The Ethnological Museum in Berlin (German: Ethnologisches Museum; until 1999 Museum für Völkerkunde) is one of the largest ethnological museums in the world. It houses half a million pre-industrial objects, acquired primarily from the German voyages of exploration and colonialization of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is famous for its reconstructed houses from around the world, its boats, and its many Benin bronzes.
The museum is located in the Dahlem neighborhood of the borough of Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Berlin. It shares a building with the Museum für Asiatische Kunst, and the Museum Europäischer Kulturen. It is one of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (National Museums in Berlin).
The museum includes one of the first ethnomusicology collections of sound recordings (the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv), a film archive, a children's museum, and a museum for the blind.
Famous quotes containing the words museum and/or berlin:
“The Museum is not meant either for the wanderer to see by accident or for the pilgrim to see with awe. It is meant for the mere slave of a routine of self-education to stuff himself with every sort of incongruous intellectual food in one indigestible meal.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“You had your breakfast in bed before,
But you won’t have it there anymore.”
—Irving Berlin (1888–1989)