Time Person
Speaking, Dialogue
00:01:09 Voice
over
The Royal Museum of Central Africa. For decades, generations
of young Belgians visited this museum, which claimed to lead them through a
discovery of the country, Congo Kinshasa. In 2013, it closed its doors to begin
the first major renovation in its history. For over a century, this museum was
a totem to the glory of the civilising work of King Leopold II. Will it be able
at last to break down the taboos and recount the darkest pages of the Congo
history? For almost a century, the museum depicted the congolese as primitives.
Will it manage to demolish these deeply rooted, subconscious stereotypes?
During the colonial period, the museum appropriated of the congolese masks and
statues. Is it time to return them? The
new museum offers a new perspective of Africa and to a critical view of
colonial history. Will it uncover the ghosts of our past? Reconcile the
memories of Belgium and those of Congo?
00:02:56
Bambi Ceuppens
If you're talking about Belgium's colonial history,this
museum automatically comes to mind. I don't think that in France,
Holland,Portugal or Great Britain there is one building that symbolises the
colonial past so well. I believe our building is pretty unique in that sense.
00:03:17 Voice
over Since the dawn of time,
societies have been organised around ancestor cults. In Belgium, the Tervuren
Museum would become the totem of a whole nation. A temple to the memory of
Leopold II. A collective imagination developed around the museum, based on
prejudices and clichés.
00:03:40 Voice
over archive 50 years ago Congo
was basically as it was when Stanley left it: 3,800,000 km² of mountains and
plains. Yesterday it was still a savage country, today... All the Belgian
Empire builders, many of whom sleep in African soil, having given it their blood...
A race difficult to understand, who shy away, who hide... Cannibalism and
slavery have disappeared. They have truly become leopard-men, disappearing into
the bush, concealing themselves on the outskirts of the villages that they
punish.
00:04:17 Guide
Gryseels I came here as a child. I grew up
in Alsemberg, a village about 20 kilo from here. I often came here with my
parents. My parents would take me with them on a Sunday afternoon to this
museum. If you would ask me what I remember about Africa from my visits to the
museum, then it would be one word: fear. I remember seeing the Congolese, their
spears and shields at the ready, the dangerous snakes... I was scared of
Africa. When I came to work here in Tervuren and saw that the exhibition was
exactly the same as the one I'd seen as a child, it was clear to me that we
would have to ring the changes.
00:05:17 Voice
over Under its veneer, the
museum long maintained the myth that Belgians went to Africa for philanthropic
ends. Namely, to free the indigenous people from Arab-Muslim slavery. But that
was only partly true.
In the mid-19th century, the major European nations – led by
France, Great Britain, Portugal and Germany – colonised the African continent.
Leopold II wanted his share, and set his sights on central Africa. But the
Belgian parliament opposed his plans.
00:06:24 Mathieu
Zana Etambala To the Belgian government,
Congo was his plaything. Let him busy himself with that, then he won't
interfere with politics at home in Belgium.
00:06:41 Voice
over The abolition of slavery
was a pretext to mask Leopold’s true motives: laying hands on the Congo’s ivory
and rubber.
Entrusted to an army of mercenaries, the civilising mission
soon turned into a bloody escapade: massacres, fire, beheadings. Some of
Leopold’s men used any means available to sack the villages.
Today, the heroes of the conquest occupy pride of place in
the museum. An enormous stela honours the 1508 Belgians who died in Congo. But
not a single plaque for their African victims.
The museum houses a collection of 120,000 of the most
valuable and rare pieces in the world. A collection built up gradually in the
colonial era. Behind the simple and carefully classified wooden statues, there
sometimes lies a history of plunder, violence and crime.
The Tabwa statue is one of the best examples. The history of
this acquisition began in 1884 in south-eastern Congo, in Mpala, near Lake
Tanganyika. A young officer in the army of Leopold II, Emile Storms was tasked
with conquering the region. During a punitive expedition, Storms ordered the
beheading of Chief Lusinga, involved in the slave trade, and took the statue
with him. Storms seized a sacred object, a symbol of strength and power to the
Tabwa people. The chief had ordered it made in his likeness to mark the start
of his reign and confirm his authority over his rivals. Emile Storms took it
back to Belgium along with the skull of Chief Lusinga. For nearly 50 years, the
statue would be enthroned, like a hunting trophy, in Storms’ living room. Only
after his death in 1918 did his wife donate it to the museum. The Tabwa statue
is considered one of the masterpieces of the museum’s collection.
