The Oceania boat hall
A huge ceremonial vessel and Palauan houses.
GodeNehler โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Julius1990 โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท Rolf Dietrich Brecher from Germany โ CC BY-SA 2.0 ยท Rolf Dietrich Brecher from Germany โ CC BY-SA 2.0
They are hundreds of bronze and ivory works looted from the palace of the Kingdom of Benin, in today's Nigeria, during a British expedition in 1897 and sold across Europe, with German museums buying a large share. After long pressure, Germany transferred ownership of over a thousand pieces to Nigeria in 2022, with some staying on display in Berlin under a loan agreement โ a precedent that shifted the whole European debate about colonial holdings.
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Berlin's Ethnological Museum holds one of the world's largest collections of non-European cultures โ some five hundred thousand objects from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. More important than the figure, though, is where it now stands: in 2021 it moved from the distant suburb of Dahlem into the Humboldt Forum in the centre of the city, inside the reconstructed Berlin Palace on Museum Island. That move made it the focus of the sharpest cultural argument in Germany. The building is itself a reconstruction of a royal palace demolished in the East German era, and placing collections largely gathered in a colonial context inside an imperial palace drew wide objection. The museum has not ignored this but made it part of the display, with panels that discuss the objects' provenance openly. Its best-known section is the Oceania boat hall, holding a huge ceremonial vessel from the Louisiade archipelago and timber houses from Palau. The Benin Bronzes, meanwhile, were transferred in ownership to Nigeria by Germany in 2022, with some remaining on display on loan โ the clearest case of European museums' changing position on what they hold.
A huge ceremonial vessel and Palauan houses.
Panels openly discussing how objects were acquired.
Schlossplatz, Humboldt Forum, 10178 Berlin