Let’s be honest – on the face of it a museum dealing exclusively with migration sounds a bit boring, perhaps not something that will top everyone’s must-see list. But the brand new Fenix which has, literally, risen out of an old warehouse on the Rotterdam waterfront is anything but that. Not only does it house an impressive collection of mainly contemporary art but its iconic central structure, the Tornedo, rivals the city’s other triumph of contemporary, thinking-out-of-the-box architecture, the equally shiny Depot of Museum Boijmans van Beuningen. The amazing shell-like (officially a double-helix – just like DNA) Tornedo is in fact the museum’s main staircase which leads the visitor to the museum’s two, huge first-floor galleries and on to a viewing platform high above the rooftop.
The Fenix is located in a long, low former dock-side warehouse and has been transformed by Ma Yansong of Beijing-based MAD Architects who have created many spectacular structures around the world. Originally the San Francisco warehouse, the building dates from 1923 and, at the time, was the largest warehouse in the world. Behind it is the Katenrecht, Rotterdam’s former red-light district and home to, fittingly, Europe’s oldest Chinatown.
The ground floor of Fenix is taken up with a large marbled floored reception area dominated by the silver staircase, two smaller galleries, a café and, of course, a shop. There is a conference hall in another part of the ground floor. The two enormous, open-plan first-floor galleries either side of The Tornedo house a rich and varied collection of art, each in its own way exploring or revealing aspects of the touchy subject of migration. There are important paintings by the likes of Willem de Kooning, Max Beckmann, Marc Chagall et all but also actual mementoes like a rescued section of the old Berlin Wall. But maybe surprisingly, there is also a great deal of humour. I really liked the soft, (nearly) life-size The Bus by Red Grooms with its motley crew of colourful characters. In a similar vein is Kimssoja’s 2007 Bottari Truck – Migrateurs, an old flat-bed truck piled high with luggage.
Luggage in one form or another is perhaps the one thing that symbolises migration more than any other and is much in evidence, in one form or another at Fenix, but never more so than The Suitcase Labyrinth. The installation which occupies one of the two ground floor galleries perhaps, more than any other, hits a nerve.
Two thousand suitcases have been donated from around the world, piled high and laid out in the form of a maze. Each case or trunk is documented and each has a story to tell. Many of the stories can be listened to on available audio devices. Two stories I listened to from suitcases which lay opposite each other in one of the aisles demonstrated two very different circumstances from the 1930s. One was the suitcase of an old Jewish lady who was deported and murdered by the Nazis but whose neighbour rescued and kept her case. The other, a man saying he had never actually carried one of his cases/trunks as there was always a porter on hand to do so. He had several pieces of luggage, one exclusively for evening wear. He extolled the benefits of travelling first class on an ocean liner and took comfort from the fact that he did not have to mix with the segregated passengers, the hoi-polloi from the lower decks. The Suitcase Labyrinth sums up the raison d’être and epitomises the Fenix Museum of Migration in a single room with a single installation.
Fenix is surely destined, like The Depot, to become a must-see in Rotterdam. Not only is it a spectacular and mind-blowingly original building but it houses an important collection of art which draws attention to one of the leading and most controversial issues of our time. Compulsive and thought provoking viewing in an extraordinary environment. Michael Hasted 15th May 2025