King Leopold’s strategy paid off. In 1885, at the Berlin
Conference, the great European colonial powers divided up Africa. Leopold II
became the sole owner of the Congo Free State. Outside its context, the Nkisi
Nkondi is silent. But this wooden statue conceals a sacred object that served
to protect the communities of the Lower Congo. The acquisition of the Nkisi
began at the mouth of the Congo River, in the village of Boma. After a conflict
with the local kings, a Belgian commercial agent, Alexander Delcommune,
expropriated their object.
00:10:54 Sarah
van Beurden From the moment that
he expropriated the Nkisi Nkondi as spoils of war, the local chieftain reacted,
saying: We want it returned. It is important to us. Right from the start, they
asked for it to be returned to the local community. He refused to do that.
00:11:20 Voice
over Delcommune was well aware
of the power attributed to the statue. He saw it as much more than war booty.
00:11:29 Julien
Volper The purpose of these large
statues covered in strips and metal tips, is in fact for use as protection.
These objects were used in important rituals, the objective being to protect a
community. They were not for personal protection but for an entity, a village
or a region.
00:11:49 Professor
Henry Bundjoko Banyata You could
go to the officiant and say: I want to protect my whole community. He would
reply: I accept that you want to protect your community. However, take a blade
or a nail, lick it, say the following, place the nail there, and your community
is protected.
00:12:10 Voice
over For years, Delcommune would
use this Nkisi Nkondi to protect himself against theft.
00:12:19 Sarah
van Beurden Because it was a
statue that had both a religious and a political importance at the local level.
The object was said to have certain powers. That certainly had something to do
with the fact that he was so interested in the statue and seized it for
himself.
00:12:41 Voice
over When he returned to Belgium
in 1883, Delcommune took the statue with him, and the museum acquired it in
1912.
The museum has long kept silent about the crimes and abuses
by the agents of Leopold II, for the simple reason that the very institution
served to promote the king’s actions in Africa.
00:13:13 Sarah
van Beurden In the late 19th century
and the beginning of the 20th century there was an upward trend for organising
major exhibitions and World Exhibitions. Very often the World Exhibitions had
large sections devoted to colonial empires.
00:13:33 Voice
over The foundation of the
museum was an extension of the Universal Exhibition held in Brussels in 1897.
It was a massive public relations effort in which the king showed off the many
treasures brought from Congo. He had 267 Congolese people brought over by boat
and installed behind the fences of a reconstructed village. A ‘human zoo’ meant
to indulge the curiosity of the spectators.
00:14:19 Mathieu
Zana Etambala The aim was to show people
how much work there was still to do in the Congo. The people there are
primitive people, they are barbarians, and it is our mission to evangelize
them, to civilize them and so on.
0:14:38 Sarah van
Beurden If you have a colonial
project, you need colonials. You need people to organize a reliable
administration. The Belgians have always been rather conservative in these
matters. Back then it was said: Belgians care most about their sons and their
money. They were in two minds whether to go there and to invest there, hence
these important exhibitions.
00:15:08 Maarten
Couttenier There were more than a million
visitors. There were only 6 million Belgians at that time... It must have had
an enormous impact on the colonial propaganda.
00:15:19 Voice
over In the summer of 1897, a
cold snap descended on Belgium. Seven Congolese from the human zoo died as a result
of a flu epidemic. It was in this period that the cinema was born. Very soon,
the new cameras were used to show Belgians images of Congo.
00:15:51 Screen
text Trip to Congo
00:16:41 Voice
over The king’s business in
Congo flourished, as trade in ivory and the exploitation of raw materials such
as rubber yielded enormous profits. Thanks to this ‘heavenly manna’, the king
built a museum devoted entirely to himself and his work in Congo. No fewer than
50 trades and 120 workers laboured full time over 5 years on the majestic
edifice. The marble was imported from Greece, the wrought-iron doors from New
York, and the wood from Canada. To leave no doubt that he was the sole master
of the site, the king had his initials carved 45 times on the building’s walls.
With this museum he was sending a message to all of Europe that the King of the
Belgians was now a power to be reckoned with.
00:18:21 Maarten
Couttenier It had cost a fortune,
something that wouldn't be possible nowadays. That was only possible thanks to
the cheap labour he had in Congo. They were atrociously exploited, but it
resulted in massive profits for him. It would otherwise have been possible.
