Dresden Museum of Ethnology, Ethnographic museum in Japanisches Palais, Dresden, Germany.
The Dresden Museum of Ethnology occupies the Japanisches Palais, a Baroque complex in Dresden. Its collection exceeds 90,000 artefacts from Oceania, Africa, America, Asia, Australia and Europe. The museum is part of the Dresden State Art Collections and shows changing exhibitions from its holdings.
The museum traces its roots to a curiosity collection started in the 16th century by the Saxon Elector, filled with objects brought from distant lands. Over time, this collection grew and was formally established as a scientific ethnographic museum in 1875.
The collection brings together everyday objects from Indonesia, India, Tibet, China, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania, showing how different societies lived and worked. What stands out is how similar daily needs were met in very different ways across these cultures.
The museum sits in central Dresden and can be reached easily by public transport, with step-free access throughout the building. Allow at least a couple of hours, since both the permanent collection and the temporary exhibitions take time to take in properly.
Since September 2022 the museum has displayed the Dresden Damascus Room, an Ottoman wooden panelling of 1810/11 from a townhouse in Damascus. The photographer Hermann Burchardt bought the panels in 1899 through the German consul and sent them to Germany for Karl Ernst Osthaus, who never exhibited them; his heirs gave them to the museum in 1930. The panels show flowers, fruit and houses, and some boards carry golden Arabic words of a poem.
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