In the Humboldt Forum in the heart of Berlin - and thus in a certain sense of the country - two contrasting contemporary architectures stand opposite each other, demonstrating the new geopolitical weights in East Asia. While the presentation of Chinese culture focuses on imperial splendor, the presentation of Japanese art refers to reduced Zen aesthetics and post-war history. Of course, the countries do not stage themselves, but the children of the country do. With thirteen thousand exhibits, the Museum of Asian Art in the west wing of the baroque palace forms the largest and most important collection of Northeast Asian art in Germany, but its interior design appears despondent, with the exception of two interventions by architects from Japan and China.
While the modern Japanese teahouse by the architect Jun Ura from Kanazawa was given an octagonal shape that contradicts the orthogonal geometry of the eight tatami rice-straw mats in the room, the famous Chinese architect Wang Shu gave the Humboldt Forum's austere interiors royal splendor.
Wang is the first and only architect from China to receive the Pritzker Prize.
Two cultures collide
The two cultures presented side by side across from the Museum Island are as different as these two architectural styles. The new world order in Northeast Asia is also expressed unexpectedly in the Berlin exhibition design: the Middle Kingdom is presented as an aspiring world power in which communism took the place of the emperor, while the Land of the Rising Sun is shown as an empire that in the post-war period experienced its most recent high point. The State Museums in Berlin have given Chinese culture an eight-meter-high, centrally accessible hall. Through the Japanese collection, on the other hand, visitors walk in parallel paths, never axially, as is known from the entrances to temples and shrines in Japan.Korea, on the other hand – unfortunately wedged between its two large neighbors in terms of geography, as in the Berlin museum – remains completely underexposed in the Humboldt Forum, since the museum hardly has any Korean artefacts.
The Japan exhibition seems closed: Scroll paintings, ceramics and lacquerware are presented in sober metal cabinets in such a way that the Japanese Omotenashi culture has nothing to do with sensuality, with the ability to create a homely atmosphere and hospitality with warm, tactile materials and fine details feel is.
The focus of the collection is on secular Nihonga painting, but the auratic artworks are presented like butterflies impaled in a display case.
New York-based exhibition designer Ralph Appelbaum made his name by designing a Holocaust museum in the United States.
His design does not show any special affinity to East Asian aesthetics.