00:18:41 Voice
over At the turn of the 20th
century, the mask fell. The humanistic façade and false pretext of philanthropy
crumbled. The slavery that the king had claimed to abolish was transformed, on
the rubber plantations, into forced labour. To avoid wasting munitions,
soldiers were to cut off the hands of the fallen and present them as proof. But
this method would give rise to abuses. The atrocities were met with
unprecedented indignation by the international community.
In 1908, Leopold II gave Congo to Belgium. As fate would
have it, he would never see the completion of his museum. The king died a month
before it opened. The day after the funeral, the press reported that during the
funeral procession, spectators shouted: “Leopold II, murderer of the Congo”.
By annexing Congo, Belgium inherited the museum, which it
named Museum of the Belgian Congo. After four months of national mourning,
Albert I inaugurated the building on 30 April 1910. It stands as an enormous,
beautiful totem that Belgium gave itself. A totem that played its part in
composing a national narrative intended to unite the country around powerful
symbols. Belgium, a country barely 80 years old, saw the museum as a way to
forge a historical imagination to be shared by all its citizens.
00:20:47 Bambi
Ceuppens Museums are in fact
a product of the nineteenth century, you might even say of 19th century
nationalism. Its starting point is the idea of the nation as a supposed or
imaginary community. That means people who will never meet one another, who do
not know each other, yet feel there is a bond between them. To create this
solidarity, to create the feeling of a single community, you need a story. And
what you say in that story, or rather what you don't say, is just as important
as what you do say. If you want to tell a nationalistic story, for example
about Belgium, you're not going to begin by talking about conflicts between
Flemings and Walloons, are you? You'll try to emphasize what they have in
common rather than what can separate them. This means that you always work
selectively when creating the story of the nation state that you wish to tell.
The same goes for the museums that were created within the context of that 19th
century nationalism.
00:22:17 Voice
over At the beginning of the
20th century, Europe was in crisis, marked by unprecedented social, political
and economic upheavals. In that context of civilisational unrest, Sigmund Freud
published his key work Totem and Taboo. In it, Freud made a connection between
the human psyche, the way so-called “primitive” tribes functioned, and modern
civilisation. He sought to show how all social structures are based on the same
psychoanalytical foundation, the same prohibitions and the same archaic
symbols.
By labelling Africa as ‘savage’ and ‘primitive’, the museum
offered the young country of Belgium a fantastical vision of the origins of
humanity.
By assimilating the people of Congo with primitive
societies, the museum presented itself as a sort of time machine. African
cultures were presented as vestiges of prehistoric times, as if they were a
testimony from the infancy of humankind in distant ages. Africans were
relegated to the bottom of the ladder of civilisations, with Europeans
enthroned at its summit.
00:24:05 Benoît
de l'Estoile So classifying
others is also a way of speaking about the self. The self is often in fact
present in these museums. They are made by European museographs and are mainly
visited by Europeans, and are a way of presenting others
in a European manner.
00:24:32 Voice
over With the appearance of the
first ethnographic documentation, an imaginary filled with clichés and
stereotypes took form.
00:24:47 Voice
over archive Dancing, a frenetic
haunting rhythm which stirs the whole of Africa, is how the black man prefers
to express himself, translating his emotions.
The tam-tam, to a frenetic, insistent rhythm, the
never-ending tam-tam, bewitching like a drug. This is the other Congo, savage
and scorching, which the white man still has not penetrated completely. The
primitive society that still submits to fetish-men, witchcraft, to the powers
of evil and ritual dances.
00:25:45 Voice
over Yet, far from the
primitives imagined by Belgians, the people of Congo lived in complex,
hierarchical societies. We can see this from the history of the royal Ndop
statues.
The statues come from the land of Kuba, a prestigious empire
founded in central Congo in the 15th century. The Kuba kings had statues made
in their likeness to mark their reign. The objects were a sign of power and
renown.
00:26:25 Professor
Henry Bundjoko Banyata You must
consider the sacred aspect. In the Kuba tribe, the king is like a spirit. Even
when you take the Ndop to the Kubas, the Kubas do not regard the Ndop as a
statue. They see it as a reincarnation of the king who created the object. The
object has become sacred. It is as if the king himself was present.
00:26:54 Voice
over Because of their
prejudices, Europeans saw the statues merely as objects of sorcery, fetishes.
These statues were targeted by missionaries who wanted to
convert Africans to Christianity. If the fetishes were not destroyed by
missionaries, a number were taken back to Belgium and sometimes given to the
museum.
