Curation of exhibitions within the framework of the Humboldt-Forum project
October 15, 2019
Berlin, Humboldt University.
On 15 October 2019, a group of trainees arrived in Berlin. The main study program of the group was formed on the basis of the Dresden museums, but since the way there lay through Berlin and the time before the evening train to Dresden allowed doing something useful to achieve the goals of the internship, the author of the program, Dr. Christiane Janeke, organized a meeting-session at the University Humboldt (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin, in Latin Alma Mater Berolinensis), the oldest of the four universities in Berlin, on the topic "Curation of exhibitions within the framework of the Humboldt Forum project". The group went to the famous Unter den Linden - one of the main and most famous of the boulevards of Berlin, where the University is located, founded on August 16, 1809 on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humboldt - a German philologist, philosopher, linguist, statesman, diplomat, friend of Goethe and Schiller, the elder brother of the scientist Alexander von Humboldt. There the group was met by Dr. Gorkh Picken and colleagues. He spoke about the experience of creating an exhibition concept by university specialists within the framework of the Humboldt Forum museum project. At the time of the visit by a group from Belarus, a little more than a year remained before the real opening of the Humboldt Forum project. Thus, the trainees were able to feel the crucial stage before the opening of the project, its dynamics and implementation mechanisms. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the new museum, now referred to as the "German equivalent" of the British Museum, opened digitally on 16 December 2020 and became available to the general public on 20 July 2021.
Photo - Tatiana Bembel
The Museum Island model shows that the former royal palace (pictured right), which now houses the Humboldt Forum Museum, was one of the largest buildings in Berlin and shaped the cityscape with its 60 meters (200 feet) high dome. The palace was badly damaged by Allied bombing at the end of World War II and finally demolished by the GDR authorities in 1950.
In the 1970s, the Palace of the Republic, the central government building of East Germany, was built on the site of the palace. After the unification of West and East Germany and several years of disputes and discussions regarding the value of the historical heritage of both buildings, the Palace of the Republic was demolished in 2009, and the Berlin Palace began to be reconstructed, starting in 2013, to house the Humboldt Forum Museum.
Entering the spacious hall, the group began their acquaintance with the Humboldt University of Berlin, which is closely associated with the future museum both by the name of the outstanding scientist and by the participation of university specialists in its creation.
Once the university hall was the entrance hall of the palace of Prince Heinrich, built on the Unter den Linden boulevard in 1748-1766 and given in 1809 to the newly established Berlin University as the main building.
Climbing the stairs leading from the hall to the university classrooms, the group met Karl Marx's thesis as parting words: "Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretirt, es kommt darauf an sie zu verandern" (Philosophers only interpreted the world in different ways, we are talking about changing it).
Introducing the group of interns from Belarus to the staff of Humboldt University, Program Manager in Germany Dr. Christiane Janeke (pictured left) thanked for the opportunity to get acquainted with approaches to curating exhibitions in such a complex space as the Humboldt Forum, which comprehensively presents non-European collections of state museums in Berlin, temporary exhibitions and public events.
The classroom format gave interns from Belarus the opportunity to feel part of the huge community of the University, where students from more than 100 countries study.
Dr. Gorch Picken talks about the exhibition space of the new Humboldt Forum Museum.
The scale of the museum space and its relationship with the physical and psychological self-awareness of a person, the specific application of the laws of perception, the patterns of movement through the expositions, and much more, which were taken into account by the creators of the most ambitious museum project of the first two decades of the 21st century, was the subject of Dr. Gorch Picken's story.
Dr. Gorch Picken's story about the ultra-modern new Museum, which was conceived by the Humboldt Forum, correlated with the history of Berlin museums and their creators − first of all Wilhelm von Bode, Director General of the Royal Museums of Berlin, who in 1906 founded the Museum of East Asian Art, the oldest of its kind museum in Germany, the first to be located on the Museum the island.
The training on the material of the Humbold Forum project was useful for the interns not only due to the topic of exhibitions and their curatorial support, which is relevant for any museum worker. The broader historical and cultural context of the project was especially interesting and understandable to specialists from Belarus: the Second World War, the entry of the GDR into the socialist camp, state changes after the collapse of the USSR. The history of the Humboldt Forum gave the trainees an idea of how difficult it can be to create a museum concept when it is based on rethinking one's own history.
