The Humboldt Forum, Berlin

Above: Image Sinan performing in Live on the High Street. Photo Credit: Jalaikon

Humboldting the Humboldt is a long-term youth engagement program designed and directed by Darren and Alice Fleming for Berlin’s new museum, the Humboldt Forum. Humboldting the Humboldt will feature a thorough exploration of the Humboldt Forum by a group of teenagers who, over the course of their five-year journey, will examine and create theatrical presentations about:

1. The collections of the various museums housed at the Humboldt Forum, the cultures from which them come and the staff responsible for curation, restoration, preservation and determining provenance.

2. Alexander von Humboldt: his ideas, his circle of friends and associates, and those who he has worked with and influenced: Schiller, Goethe, Darwin, Thoreau, as well as their living descendants.

3. The various ethical challenges facing the museum: particularly meeting individuals from the prominent No Humboldt campaign who are strongly opposed to the construction of the museum, citing the many unresolved issues surrounding the collection and its colonial past.

4. The different organisations – and the individuals within them – that comprise the Humboldt: the Ethnological Museum, the Museum of Asian Art, The Berlin Exhibition and the Humboldt University’s Humboldt Laboratory, and their various departments, with an exploration of their responsibilities and duties as well their mandates.

5. The building: with the facade being a reproduction of the former Prussian castle, the building is an exciting and controversial project. The Young Explorers will explore the heating ducts, the electrical system, the alarm system, the kitchens, the restaurants, the elevators, including the various departments that are responsible for building-related issues like heat, pest control, and security.

6. The lives of the Humboldt directors, board and staff who run the Forum, particularly those who are at the level of departmental heads or leaders. For example, they will explore the life of Director, Neil MacGregor: his home, his favourite cafe, and the pool where he does his daily laps. They will meet his friends, family and pets, and they will collect samples from his life, both literal and metaphorical: small treasures from his home, small stories from his life and little bits of dust from under the desk in his study, which they will catalogue and classify, looking for connections between all the data, as Humboldt did as he travelled through the Americas.