A new museum has opened in the Netherlands dedicated to celebrating human migration through art.

The Fenix Museum in opened recently in a former warehouse in Rotterdam’s port district.

The museum’s inaugural exhibitions are ‘All Directions: Art That Moves You’, which will feature works by Francis Alys, Cornelia Parker and Do Ho Suh.

Also featured is the ‘The Family of Migrants’ exhibition inspired by Edward Steichen’s ‘Family of Man’ at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which is made up of 194 photographs on the theme of migration.

Another exhibition is The Suitcase Labyrinth, an interactive installation made up of 2,000 donated suitcases.

Fenix overlooks the docks where millions of lives have changed over the past centuries. Some left for America or Canada by ship at the turn of the century, while others arrived from countries like China, Cape Verde, and Greece. Famous figures like Albert Einstein and artist Max Beckmann departed from Rotterdam.

The museum also features the personal stories who have made Rotterdam their home.

Located on an 8,000-square-meter site, the Fenix building has an internal area of 16,000 square metres spread across two floors.

Of this, 10,509 square meters are designated as publicly accessible space, with 6,000 square metres allocated for exhibitions and 2,275 square metres forming the central area.

FENIX is funded by the ‘Droom en Daad Foundation’, founded in 2016 and led by former Rijksmuseum director Pijbes.

With anti-immigration governments almost the norm across the globe, it was not an easy thing to build a museum to celebrate immigrants.

The Netherlands has had a reputation for welcoming refugees since the 16th century, but in the 21st it has been riven by arguments over Islam and multiculturalism.

The Party for Freedom, led by Geert Wilders Geert Wilders, a xenophobic agitator, came first in the most recent Dutch election;.

But earlier this month Mr Wilders Brought down the government in a row over asylum-seekers.

Read more: https://www.fenix.nl/en/over-fenix/