Fenix International Art Museum Of Migration Opens In Rotterdam

Forbes

19-05-2025

Photographs on view as part of "Family of Migrants" exhibition at Fenix art museum in Rotterdam.
Chadd Scott
Migration is a person.
Immigration. Emigration.
People.
A mother. A child. A family.
Politicians want us to forget this, focusing contemporary conversations about migration on borders and paperwork and permission and statistics. Migration as a problem, not a person.
The trick is working. Voters from the United States to the Netherlands have installed far right-wing, anti-immigration, anti-people governments hell bent on punishing migration via the most inhumane measures imaginable. Americans are quick to ignore that every single non-Indigenous one of them descends from a migrant. The Dutch were made migrants 85 years ago when Hitler invaded.
When thinking about migration is separated from thinking about people–and our histories–as these villains so cleverly achieve, the challenge of migration can be given over to cruelty.
It's time for the artists to remind us that migration is a person.
That's exactly what they do to stirring effect at Fenix, the new international art museum devoted to migration in Rotterdam, Netherlands, opened May 16, 2025. The single-issue museum located in a former Holland America Line shipping and storage warehouse on the docks from which millions of Europeans left for new lives overseas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries–migrants–makes clear that now, as then, migrants are people–just like you.
Detail of Daria Khozhai's 'Pravda - 'Truth,'' 2024-2025, installed at Fenix art museum Rotterdam.
Chadd Scott
Not all the art inside Fenix was produced by migrants, but much of it was. That includes Willem de Kooning's (1907–1997) Man in Waistcoat (1969). De Kooning migrated to America from these very docks in 1926. He was a stowaway. A charming term from a bygone era. Today he'd be called illegal. Chased by ICE. Thrown to the ground. Hands zip-tied. Perhaps sent to prison.
One of the greatest artists of the 20th century. A person. A migrant.
Just like Albert Einstein. He migrated to America from the Rotterdam docks as well.
Intellectual. Pacifist. Jewish.
The Nazis didn't want the world thinking of him as a person either. Not a real person. Not an equal person. Something less. Trash. The way 2025's Nazi-descended politicians on both sides of the Atlantic want us thinking about migrants.
Maria Kulikovska (b. 1988) is a migrant. She fled Crimea in her native Ukraine when Russia annexed it in 2014. Since then, she's filled out hundreds of visa and residence applications seeking shelter, safety–acceptance–in countries across Europe.
A person.
Her tormented paintings on these forms are particularly powerful.
As is fellow Ukrainian, fellow migrant, Daria Khozhai's (b. 1991) recreation of her childhood bedroom in Kyiv. The old Soviet Union threw up tens of thousands of cheap, cold, concrete apartments across the city from the 60s through the 90s. Residents insulated the walls with copies of 'Pravda' ('Truth') newspapers–sometimes nearly a foot thick–covering them with wallpaper. When Russia began bombing Kyiv in 2022, the walls were blown away, exposing the old newspapers.
Inside the small bedroom, roughly 6-by-8 feet, Khozhai has covered the walls with contemporary newspaper front pages related to Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine. On these papers, Vladimir Putin is called every terrible name in the book, Europe's indignation at full throat.
That indignation, those headlines, the praise for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's bravery and leadership cooling dramatically since those early days–in Europe and America.
Fenix' art collection began from scratch five years ago. It currently numbers about 400 pieces with new acquisitions continually being made. This is the work of Wim Pijbes, former director of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and current director of Droom en Daad Foundation, the funding source behind Fenix.
It is not a national museum. No representative from the Dutch government was on hand when the building was introduced to assembled members of the media from around the world despite its historic newsworthiness. A government presence at such events is commonplace. The absence was conspicuous.
'Starting this collection, I came across many images, and as an art historian, I immediately thought, this is all the same–Jesus, Mary and Joseph on that flight to Egypt,' Pijbes told Forbes.com. 'It's the same image as people at the border of Syria, having everything they have in their hands. (Migration is) nothing new. It's all over the world. It's universal, timeless.'
In addition to the artworks–most created by international emerging artists–Fenix displays important historical artifacts related to migration such as a section of the Berlin Wall, a migrant boat from Lampedusa in the Mediterranean Sea, and a 1923 Nansen passport. This was an internationally recognized travel document issued to stateless refugees after World War I.
