The Humboldt Forum is scheduled to open in the rebuilt Berlin Palace in 2019. Among other things, it will present the outstanding collections of the Ethnological Museum Berlin and the Berlin Museum of Asian Art in a new way. To prepare for it, the Humboldt Lab Dahlem was a place to experiment with exhibitions for four years (2012 – 2015). Its projects concerned postcolonial ethics, cross-cultural knowledge transfer and much more. At its core, however, it dealt with the question all museums face today: how to make collection objects tangible in a world of complex realities. Martin Heller was the initiator and co-director of the Humboldt Lab Dahlem; he will report on its activities, on the ambitions of the Humboldt Forum and the necessity of experimenting. Free admission