Migration – “Where are you going?”

In 1750 the Württemberg schoolmaster Gottlieb Mittelberger went on a sailing ship in Rotterdam. The goal of the emigrant: America. 32 children died during the Atlantic crossing. The corpses were thrown into the sea. Mittelberger wrote about the conditions on board: »During the seafaring, however, in which ships arose a miserable misery, steam, steam, gray, vomiting, some lake diseases, fever, fever, ruhr, headache, heat, constipation of the berthstore, tastiest, curb, cancer, mouth and the like, which is all of the old and very sharp dishes and meat And desert water from which very many spoil and die. This whimmer then rises to the highest when you have to stand storm for two to three day and night, that you think you are sinking together with the ship, and the people that are so closely packed together are thrown on top of each other, sick and healthy ones; Some sigh and Schreyet: Oh! If I were back home and would be in my pigsty. “

From 1820, six million people emigrated from Ireland who had similar experiences to Mittelberger. The Irish wave of emigration culminated as a result of the great famine triggered by the potato rot (1845–1852). Many of those escaping to hunger died on the “coffin ships”.

From 1873 the Holland-America line existed, on the ships of which millions of people from Rotterdam emigrated to the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand well into the 20th century. Emigration also took place towards Rotterdam, where people from 120 nations live together today, migration is everyday life. For example, Chinese seafarers remained in the port city, worked in shipbuilding, opened restaurants and shops, and the peninsula in the Katendrecht in the Rotterdam Feijenoord became the first Chinatown on the European mainland.

The Migration Museum Fenix ​​was opened on this peninsula in May 2025. Fenix ​​is ​​housed in a historic warehouse of the Holland America line from 1923. The harbor store, which was located on the Kai of the Nieuwe Maas and San Francisco Warehouse, was designed by the architect Cornelis from Goore and was the world’s largest transsh then with a length of 360 meters and an area of ​​43 200 square meters. Nazi troops destroyed parts of the quay during the Second World War, and the port storage was badly damaged. In 1948 a fire caused further damage. But how the mythical Phoenix rose from the ashes, was rebuilt in two and called Fenixloods I and Fenixloods II. Fenixloods I has now become a modern loft building with gastromy on the ground floor.

Fenixloods II was acquired in 2018 by the DROOM EN DAAD (dream and deed) Foundation and restored by the Bureau Polderman in cooperation with the Chinese architecture firm MAD. Its founder Ma Yansong designed a staircase in the form of a double helix made of polished stainless steel for the middle of the museum building. This bears the name “Tornado” and allows different ways to the roof, including unexpected change of direction and changing perspectives – a reference to the route to cope with the migrants. From the roof there is a look at the skyscrapers of the Wilhelminakade and the Hotel New York built in 1901 on the “Kai of tears”, from which people have voluntarily or forced to travel from Europe to the “New World” for centuries.

There can hardly be a better place for a migration museum. Dutch politicians shone through absence when the museum was presented to the international press in May. It cannot be assumed that the German Interior Minister Dobrindt, who eagerly works as a Minister of Department, has plans to build a migration museum and also in a predestined place.

For dealing with migration as a universal human topic, 8,400 square meters of exhibition space in the opening exhibition “All Directions” is used instead of data, passenger lists and shaving images on the visual art, which is why Fenix ​​is ​​often classified as a “art museum” in the media.

In the extensive foyer, however, it is initially important to walk through a labyrinth of 2,000 luggage, from the old overseas case with bow tapes and grinding caps made of sheet steel to the modern trolley made of thermoplastic composite material. One of the luggage left to the museum once belonged to a Willemine. Her grandson Ernst reports that his grandma had traveled to China with her husband in 1898. When marriage failed, Willemine traveled with her four children with the Trans -Siberian railway to Irkutsk and on to Moscow. Finally, however, she returned to the Hague and was involved in the Suffragetten movement until she won the right to vote in 1919.

The photo exhibition »The Family of Migrants« is also shown on the ground floor. With almost 200 photos, taken between 1905 (New York) and 2025 (Syria), the exhibition is created as a triptych: departure, trip, arrival. Almost all photos were printed new and large -format and were exhibited quite crowded. A strategy of overwhelming is visiting here. Details on the photographers and their intentions can only be found in a short form in a short form.

In the (barely divided) first floor, 150 works of art and objects are shown, with many of them come from artists who have an emigration history. It requires a catalog to appreciate them all. The walk-in “bus” installation of the American multimedia artist Red Groom is unmistakable. A multicultural spectrum of users of local public transport in New York is sitting in Grooms’ bus made of coarse fabric. The British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibaric CBE, a “postcolonial hybrid” according to his own statement, has a figure dragged a network with all kinds of household items. His “Refugee Astronaut IX” is on the way to a new home on a safe planet. A little hidden depends on a slightly deformed aluminum by Hannah Arendt’s text »We Refugees« from 1943 – a work by the artist Olaf Metzel, born in Berlin.

The Cuban artist Mario Sergio Alvarez expanded old kitchens on a job in Rotterdam, but kept the best pieces of wood and painted with representations of plants from a Dutch book about exotic plants. He raises the question of whether he will be able to gain a foothold in the Netherlands or that an exotic will always remain there. The Israeli artist Efrat Zehavi, who lives in Rotterdam, has always asked pedestrians there only one question: “Where are you going?” Often the respondents explained where they come from. In the developing conversations, Zehavi portrayed a total of 116 people in tone.

The Indian artist Shilpa Gupta has been dealing with the effects of limits and boundaries through state apparatus for over two decades. In border areas in particular, societies are defined by far more than nationality. In the Fenix, Gupta had a steel gate installed that thunderes against the museum wall every few minutes and lets the plaster burst. Guppa points out that every so solid movement obstacle is not permanent.

Migrationsmuseum Fenix, Paul Nijghkade 5, NL-3072 AT Rotterdam, https://www.fenix.nl/en/