Among them is the Njinda. Originally, this cultic object
served to protect the Pende community. But to the European evangelisers, the
Njinda was a demon to be fought.
The history of the acquisition of the Njinda goes back to
1931 in southern Congo, in the palm nut plantations operated by the oil
producers of the Belgian Congo. Men, women and children were conscripted for
forced labour on the plantations. The colonial State deducted a tax from even
their meagre earnings. The population rebelled and an administrator was killed.
00:28:19 Julien
Volper As regards the Djinda during
this troubled period of revolt, you should realise that several of the leaders
of this revolt were important in the association of what we now know as the
Djinda sect. During this revolt, the Djinda's role is no longer one of
anti-witchcraft, but will be considered as an anti-white fetish. A fetish that
will tell them how to fight the Europeans and with how many.
00:28:51 Voice
over The colonial administration
repressed the rebellion with bloodshed. The Pende chiefs were tried and
executed.
But the missionaries considered the true guilt lay
elsewhere. The religious blamed the Njinda, which they accused of sowing chaos
among the population. They seized the statuette and gave it to the museum. The
museum’s storage is overflowing with artefacts brought back by Belgians during
the colonial occupation. But confiscation was not the only way of growing the
collection.
00:29:35 Sarah
van Beurden However, the largest
part of the ethnographic collection came to the museum in different ways. A lot
of them were donations from former colonials. Another large part was collected
for the museum, but not by the museum. The museum encouraged both colonial
officers to donate objects, as well as colonials who had settled there and of
course missionaries. Over time this became quite an organised system.
Questionnaires were sent out regarding specific objects they were interested
in, asking about the context in which they were found to ascertain the origins
of the objects. So the colonial community became involved in collecting the
objects.
00:30:29 Voice
over In 1910, a scientific
institute was opened at the museum. Its task was to gather a mass of data about
central Africa. For more than a century, it has identified and classified those
data, drawing up an encyclopaedic overview of everything to do with Congo. An
exhaustive inventory of the flora, fauna and objects without equivalent
anywhere in the world.
00:30:57 Benoît
de l'Estoile The museum is
often thought of as a microcosm, a universe in miniature. Starting from a few
objects that have been brought here, this universe will be evoked.
00:31:19 Voice
over Behind the scenes,
researchers are listing all the objects in the museum. Each item is measured,
analysed, labelled, numbered and given a document file. The documents were
organised and arranged into ethnic groups. Naming, classifying and ordering in
a hierarchy was the way for scientists to represent and dominate Congo. The
ethnic groups became the main criterion for classifying the objects. In so
doing, Belgians were merely projecting on Africa their own obsessions with
identity.
00:32:09 Maarten
Couttenier When you recreate
something it will always remain a representation. You cannot take the reality
of Congo, however hard you try, and bring it back with you to Belgium. You can
only reconstruct it.
00:32:27 Voice
over In Africa, the mask
represented a particular world and had its own life. Every mask had its unique
way of moving, dancing, singing. Far from belonging to a single ethnic group,
masks were sometimes lent or traded between different communities. An old mask
was sometimes redesigned, patched up or abandoned in favour of a more
attractive one.
What stories can be told by these objects in this museum
which, for a century, was used to justify colonialism? How can their history
enlighten our understanding of the present?
00:33:36 Bambi
Ceuppens Should we start now,
in the 21st century, armed with the objects that were collected from the 19th
century, or should we first of all try to tell a story? A story that surpasses
the objects, or at least tries to integrate other elements that are not
revealed by these objects.
00:34:03 Voice
over As the country prepared to
celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Belgian Congo, the rhetoric about
colonisation remained unchanged.
00:34:15 Screen
text archive The F.B.I Indigenous
Well-being Foundation presents
“The Bush Evolves”
00:34:26 Voice
over archives What Europeans do in
the overseas territories, is sometimes maligned. However, there are many plus
points. We've introduced hygiene to groups of humans who seemed not to have
advanced since the iron or bronze age. We have brought material comforts to
those living in the forests or the savannah. This is what the white presence in
Africa has achieved.
50 years ago, Leopold II's work was taken over by Belgium.
Order prevails, administration and justice are in place. The colony will be
able to be economically sound.
We have to put unusable traditions behind us, rethink
Congolese housing, draw up innumerable plans, and try out new things. We must
build a new world.
Seated at table now with cutlery and even a tablecloth. This
is unheard of for these girls.
