Des mises en scène de curiosités aux chefs-d'œuvre mis en scène. Le Musée royal de l'Afrique à Tervuren : un siècle de collections

Bouttiaux, Anne-Marie

doi:10.3406/cea.1999.1768

Cited by 15 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Bouttiaux defended that decision, arguing that the objects in the permanent exhibition had in a sense also been 'hidden', given the poor presentation and lighting. 21 Coming from the museum's own staff, this statement equals a declaration of institutional bankruptcy.…”

Section: Remnants Of Colonial Propagandamentioning

confidence: 98%

Visualizing trauma: the Belgian Museum for Central Africa and its discontents

Hoenig¹

2014

Postcolonial Studies

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Fresh debates on the hybrid character of truth and identity undermine the authority of knowledge, and, as a consequence, its production and dissemination through public and thus officially sanctioned institutions. Kratz and Rassool argue that the museum, a flagship institution of knowledge dissemination, is fast becoming a site of narrative contests, producing a 'tug-of-war' that decentres values and expectations of curators and visitors alike. 1 The contestation of truth in competing narratives is the backdrop against which I started my engagement with the question of representation of 'Africa' and Belgian colonial rule in the permanent exhibition of the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) up to the time of its temporary closure, for renovation, in December 2013. In an attempt to present fresh frames for retrieving memories from collective trauma, the article links discursive formations in the sphere of museology with recent debates on transitional justice, keeping in mind that the notion of 'dialogical truth' emerges from 'interaction, discussion and debate'. 2 The article comes in five sections. It opens with a tour of the permanent exhibition of the RMCA on the eve of its closing, weaving together the existing literature on the museum and my own observations. Next it sheds light on the origins of the museum and resultant controversies over the (mis)representation of colonialism in former colonial institutions. The essay goes on to explain, against the background of research on memory and trauma, how alternate forgetting and remembering of Belgian colonial rule translates into omissions and ambiguities in the permanent exhibition. The article proposes alternative frames for addressing the colonial dimension of Belgium's past and present relationship with Central Africa and eventually asks the question whether new beginnings are possible. In writing the article, I have drawn extensively from my own observations, interactions with museum staff, correspondence with academics and practitioners, and a range of primary and secondary sources many of which I consulted during repeat trips to Brussels for archival research in another contested metropolitan institution, the Royal Library of Belgium. A museum tourThe RMCA is one of 10 federal scientific institutions in Belgium, located in Tervuren, a small municipality on the outskirts of Brussels, the national capital. The first visit I paid to the permanent and temporary exhibitions of the RMCA in the course of this research-more were to follow in the months ahead-fell on a cold sunny day in February 2013. City dwellers visibly enjoyed taking a stroll in the lavish museum grounds, and visitors queued to have a peek at the temporary

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Section: Remnants Of Colonial Propagandamentioning

confidence: 98%

Visualizing trauma: the Belgian Museum for Central Africa and its discontents

Hoenig¹

2014

Postcolonial Studies

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“…As a metaphor, the collections are already considered in their fictional dimension, given that the concrete correspondence as such is impossible. Visual collections such as photography and films, like other colonial museum collections, are subject to criticism (Clifford 1997;Bouttiaux 1999;Couttenier 2005;Edwards, Gosden & Phillips 2006;Wastiau 2017). Unlike artefacts collected in the former colonies, visual collections were produced by the colonisers.…”

Section: Institutional Framing Of Colonial Images: Ambivalent Tropesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Across Anthropology

Oswald¹,

Tinius²

2020

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understands these institutions as caught up in a temporal dilemma: being at the same time sites for the negotiation of contemporary identity politics and the recognition of colonial pasts, while remaining caught up in a paradoxical anachronism. "What, then, constitutes the contemporary at a time of anachronism?", he asks, prodding at the fraught relation between contemporary art, modernism, and post-modernism to think of a possible anthropology of the contemporary. Note1. We also do not intend to associate the concerns articulated in this book to those revolving around posthuman debates on robotics and artificial intelligence (Braidotti 2013; Atanasoski and Vora 2019). In this sense, our propositions are related to but distinct from experimental methodologies and analytics, such as the "alter-anthropological" (Hage 2012: 286), where "critical anthropological thought can generate new problematics (…)", and the "para-sitical" offered for debate by Deeb and Marcus (2011) to reflect on the creation of ethnographic situations.2. The research that led to this piece was also funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation as part of the research award for Sharon Macdonald's Alexander von Humboldt Professorship. We are grateful to CARMAH and all colleagues who contributed to making our joint research stimulating and productive. Additionally and in particular, we wish to thank Sharon Macdonald, Thomas Fillitz, and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on our introduction.

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“…The exhibition transformed into a permanent museum, a new building for which was finished in 1910 (Wynants 1997;Bouttiaux 1999;Couttenier 2005aCouttenier , 2005b. From the beginning, one of the museum's main goals was to dispel misgivings about the colony among the Belgian population, which was historically apprehensive about its king's colonial undertakings and had shown significant resistance to the takeover of the Congo by the Belgian state.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Value of Culture: Congolese Art and the Promotion of Belgian Colonialism (1945–1959)

Beurden¹

2013

History and Anthropology

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Des mises en scène de curiosités aux chefs-d'œuvre mis en scène. Le Musée royal de l'Afrique à Tervuren : un siècle de collections

Cited by 15 publications

References 0 publications

Visualizing trauma: the Belgian Museum for Central Africa and its discontents

Visualizing trauma: the Belgian Museum for Central Africa and its discontents

Across Anthropology

The Value of Culture: Congolese Art and the Promotion of Belgian Colonialism (1945–1959)

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