Ethnological Museum

The museum’s tasks are to collect, preserve and to study cultural products of pre-industrial societies, primarily outside of Europe.

The museum currently embraces the following collections: Africa, American archaeology, American ethnology, Europe, the Islamic Orient, eastern and northern Asia, south and southeast Asia, the South Seas and Australia, as well as the ethnology of music. Other facilities include the Children's Museum and the Museum for the Blind.

The exhibition 'American Archaeology' presents the great diversity of pre-Hispanic cultures in Meso-, Central and South America from 2,000 BC to the first half of the 16th century. Exhibits include unique stelae from Guatemala with carved reliefs, painted stoneware vessels of the Maya, Aztec stone figures of gods and a selection of gold objects from Central America, Colombia and Peru.

The Pacific section presents the cultures of Oceania and Australia, most notably in the form of a large boat hall and a gallery of contemporary Oceanic art. Built-to-scale Oceanic boats and houses bring the South Sea atmosphere to Europe, creating a true island world experience.

Since summer 2005 the Africa section presents its new permanent exhibition of African art. These masterpieces could previously be seen at the exhibition Art in Africa in Brazil in 2003/2004. That exhibition attracted more than a million visitors, and won two awards. The concept, arrangement and presentation of the exhibition emphasises the significance of art as a central component of the different cultures of Africa.
It is arranged in four large groups, starting with an introduction to aspects of the African history of art, followed by figures, performance and design.
The new permanent exhibition makes clear that art from Africa has its own art-historical development, which the Western world failed to understand or recognise for a long time. African art was instead regarded as primitive - a stigma based on the ideology of the colonial age. Beyond that the exhibition points out that African art, in addition to its religious significance, had a multiplicity of functions in African societies.

The Junior Museum takes younger visitors on a virtual journey from Berlin to the Sahara and on to Australia.

Video: Felix von Boehm / cine-fils.com