The black man models his dress sense on the white man's.
Traditional Congo, primitive and fascinating, is fading. By
gaining ground, modern industry supplies a new physiognomy, harsher, yet more
familiar.
Hundreds of villagers have left for the urban centres, where
there's money to be earned and pleasure to be had.
The young black's dream is slowly coming true. His education
and knowledge improve constantly. We might not give them real engines yet, but
these run just like them.
00:36:38 Voice
over On 4 January 1959, King
Baudouin promised Congo its independence. A page was turned both for Africa and
for the museum. With independence, the Congo Museum was rebaptised the Royal
Museum of Central Africa, and sought a reason for its existence in a world that
had disappeared. Africa was seeking to reappropriate its history and to make
its culture and arts the launch pad for its emancipation.
00:37:14 Voice
over archive The opening of the
first World Negro Arts festival at Dakar. President Senghor talks of the black
continent's contribution to the world. The world's black writers and artists
from Duke Ellington to Marpessa Dawn and Katherine Dunham met at the Senegalese
capital to celebrate today's cultural awareness of Africa.
00:37:38 Sarah
van Beurden In the context of
African decolonisation throughout the whole African continent, culture and
cultural identity become very important. They play an essential role in the
projection of independence and uniqueness. This is considered something that
has to be wrested from the former colonial rulers.
00:38:07 Voice
over Zaire was part of that
movement. With his desire to return to its authentic African identity and to
rid itself of western domination, Mobutu demanded that the Museum return works
of art.
On 29 March 1976, the museum officially returned to the
Kinshasa museum one of its three Ndop statues. The return of this piece marked
the beginning of a collaboration between Belgium and Zaire. Between 1976 and
1982, the Royal Museum of Central Africa donated 160 pieces to the Zaire
museum. But the collaboration between the two countries would not last long.
00:39:02 Guido
Gryseels The museum of Tervuren sent back
176 pieces to Congo, and 600 back to Rwanda. The objects are still there in
Rwanda, also in the museum, but in Congo most of the pieces were stolen a few
years afterwards. They were exported illegally and at present are to be found
among art-dealers or in private collections.
00:39:27 Voice
over Unable to address the
impact of decolonisation on the story it told, the museum became a sort of
fossilised object.
It stood as a palace of colonial memory frozen in time, a
storehouse of souvenirs from a bygone era where Belgium believed it was
spreading civilisation in Africa.
For children of the African diaspora, a visit to Tervuren
was nevertheless a form of aggression. The museum struck them as a kind of
Congo Park for Belgians, reducing Africa to its supposed savagery and its
history to primitive traditions.
00:40:26 Bambi
Ceuppens I think that it's
impossible to imagine that there would be a museum in Belgium on the history of
woman, that would be completely mounted by men without a single woman being
involved in the creation of the exhibition or the narrative that would be told
in the exhibition and so on.
00:40:55 Voice
over The hoped-for change came
in 2001, with the appointment of a new director, who would make renovation his
priority.
00:41:05 Guido
Gryseels The renovation basically took
shape from within the museum itself, although in recent years there has been a
change in mentality both on a political and external level. More and more, the
Independent State of Congo is being called into question and colonialism itself
is also being questioned. There is also today's problem with a multicultural
society, of racism and of people from African origin who find it difficult to
find work or proper housing. Does it have something to do with a number of
Europeans who feel superior towards Africans? These issues are now very clearly
on the table. I have to admit that we, as a museum, played our own particular
role.
00:41:58 Voice
over More than a mere
refurbishment of the building, the museum seeks to become the first colonial
museum in the world to face its origins head on. To do so would take a
spiritual revolution and a redeployment of its collections so as to resonate
with the big debates of today. A museum on Africa and on the history of
colonialism, certainly, but for whom? For what reason? And how?
00:43:01 Bambi
Ceuppens Visiting a museum is
similar to giving a lesson: the principal is not what people know at the end of
it, but the sort of questions they ask. "That is interesting."
"I would like to know more about that." "I had never really
looked at it that way." "I'd never thought about it before", and
so on. So, in fact... in my mind visiting a museum is not simply an end of
something, but also a beginning of something else.
00:43:52 Voice
over In time, the museum has,
paradoxically, become a place for the preservation and conservation of
Congolese heritage, in opposition to its commercialisation. But isn’t it time
to address the question of returning its artworks to Congo?
