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Farewell and departure at the Dahlem museum site: the Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian Art are closing their doors to move to the Humboldt Forum. The Museum of European Cultures, which will remain in south-west Berlin, is reorganising itself.

Throughout his life, Alexander von Humboldt wanted to "find out what the world is all about". This is how Andrea Wulf puts it in her biography of the natural scientist, polymath and world traveller. The Berlin Humboldt Forum has dedicated itself to this goal - and it wants to follow the paths that its namesake once travelled, the paths of cultural exchange and interdisciplinarity. Humboldt, to quote Andrea Wulf once again, was firmly convinced: "Knowledge must be shared and exchanged and be available to all people."

With this in mind, the collections of the National Museums in Berlin are already on their way before the Humboldt Forum opens in 2019. The reconstructed City Palace in the direct neighbourhood of Museum Island is growing and thriving, and the collections of the Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian Art are preparing for the move. However, a series of special exhibitions will make 2017 much more than just a year of transition. "For us," says Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, the future anchor tenant of the Stadtschloss, "the Humboldt Forum begins in 2017". And on the Museum Island.

This dossier brings together a number of articles from the magazine "Sammlungswelten" , which was published in December 2016. The magazine was supported by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Board of Trustees and realised with the publishing house Res Publica.