[1] Its highlights include important objects from the Sepik River, Hawaii, the Kingdom of Benin, Cameroon, Congo, Tanzania, China, the Pacific Coast of North America, Mesoamerica, the Andes, as well as one of the first ethnomusicology collections of sound recordings (the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv).

Until January 2017, the museum will remain open to the public, and its permanent exhibitions of works from Africa, Mesoamerican archaeology, and South Asia can still be viewed.

Highlights include the collections of painted Maya vases and drinking cups, Benin bronzes, sculpture from Cameroon, and power figures from Congo.

In 2021, the museum announced plans to return some of its holding of Nigerian artifacts, including a large collection of Benin Bronzes, to Nigeria.

[6] The museum's first building in the center of Berlin on Königgrätzer Straße (now Stresemannstraße at the corner with Niederkirchnerstraße) was already too small to accommodate the collections when it opened in 1886.

[3] The situation deteriorated further in the last years of the 19th century, as the collections expanded rapidly because of increased institutional support for ethnology and the growth of the German overseas colonial empire after the Berlin Conference.

The Bornemann building faced onto Lansstraße with an uncompromisingly modernist pavilion and contrasted sharply with the older neo-classical Bruno Paul structure, with its main entrance on Arnimallee.