An artist rendering of Fenix designed by MAD Architects. Fenix museum / MAD Architects

Many museums around the world that focus on migration tend to frame the subject through the history of a city or nation, often at the risk of creating exhibition programs that lean too heavily into identity politics or view the issue primarily through a political or historical lens. But the soon-to-open Fenix museum in Rotterdam—one of Observer’s most-anticipated art museum openings of 2025—takes a different approach. Rather than limiting itself to regional narratives, Fenix promises to examine migration through a transcultural perspective, exploring its themes through the lens of art as a universal phenomenon that has accompanied human movement and survival since the beginning of time.

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Slated to open in May, Fenix will be housed in a sprawling 16,000-square-meter warehouse built in 1913, now radically transformed by the acclaimed Beijing-based architecture studio MAD Architects. Funded by the Droom en Daad Foundation—a private philanthropic initiative directed by Wim Pijbes, former director of the Rijksmuseum, and backed by the Van der Vorm family, which controls Holland-America Line and HAL Investments—the museum will serve as a centerpiece in the ambitious regeneration of Katendrecht. Once Rotterdam’s red-light district and home to the oldest Chinatown in continental Europe, Katendrecht is being reimagined as a cultural hub. As part of its commitment to fostering the city’s creative-led development, the Droom en Daad Foundation is also establishing a new venue for The National Museum of Photography, set to open in the same district late this year.

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Fenix’s building embodies a layered history, deeply tied to Rotterdam’s identity as a port city shaped by migration. Originally constructed for storage and shipping operations, it played a crucial role in the Holland America Line, the Dutch cargo and passenger service that carried millions of migrants to and from these very docks throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries.

“The story of Fenix is........

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