening as an opportunity to deal more thoroughly and more clearly than any other German politician to date with Germany’s coming to terms with colonialism.
The word “partial opening” suggests small things. There are 8,500 square meters to walk on the two floors. 12,000 objects from Africa, Asia and Oceania are on display. The room with the controversial Benin bronzes is not included yet.
Processional bull Nandi, mount of god Shiva (19th / 20th century) in the module “Art of Hinduism in South Asia” of the Museum of Asian Art in the Humboldt Forum.
(Photo: A. Schippel / Stift. Humboldt Forum)
The first impression in the Africa exhibition is paradoxical: the huge halls, with their dead zones and their gloomy children’s blankets, seem like something crucial is still missing. Nevertheless, the objects seem to be gasping for air. Not only in the show magazines, where hundreds of them are stacked in floor-to-ceiling showcases, an idea that was adopted from the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, which opened in 2006. But also almost everywhere else. But while the Paris Museum did everything beyond these stylized storage cupboards to illuminate the beauty and aura of the pieces – for which it was often criticized – the other extreme prevails in the Humboldt Forum. Many objects lie spread out in the pale light, as if the curators didn’t quite know what to do with them. The exhibition hall charm of the halls and the hospital floor don’t make things any better. An FDP party congress could take place here as early as next week.
This is different on the third floor with the Asia exhibition, especially in the grandiose dome with the “Cave of the 16 Sword Bearers” and other items collected during the Turfan expedition, which simulates a journey along the northern Silk Road. Or in the hall for which the Chinese architect Wang Shu designed a roof structure inspired by pagodas.
Four positions for provenance research? The Musée du Quai Branly had 70
On the second floor, however, the curators’ uncertainty cannot be overlooked. On the one hand, it stems from the restitution debate that overtook the project at the finish line. Of course, four years are not enough to research the origins of thousands of objects, to work through the entanglement of museums in the colonial system and to get in touch with those who actually own the things. What the museums could do immediately, however, would be to initiate the overdue cultural change and give up their institutional arrogance. But there was little to be seen on Monday.
Dorgerloh and Hermann Parzinger, the President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, referred to the hastily implemented programs: here something “outreach”, there a “residency” or a contemporary artistic intervention. Everything is right and good, but it is not yet a “dialogue”. Four positions for provenance research? The Musée du Quai Branly had 70. Even the effort to give a few references to the origin of individual objects afterwards often remains unsatisfactory. On tiny tablets there are a few lines with a dead QR code. Most of the video desks that might have provided more information were out of order, and those that worked only displayed the patchy information from the museum database.
Almost defiantly, the museums are also continuing their old policy of obfuscation. In a wall text it is said, for example, that the objects came into German hands “through purchase, exchange, donation and violence” – everything is done to avoid the word “robbery”. The Cameroon Hall is particularly scandalous, where Hans Glauning, an officer in the Schutztruppe, is celebrated as an “enthusiastic amateur ethnologist”.
Around 10,000 objects are shown on more than 8,500 square meters of exhibition space. Here a throne with a footstool, Cameroon around 1880.
(Photo: Rolf Zoellner / imago images / epd)
This attitude is most evident in the famous Luf boat. A few months ago, the historian Götz Aly described in a book how this 15-meter-long boat was stolen from the South Sea island of Luf, most of the inhabitants of which died as a result of attacks by the Germans and imported diseases. In the provenance brochure “macht | | ties” the curators insist once again that the research on “acquisition” is “not yet completed”. The wall text reads stubbornly: “Collected in 1903 by Max Thiel”, as if he had found the boat on the beach like a shell.
Hartmut Dorgerloh has repeatedly said in recent years that the Humboldt Forum cannot be a museum of colonialism, cannot only tell of robbery and violence. He probably hoped that if you were only more honest with the origin of the objects, you could save the old type of ethnological museum into the present. It was an illusion. There is much more to clarify than just provenances: What does a museum like this have to tell about the world? Who’s speaking? What does it show and from what position? The Humboldt Forum was unable to answer any of these questions for itself. That is why it does not find any attitude or language of its own. Visiting the Humboldt Forum is like watching an old documentary – without sound.