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A museum on the move: new institution captures human stories of migration

Gavin Haines

created: June 4, 2025, 7 a.m. | updated: June 20, 2025, 4:53 a.m.

Those behind Fenix Rotterdam hope to offer a nuanced picture of the ‘timeless and universal’ phenomenonAn art museum devoted to migration has opened in Rotterdam, near the dock where Albert Einstein fled Europe to start a new life in the US. The Fenix museum is the centrepiece of a regeneration project in the harbour-side neighbourhood Katendrecht, formerly home to Rotterdam’s red-light district and Europe’s largest Chinatown. The inaugural collection exhibition All Directions: Art That Moves You showcases 150 artworks and objects ranging from the historical to the contemporary, drawn from the Fenix collection and acquired over the past five years. As well as exhibitions, the museum has a vast indoor city square or ‘plein’ on the ground floor. It’s not for us to tell people how they should feel about migration.

3 weeks, 6 days ago: Positive News