Berlin's "Museum of East Asian Art" and "Museum of Indian Art" to be united in future to form a "Museum of Asian Art"
Press release from 12/05/2006
The Board of Trustees of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation yesterday approved the merger of the Museums of East Asian Art and Indian Art. In future, they will be run as departments of the new "Museum of Asian Art".
Their unification will strengthen the importance of both collections through a more efficient structure and the pooling of resources. As the two smallest of the sixteen State Museums in Berlin, the Museum of East Asian Art and the Museum of Indian Art have increasingly reached the limits of their capacity. However, they are particularly challenged by the Foundation's plan to present non-European cultures at the Humboldt Forum on Schlossplatz in the future. In the centre of Berlin, together with the Ethnological Museum and in the context of Western cultures, which are located on the opposite Museum Island, they are to be given a new and stronger profile. The fact that the long-standing director of the Museum of Indian Art, Prof. Dr Marianne Yaldiz, retired at the end of last month also spoke in favour of the current timing of the merger. The current director of the Museum of East Asian Art, Prof Dr Willibald Veit, will take over the management of the new museum with immediate effect.
The Museum of East Asian Art was founded exactly 100 years ago as the East Asian Art Collection by Wilhelm von Bode and was one of the first museums of non-European art in Germany. With this foundation, Bode wanted to emphasise the equality of the art of East Asia and Europe. This is all the more remarkable given that the Museum für Völkerkunde (now the Ethnological Museum) had already had an East Asian department since 1873, which was not integrated. The Second World War was a particularly painful turning point for the museum: around five per cent of its holdings, the entire library and the photo archive were destroyed and around 90 per cent were taken by the trophy commissions of the Russian army to the former USSR, where they are presumably still to be found today. The reconstruction of the collection began in the West with 300 objects that were returned by the Western Allies. In the eastern part of Berlin, the surviving East Asian holdings of the Museum of Decorative Arts and Monbijou Palace formed the basis for a new museum. The fact that today, after reunification, the Museum of East Asian Art is once again one of the top addresses in its field is due not only to the commitment of those responsible, but above all to its numerous sponsors and outstanding patrons.
The Museum of Indian Art was founded in 1963 when the Indian Department of the Museum of Ethnology (now the Ethnological Museum) in West Berlin became independent. Its collection includes artefacts from India and the countries of the Indian cultural sphere such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia. Although this collection also suffered heavy losses during the war (especially the Central Asian Turfan collection), it is of great international importance with its approximately 20,000 objects. In some areas, it is considered to be one of the most sophisticated outside India.