Grassi Museum of Applied Arts — Attraction in Leipzig

I visited this museum for the ethnographic collection with a group of South and Southeast Asia scholars. I have not seen the Applied Arts section, which I hear is great. The ethnographic section was rather disappointing, as it is (as of September 2024) in the process of being converted into a sort of meta-museum and a post-colonial guilt trip. Instead of having the ethnographic collection on display they now have rooms full of woke posters about how sad it is that many artefacts were acquired immorally and unfairly. I'm not saying that these details should be suppressed and forgotten. I'm all for bringing them out into the open. But... on the one hand, their presentation should not take the form of one-sided self-flagellation but also acknowledge the tremendous contribution of ethnographic museums to preservation and knowledge dissemination. How many of those collection pieces, whether fairly or unfairly acquired, would by now have been lost to war, decay and deliberate iconoclasm, and how many would have been sold unscrupulously to private collectors on the black and grey market, if they hadn't been carried to those bad-bad colonial museums? And on the other hand, an ethnographic museum is not the place to house exhibitions addressing colonial guilt. That is like closing down a library and converting it into a guilt trip because it used to house many works by ancient Greek authors who had slaves to cook their dinner (so let's forget about their timeless philosophy and plays), by people like Rudyard Kipling brimming with the white man's superiority (so let's forget about his astute psychology and engrossing narrative), etc. No, please let's keep the library and find a different venue to address the questionable moral background, and even there, let's address it with a fair view of the entire context. That said, there were still a few rooms of the old, actual, ethnographic collection, which was great to see. They included a village hut from India, built on the site by authentic artisans invited for the purpose, with many of the materials also brought from the region of origin. Other materials were sourced locally, for instance cowdung for the wall plaster came from a German organic cattle farm, where the craftspeople first made a visit to check if the material is really suitable for their purpose. I hear that there used to be several other traditional buildings in the museum, presumably built with the same devotion and care, and enjoyed by countless children and adults as tangible reminders of how other people live and settings where they could hear about other cultures. Too bad that...

Unfortunately I had a bad experience at what seems to be a really wonderful museum otherwise. I didn't have a euro to use the lockers before entering the exhibition and asked the woman at the information desk if she had a plastic token I could use instead - she said no I had to use a euro. When I was asking the question, another visitor returned a token to the other woman on the information desk. I explained what I had seen to the woman but she insisted I had to use a euro. To be certain about what I had seen, I emailed the museum after my visit to ask if plastic tokens were available and they confirmed that they were. Now, its possible that the woman on the desk didn't know they were available (despite the other visitor returning the token to her colleague sitting next to her) but I think she didn't want to lend me a token because I am English, unfortunately her demeanour changed when I asked 'Sprechen Sie Englisch?' - I left the museum feeling quite...

Can't understand why this place doesn't get more attention on Leipzig guides. If this was in a major city it would be rightly regarded as a world-class museum, housed in a beautiful Art Deco building. For fans it's worth it for the architecture and light fittings alone! In particular I loved the applied arts area's array of Art Deco homewares and their medieval to Renaissance objects. The whole thing is well-curated and not just "let's put everything we have on display".

The cafe is one of the best museum cafes I've eaten at, all freshly made and good range of vegetarian options. The shop is a reasonable size and has some interesting books, just a shame their catalogues don't have everything in them (although the attendants had no problems with us photographing objects). Most signage is German only but there are some English. There are also English guide leaflets and an audio tour to help. If you like history, art and design do not leave the city without...