Ambassadors' conference at the Ethnological Museum Berlin
Press release from 09/06/2007
Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, and Peter-Klaus Schuster, Director General of the National Museums in Berlin, welcomed Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the heads of German missions abroad to the Ethnological Museum in Berlin-Dahlem yesterday to mark the seventh Ambassadors' Conference. As part of the presentation "Berlin - World Centre for Art and Culture", they explained the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation's plans for the Humboldt Forum.
The concept of the Humboldt Forum envisages that the non-European collections of the State Museums will move from Dahlem to Schlossplatz in the centre of Berlin, in the direct vicinity of Museum Island, which is home to 6,000 years of European art and culture. Klaus-Dieter Lehmann emphasised: "No other metropolis in the world can offer such a central location for the cultures of the world, which at the same time has such historical legitimacy, linked with the name of the Humboldt brothers. We want to live up to this claim with a modern, sophisticated utilisation concept." The Ethnological Museum, an archive of world cultures and mediator of non-European cultures, will benefit from the change of location: With the move to the Humboldt Forum - and thus also close to the Federal Foreign Office - its role as a co-operation partner of scientific institutions, museums, representatives of states and cultures in Africa, Asia, the South Seas and America will become even clearer than before. Against this background, the visit of the German ambassadors to the Ethnological Museum is of particular significance.