00:44:20 Sarah
van Beurden One important reason
why restitution is somewhat of a controversial matter, lies in the word
restitution itself. Restitution is something you do to make good for something.
You acknowledge that you have made a mistake and make a restitution. So, for
the European museums to go along with this idea of restitution, under the term
restitution, means that you acknowledge... ...that you concede mistakes were
made in the colonial past.
00:44:54 Julien
Volper For me, these objects are part
of the history of Belgium, and also a part of Europe's history. In the same way
that the Garden of Earthly Delights, the painting on a panel by Hieronymus
Bosch housed at the Prado, is also part of the history of Spain. Why is this
painting that has nothing to do with Spain in the Prado? Because at a certain
moment, Belgium, which didn't exist as Belgium at that time, was invaded and
occupied by the Spanish, and became part of the Kingdom of Spain. And that
becomes part of the history of the objects.
00:45:38 Professor
Paul Bakua-Lufu Badibanga But we are
focusing on the acquisitions of the Royal Museum of Africa, because of the
methods used in acquiring objects, which were, shall we say, not altogether as
they should have been. I already told you that the missionaries sometimes
tricked the people. They'd say that they were going to burn the fetishes. But
they didn't burn them. They simply brought them back to Europe. Then there were
the territorial agents who would sometimes snatch the objects they thought were
very valuable and bring them back to Europe, and so on. Of course a great
number of the objects were acquired in a proper manner, in a way legally.
However, in the case of a certain number of objects there are problems as
regards their acquisition.
00:46:37 Guido
Gryseels It's not easy. Even if I wished
to offer restitution tomorrow, this has to be approved by the Belgian state:
the federal parliament, the Walloon parliament, the Flemish parliament, the
Brussels and the German parliaments. That would take a few years. The moral
ownership of the pieces lies of course back in Congo. It is at the origin of
the objects. We are simply their keeper, the guardians of their heritage. But
that discussion goes far beyond museum matters. What always strikes me when I
hear people talking about restitution, is that it always concerns the pieces in
museums from the public sector. However, there are many pieces in private
collections, and one could ask oneself how they got to be there.
00:47:45 Voice
over How will the museum respond
if a request for return were made by a community or village?
00:48:03 Baku
Kapita Alphonse He took the fetish and
took it with him to Europe. And now it's in a museum in your country. So this
is all that I have to remind me of my grandfather.
This is my grandfather in the middle. He was the one who
ruled the kingdom. Mr Delcommune took everything and had it shipped to Europe.
It belongs to and is cherished by my family. We have to recuperate the fetish
and bring it back here. Because, as he was just saying, it belongs to us. It
has to be here where it belongs, so that it can used as our ancestors once used
it.
00:49:17 Professor
Henry Bundjoko Banyata I believe
that if these objects would be returned to their villages of origin, it would
send a strong message. The people in those villages who handled those objects,
the people who made them, are they still there? The objects have to be returned
in good condition so that they be used again. But there is the risk of them
falling into the wrong hands, people who would try to steal the objects and
sell them elsewhere. That would be a double loss as well as having done all
that work for nothing.
00:49:56 Voice
over While awaiting the
resolution of the cultural dispute between Belgium and Congo, the museum plans
to launch additional partnerships in Africa. At the heart of Dakar, the future
Museum of Black Civilizations, aimed at making African art known around the
world, may well be the first such partner.
00:50:42 Hamady
Bocoum In my mind,
circulating the people's heritage is important for museums, for Africa, for the
diaspora, for everyone. For example, here at this museum, we look forward to
welcoming exhibitions that introduce us to different peoples. We can't sit and
contemplate our navels. We want to learn about others. We no longer want to be
regarded as objects of curiosity.
00:51:18 Voice
over Black people were long an
object of curiosity for Europeans, an anthropological reality that fed
erroneous and racist images of Africa.
00:51:35 Guido
Gryseels For most Belgian children, their
first experience of Africa is in this museum. For generations, this museum has
been a reflection of the superiority of the whites over the blacks. Obviously
this has contributed to the problems of a multicultural society and to today's
all too present problems. The major renovation work has gone a lot further than
simply putting together another permanent exhibition. It is a change of
mindset, it is a cultural transformation of the way we think, the way we see
Africa, the way we do research, and of the way we enter into dialogue.
00:52:24 Voice
over Becoming a centre for
discussions of Africa today, while revisiting the colonial past, is the
ambition of the museum now renamed the Africa Museum. Will the museum be able
to rise to this challenge?