Thea Jiang
Complex Projects
Bye-Bye-Bye Museum: the museum of return on Museumsinsel of Berlin
One of the most controversial topics surrounding museums in the twenty-first century is the contentious origin and accession of collections. In particular, the prominent museum cluster of Museumsinsel Berlin houses many foreign collections due to its imperial and colonial past.
Bye-Bye-Bye Museum envisions a new cultural space at Museumsinsel, dedicated to artefacts with disputed ownership. A space where past stories are told and artefacts are returned—fostering greater dialogue and cultural production between objects and people. This is achieved by showcasing the return process of artefacts, offering a performative element in the museum experience and reconfiguring the museum typology.
The museum also reconnects the historical Spree harbour to its neighbourhood, while transforming it into a distribution network for artefacts and Museumsinsel. An infrastructure that integrates energy demands with artwork logistics by adapting geothermal systems within climatic demands of storage, preservation labs and exhibition space. The project demonstrates a model of how relevant institutions can handle their controversial artefacts, the energy crisis, and an increasing amount of collections globally.