✨ 500.000 visitors ✨ Today marks exactly one year since Fenix opened its doors 🎈 In the first twelve months, half a million people visited Fenix.
This milestone brings pride, and above all, gratitude. What stands out is the diversity of visitors, from near and far, each bringing their own story.
You may recognise something of your own story, or that of someone you love, in one of the artworks. At Fenix, migration appears through the eyes of artists: timeless and universal, human and part of everyday life.
Thank you for being part of this first year. 💛
Big news: Fenix is expanding📍🔜 After welcoming half a million visitors in its first year, Fenix takes its next step this autumn with a new exhibition space of nearly 650 square metres.
The new gallery creates more room for artists to share stories of migration and will host several temporary exhibitions each year, alongside All Directions, The Family of Migrants and The Suitcase Labyrinth.
Opening in November: an exhibition by the international artist collective @slavsandtatars . For twenty years, the collective has explored the region between the former Berlin Wall and the Great Wall of China. Through humour and sharply observed installations, they reveal how porous borders truly are, with food, myths and language moving freely across them.
Departure, journey, arrival. Migration is often depicted as a straight line from A to B. In reality, that line is seldom direct. Migration isn’t linear; it’s layered and unpredictable ‒ a process shaped by detours, pauses, turning points, and unexpected twists.
The route 'In-between' takes you past the artworks of ten women artists who explore the in-between space of migration. It could be a conversation that shifts your perspective, a small incident that redirects a life unexpectedly or a culture carried to a new place, where it takes on fresh meaning.
Visit the exhibition All Directions → tickets → link in bio
📷 @titiahahnephoto
From 27 to 31 May, @o.festival.rotterdam brings together performance and stories of migration at Fenix. On the quay, inside a container, they present a 25-minute music performance. We offer a combined ticket: Containerbegrip + museum admission.
Containerbegrip tells the story of Emre’s grandfather, who came to the Netherlands from Turkey as a guest worker at the Rotterdam harbour, where he operated a crane. He left his family and friends behind and lived in a container home with bunk beds, with little more than memories of the mountains and cassette tapes he had sent to his family. The audience is taken through his story and the legacy of his migration for the second generation.
→ Visit the performance and continue into the museum for a combined ticket of € 20.
Find tickets at fenix.nl/agenda
When Maksut talks about Anatolian food, he rarely talks about recipes. He talks about people.
About memories passed on without being written down. About techniques learned by watching, tasting, helping, hand to hand, generation to generation. In Anatolia, food was never fixed. It lived, changed, travelled.
Born in the south of Turkey, with Syrian roots, raised within Turkish culture, Maksut grew up in a region shaped by spice routes, migration, and more than seventy civilizations. A kitchen influenced by Mesopotamia, by the Middle East, by seasons and place. For him, that richness isn’t something to preserve behind glass, it’s something to carry forward. Not freezing them in time, but allowing them to evolve, so the next generation can understand them, feel them, and take them further.
At ‘O’, that way of thinking becomes tangible. Food as a shared language. As a bridge. As a place where tradition meets the present, quietly, without explanation, but with intention.
You can now see a first edition of Het Achterhuis (The Diary of a Young Girl) by Anne Frank in the exhibition All Directions. The book finds a natural place in the museum, where it tells a story about war, identity, and the search for a place to call home.
Anne Frank fled to the Netherlands with her family in 1933, as antisemitism in Germany intensified. While in hiding, she writes about her wish to become a Dutch citizen, something she never sees fulfilled. She dies stateless in the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. After her death, she becomes a Dutch icon, widely recognised for a nationality she was never granted.
Read more on our website, or visit the museum → link in bio
For this 925 sterling silver brooch, jewellery label The Boyscouts draws inspiration from the Tornado. The spiral shape evokes movement and shifting perspectives, much like the journey of a migrant, as architect Ma Yansong describes it. 🌪️
The pin is available at the museum shop in Fenix.
📷 1: Titia Hahne 2, 3: Casper Rila Wilderlicht
Vote for Fenix for the Rotterdam Architecture Prize! 💫🗳️
The Rotterdam Architecture Prize highlights the best new buildings in the city each year. The award ceremony takes place during Rotterdam Architecture Month in June 2026. Fenix is one of the ten nominees.
Cast your vote for Fenix via: rotterdamarchitectuurprijs.nl/prijs-2026/fenix
@airrotterdam@rotterdamarchitectuurmaand
During the May Holidays, Plein is open, and there is something for everyone. Get creative at the crafts table, join us for a soup with @vrijheidsmaaltijden.rotterdam , or watch a special performance by @connyjanssendanst or @codartsglobalmusics .
See the full programme → fenix.nl/agenda
🇻🇳 Deze keer in de Mooncake Lunch Pop-up: @tessayen met haar vernieuwende Vietnamese keuken.
Verwacht geen standaard repertoire, maar gerechten zoals doorzichtige tapiocadumplings, makreel in tamarindebouillon en ijs van bananenblad 🤤
Waar Vietnamees eten in Nederland nog vaak blijft hangen bij een paar bekende klassiekers zoals bánh mì en gỏi cuốn(hoe lekker ook), laat Tessa zien hoe die keuken zich hier verder ontwikkelt.
Ze hoort bij een nieuwe generatie die verder kijkt dan bánh mì en loempia’s en haar eigen signatuur neerzet.
Precies daarom wil je hier eten.
Kom langs en proef Tessa’s Vietnamese keuken!
📍 @fenix | Mooncake Lunch Pop-up @ Plein | Paul Nijghkade 5, Rotterdam
🗓 Donderdag t/m zondag | 11:30–15:00u | 16 april t/m 7 juni ‘26
✨ Vega opties | Halal | Geen alcohol
👉 Over de pop-up reeks:
Wist je dat dit in de geschiedenis van Rotterdam de allerlekkerste tijd is om in leven te zijn? Van dampende dumplings tot pittige pastechi, het beroemde broodje Dynamite en Fernandes-ijs; Rotterdam heeft het allemaal. Nooit eerder smaakte deze stad zo verrukkelijk en veelzijdig. Met de Mooncake Lunch Pop-up bij Plein in kunstmuseum Fenix vieren we dat. Elke acht weken wordt hier een andere eetcultuur uit de stad uitgelicht. Elke chef brengt een verhaal, herinneringen en trots mee op je bord.
🎥 : @bjornplooster
#fenix #rotterdam #mooncake #samenwerking #vietnamees
Fenix curator @yevkravt interviewed @latifa.echa about her work 'Frames'. 🤲 A conversation about belonging, absence, and collective memories. 'Frames' is part of In-between, a route through the exhibition All Directions, featuring ten women artists on migration.
YK: In Frames, you remove the carpets' ornamental and symbolic centre. What new paths of thinking does this gesture open?
LE: "Removing the centre of the carpet destabilises an object that carries strong symbolic and cultural authority. By subtracting what is usually ornamental and meaningful, the carpet shifts from a functional or ritual object to a trace or structure."
Read the full interview on fenix.nl → stories
