Dahlem

In May of 2018, the famous South Sea boats were transported from the Ethnologisches Museum to the Humboldt Forum – a clear turning point for the once-central museum precinct in West Berlin. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dahlem’s Sculpture Collection, its Kupferstichkabinett and Gemäldegalerie, as well as the Museums of Islamic, Indian and East Asian Art received acclaim for their exhibitions. They attracted not just the local population, but also large numbers of tourists to the south-west of Berlin. After the reunification of Germany, the activities of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin came to be focussed increasingly in the central district of Mitte. The number of visitors making their way to Dahlem declined, and with the construction of the Humboldt Forum, the idea emerged of presenting the Ethnological Collections and the Collections of Asian Art there.

However, Dahlem has by no means been “abandoned”. The Museum Europäischer Kulturen holds its exhibitions here, and work on the collections of the Ethnologisches Museum and the Museum für Asiatische Kust continues to take place in Dahlem. The Institut für Museumsforschung has also been based in Dahlem since 1979. And in the future, “Forschungscampus Dahlem” (FC Dahlem) will test out new forms of collaborating with society and institutional partners.