A 'Suitcase Labyrinth' composed of 2,000 donated suitcases brings to life a collection of personal histories from countries, cultures, and communities around the world. Each bag is a person. The smell of leather and adventure is intoxicating. Stickers from fabulous destinations and hotels adorn the bags. These were people who had the luxury of planning their migration and tidily packing their possessions into fashionable luggage.
From Honoré Daumier's (1808–1879) bronze relief to Yinka Shonibare CBE's (b. 1962) Refugee Astronaut IX (2024), Fenix artworks more commonly share the archetypal migrant/refugee posture: hunched over, meager possessions slung across the back in a makeshift sack, trudging forward, head down, future uncertain. No romance or adventure in this silhouette.
Most affecting, however, are the nearly 200 pictures presented in 'The Family of Migrants' exhibition. Taken by 136 photographers from 55 countries between 1905 and the weeks before Fenix' opening, the photos are a mix of documentary images, portraits, and journalist photography drawn from international archives, museum collections, image banks, and newspapers.
People being arrested at borders. People hiding from border agents under cars. Babies being passed through barbed wire. Mothers cradling children. Man's capacity for barbarism exposed.
Just outside Fenix' walls was something called the 'Pier of Tears.' From that standpoint, millions of weeping family members and friends said 'goodbye'–often forever–to loved ones headed across the ocean. Tears for strangers flow as freely inside 'The Family of Migrants.' Good. Tears mean these migrants are seen as people.
Fenix art museum in Rotterdam.
Iwan Baan
A museum of migration belongs in Rotterdam. The quays around this warehouse saw millions of emigrants board ships bound for destinations such as America and Canada. Today, Rotterdam possesses one of Europe's most robust migrant populations.
Rotterdam has a long history as a trading and transportation hub. Its huge, deep-water port and strategic location with easy access to the North Sea and Rhine River make it an ideal thoroughfare for shipping and the gateway to Europe. Until 2004, Rotterdam had the busiest port in the world. That distinction now resides in China.
In the 19th century, Rotterdam's port facilities and infrastructure as an international trade hub grew dramatically, expanding to meet the new demands and opportunities generated by the industrial revolution, with larger steam ships, mechanized loading cranes, and steel bridges connecting both sides of the Maas River. Pictures of boat traffic on the Maas during this period look like cars in Midtown Manhattan at 4 o'clock on a Friday afternoon.
The 16,000-square-meter warehouse Fenix inhabits was at the heart of this. Completed in 1923, the building, known as the San Francisco Warehouse, served as an important storage and trans-shipment building for the Holland America Line – a successful Dutch cargo and passenger company founded in Rotterdam in 1873.
Following bombing by the Germans in World War II and a fire, the warehouse was rebuilt in the 1950s as two separate buildings, Fenix I and Fenix II–as in 'rising like a Phoenix.' The Fenix II Warehouse has undergone an extensive transformation to become the Fenix museum, ensuring this fine example of Rotterdam port architecture is preserved for the future.
The building's centerpiece is the Tornado, an organic, dynamic structure evocative of rising air. This reflective, metallic, double-helix staircase climbs from the ground floor, flowing up and out of the rooftop onto a viewing platform looking over the city. The River Mass flows in front of the museum. The former headquarters of the Holland America Line sit 250 yards away. Rotterdam's Euromast can be easily seen from one vantage point, the striking Erasmus Bridge from another, the old S.S. Rotterdam steamship, now a tourist attraction, from another still.
Beijing's Ma Yansong of MAD Architects imagined the Tornado. Serendipitously, the harbor-side neighborhood of Katendrecht that Fenix calls home was formerly the first Chinatown in continental Europe–migrants. Cape Verdean sailors and Surinamese jazz musicians–migrants–also found a home there.
Insightful walking tours of Katendrecht are available in English on a limited basis. Inquire here.
ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS - APRIL 3: A water taxi navigates past the former building of the Holland Amerika Line, now a hotel and restaurant in the Port of Rotterdam on April 3, 2025 in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The Holland Amerika Line transported hundreds of thousands of European migrants from Rotterdam to New York between 1873 and the 1970s. The port of Rotterdam is the largest seaport in Europe and a key transit point for trade with the US, particularly oil products. (Photo by)
Getty Images
Rotterdam doesn't spring to mind for most Americans considering a European vacation. Change that. Especially if your passion is art. And especially if your passion is architecture.
