Rotterdam unveils a museum about migration while anti-foreigner sentiment rises in Europe

ROTTERDAM – A gleaming spiral staircase jutting from the extortion of a erstwhile Dutch warehouse overlooks the waterway wherever millions of Europeans erstwhile boarded ships bound for a caller beingness successful the United States.

The twisting path, intended to correspond migrants' unexpected journeys, stands connected the Fenix museum, the newest attraction connected Rotterdam's waterfront.

The depository tells the communicative of migration, with exhibits including thousands of suitcases from travelers, portraits of refugees and a life-sized metropolis bus.

Architect Ma Yansong of Chinese steadfast MAD Architects told The Associated Press helium wanted the gathering to service not lone arsenic a depository but besides arsenic “a memory."

The depository opens Friday arsenic migration is connected the rise, on with anti-immigrant sentiment successful galore parts of the world. The fig of radical surviving extracurricular their state of commencement — implicit 300 cardinal — has astir doubled since 1990, according to the United Nations.

“As agelong arsenic we beryllium arsenic quality beings, we determination and we migrate. And we volition ever support connected doing that. And that’s what we amusement successful Fenix,” said the museum’s director, Anne Kremers.

As the museum's operation continued past year, the hard-right Dutch authorities announced unprecedented measures aimed astatine reining successful migration, including a reintroduction of borderline checks. It shattered a long-held representation of the Netherlands arsenic a federation that welcomed caller arrivals.

The museum's viewing level looks retired crossed Rotterdam, whose 650,000 inhabitants correspond implicit 170 nationalities. The metropolis is the largest larboard successful Europe.

Many of those departing Rotterdam successful the aboriginal portion of the 20th period made the trans-Atlantic travel connected the Holland America Line, a shipping institution founded by the Van der Vorm household successful 1873. The household has been the superior fiscal backer for the Fenix project, via Dutch creation instauration Droom en Daad (Dream and Action).

Art tin sometimes supply a amended ground for treatment of politically loaded topics similar migration, said Cathrine Bublatzky, an anthropologist who studies the intersection of creation and migration.

Kremers said she hopes visitors volition instrumentality distant “what it feels similar to permission your home, to find a caller home, and to accidental farewell.”

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