Description from the Museum:By examining the use of masks in dances, rituals and the belief system they serve and represent, the book also explores their concrete and symbolic roles as objects that are "devitalized" once they have been removed from their environment. They raise questions about identity, self-respect and the perception of the "Other" in Western society. A mask hides an identity, or reveals it. The traditional mask, used during African ceremonies and festivals, is always more than the wooden face worn by the dancer: it allows an entity to take shape, with its own way of dancing and moving. The wearer transforms into another person, a deity, sometimes even an animal. The exhibition presents 180 masks in an original way, grouped according to 18 themes including the history of the collection and the role of the mask in communication with the supernatural, in the harvest, during initiation rituals, at funerals, etc.Catalogue of the exhibition co-published by the Royal Museum for Central Africa and 5 Continents, in English, French and Dutch. Written by Anne-Marie Bouttiaux, the exhibition's organizer, this work also includes an essay by Roger Pierre Turine. ISBN 978-88-7439-513-2. Additional information is available at www.africamuseum.be.

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From Displaying Curious to Showing Masterpieces: the Musee Royal de l'Afrique In Tervuren, Belgium, a Century of Collecting. — For a century now, the ethnological section of the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, has managed a vast collection of objects. At the start, sculptures were exhibited for neither aesthetic nor scientific purposes; they merely served as an exotic decor for colonial propaganda. Over time, some of these sculptures have attained recognition as "masterpieces", whereas others have been catalogued as the material evidence of given cultures. The way these objects have acquired status in a museum with many other sections of natural and human sciences is described.

This paper explores some of the methodological and theoretical challenges raised by the presentation of masks from the Guro region of the Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in Persona, a 2009 exhibition at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium. Along the Ivory Coast, masquerades are popular, but they also take place during important rituals such as campaigns against witchcraft, funeral ceremonies, and propitiatory cult events. Masks are used in dance performances, and these can only be related in a museum context through texts, photographs, music, and videos. Yet in spite of such efforts to communicate the dynamism of living cultures, exhibitions often become a kind of cenotaph, as if these cultures were dead. Museums thus tend to have a “deadening effect” on living cultures, placing them in a timeless and false past. How can we deal with this aspect of the displays, especially when we know that today's masquerades are profoundly influenced by modernity and urban culture?

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