Rotterdam was mostly leveled during World War II; the German bombing commenced on May 14, 1940, 85 years plus two days from the opening of Fenix. The Port's strategic value to the Allied war effort made it a desirable target. Anyone looking for old-timey, medieval streets and structures, keep looking. After the War, the city dedicated itself to becoming a world-class destination for architectural innovation. It has achieved that goal.
Understand this, too, when thinking about Rotterdam for holiday: Amsterdam has too many tourists. Amsterdam wants fewer tourists. Rotterdam is happy to oblige the overflow, and being less than an hour's train ride away, travelers can comfortably stay in Rotterdam, day trip to Amsterdam, visit the Rikjsmuseum and Van Gogh Museum, then bop back to less expensive hotels and meals, and fewer crowds.
Hotel nhow makes for an ideal headquarters from which to experience Rotterdam and the surrounding region. Its blocky outline stands as one of the most distinct on the Rotterdam skyline. Views of the Erasmus Bridge from its seventh-floor terrace café are the best in the city. Fenix is only 700 meters from nhow. When the Netherlands national museum of photography moves into its new home later in 2025, it will be about that same distance in the other direction.
Across the street is a Metro station taking passengers directly to Rotterdam Central Station–and transfer to Amsterdam–or all the way along the E line to The Haag in 40 minutes–no switching trains–where Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665) awaits at the Mauritshuis. And Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp (1632). And Carel Fabritius' The Goldfinch (1654).
Delft with its world-famous blue pottery sits tidily between The Haag and Rotterdam.
Paris. London. Rome. The Netherlands via Rotterdam has something for you when talking about seeing great art.
Henk Chabot, 'Refugees with child in white cloth,' 1943. Oil on canvas.
Chadd Scott
In Rotterdam, the Depot of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is the world's first publicly accessible art storage facility. It stores all the artwork while the museum next door undergoes a decade-long restoration. Art history nerds will want to be sure to stop in for a look at one of Pieter Bruegel's The Tower of Babel (1568) paintings.
Adjacent to the Depot is Nieuwe Institute, a museum for architecture, design, and digital culture. On view through October 11, 2025, find an exhibition devoted to Fenix Tornado architect Ma.
Also here in the city's museum park are Kunsthal Rotterdam and the Chabot Museum Rotterdam. Dutch expressionist Henk Chabot's (1894-1949) paintings would feel right at home at Fenix. He watched the bombing of Rotterdam from his home just outside the city and dedicated his artmaking during the war years to the country's migrant refugees.
How might the contemporary migrant/refugee conversation be different if today's migrants looked like Chabot's migrants, northern European, instead of African or Latin American?
The can't-miss Chabot Museum is housed in one of Rotterdam's most beautiful modernist villas.
CHINATOWN WALKING TOUR
View of western extent of Port of Rotterdam as seen over the rooftop of Portlantis.
© Ossip van Duivenbode
Further afield, out where the North Sea meets mainland Europe at the Port of Rotterdam's western-most point, Portlantis opened in March of 2025. Here, visitors learn all about how the Port works. How its 192,000 employees and 3,000 companies process 14 million containers per year. Anyone interested in engineering, construction, chemistry, transportation, or logistics will find it fascinating.
Portlantis sits on dredge-and-fill sand. This was the North Sea until 2013 when the bustling port required expansion. From the rooftop balcony, views over dune to the sea, of the enormous windmills, and across to the port reveal its unimaginable scale. As does transport to Portlantis. The Port of Rotterdam is a full 45 kilometers long. It goes on and on and on.
This is not the touristy, architecturally dazzling Rotterdam. This is the working Rotterdam. The Rotterdam of industry, warehouses, trucking, oil refinery, and calloused hands. The large mound visible from the Portlantis roof is contaminated soil. All the products and natural resources making our modern lives possible come through here, the same products destroying the planet and the same natural resources extracted elsewhere with a heavy ecological toll paid by the residents there.
The Port is a complex place in more ways than one. Curious travelers keen on complexity will never forget it.
Unless traveling by car, Portlantis can be a little tricky to get to for newcomers involving a Metro ride, ferry, and finally free shuttle bus to the building. It's worth the effort. Once there, bus and boat tours into the guts of the port are available.