New art museum exploring migration opens in Rotterdam New art museum exploring migration opens in Rotterdam

A new art museum exploring the theme of migration is now open in Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

Located within a restored warehouse that once served as a storage hub for the Holland-America cargo and passenger line, Fenix is the centrepiece of regeneration plans for the harbour-side Katendrecht district. This area was once Rotterdam’s red light district, and the oldest Chinatown of continental Europe.

Designed by MAD Architects, the museum has a panoramic viewing deck atop a 30-metre-high ‘tornado’ structure, which consists of two staircases spiralling up through the atrium’s glass roof. From there, you’ll be able to enjoy vistas across the River Maas and of Hotel New York, the former headquarters of the Holland-America Line.

Inside, the inaugural exhibition All Directions: Art That Moves You features 150 artworks and objects, with pieces from artists like Grayson Perry, Do Ho Suh, Max Beckmann and Shilpa Gupta alongside personal mementos from Rotterdam residents that tell their own stories of migration.

The museum is also showing photography exhibition The Family of Migrants, inspired by Edward Steichen’s 1955 MoMA exhibition Family of Man. A mix of documentary images, portraits and journalist photography taken by 136 photographers from 55 countries are on display.

Anne Kremers, director of Fenix, said, “The story of Fenix is inextricably linked to Rotterdam and its many communities; but that story is also the world’s. It is a story of arrivals and departures, and of constant change to face the future. From the crossing of the Berlin Wall, to the departure for the USA on the great steam ships, to the arrival of new communities from every part of the world to build, to create, to learn, Fenix is a mirror to the experience and the stories of people from everywhere told through the lens of art.

“It is with this in mind that we are working not just with local and international artists to explore the topic of migration, but also inviting communities across Rotterdam to co-create programming within our public spaces.”

More information: fenix.nl

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