Museum Volkenkunde

Museum of Ethnology

Leiden - Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden shows the art treasures of distant cultures. You travel from the heat of the sweltering Djenné in Africa to the extreme cold of the Arctic. And you will discover the mysteries of the Maya and Mixtec in South America, via Japan and Indonesia, to the inhabitants of the most extensive continent of our planet: Oceania.

The collection of King Willem I

The Museum of Ethnology was founded when King William I had art and utensils bought up from the overseas territories of the Netherlands. Each room in the museum is dedicated to a particular country or continent and you can clearly see in the collection where the Dutch have been active in the past.

Masterpiece turns out to be a falsification

The falsification of the Mixtec skull in Museum Volkenkunde

Mixtec skull

In 2016, one of the museum's masterpieces, a Mixtec skull from South America, turned out to be fake. Because there was uncertainty about its provenance, the museum has the skull extensively examined at various European institutions. What seems? The skull and the mosaic are authentic, but the glue used appears to be from the 20th century. A fake. Fortunately, the skull now has its own corner in the museum, because with such a story the skull is still interesting to see.