A workshop project at the German Port Museum – Location Shed 50A
In the 2024 season, a series of presentations will be shown in Shed 50A, presenting various approaches to the conceptual development of the German Port Museum. One of these workshop formats, which will be presented from June 5 to October 31 in the cube in the middle of the museum’s display depot, is dedicated to new approaches and perspectives on the complex topic of “Ports and Global Trade” based on the private archive of Henry B. Sloman. This topic will play a central role in the second location of the German Port Museum, which is to be built on Kleiner Grasbrook by the end of the 2020s.
Against the backdrop of the 100th anniversary of Hamburg’s Chilehaus, which was built in the Kontorhaus district between 1922 and 1924 on behalf of Henry B. Sloman using profits from the saltpetre trade, photographs from Henry B. Sloman’s private archive will be used to provide insights into the saltpetre trade in Chile at the beginning of the 20th century. As part of the workshop project, the diverse and impressive visual material will be critically examined for its historiographical ambiguity and serve as the basis for a general discussion about working with family archives in a museum context. An extensive accompanying program will deepen the examination of traces of memory of the global saltpetre trade in the city of Hamburg. Visitors are invited to actively share their impressions of the workshop project and thus provide their own impetus for the conceptual work of the German Port Museum.
The project is being held in cooperation with the Museum am Rothenbaum Kulturen und Künste der Welt (MARKK), which is examining the working and living conditions in the saltpetre works in a new special exhibition “White Desert Gold. Chile Saltpetre and Hamburg”.
