ExitCongoMuseum: a Century of Art with/without Papers.

Musee Royal de l'Afrique Centrale Tervuren, Belgium November 24, 2000-June 24, 2001

The fame of the Muse Royal de l'Afrique Centrale resides in its vast holdings of approximately 160,000 objects from central Africa, of which only about 1,600 are on display, and in its 90,000 archival photographs. The extent of this fame, however, is primarily confined to scholars, anthropologists, ethnologists, art historians, collectors, and dealers in African art who go to the museum to view some of the greatest Congo artworks, to pursue research in the reserve collections, and to make use of the extraordinary wealth of documents.

The Muse Royal de l'Afrique Centrale was built to "promote" the Belgian colony, a mandate that continued until the Belgian Congo's independence. Ambitious in its undertaking, the provocative and thoughtful exhibition "ExitCongoMuseum: A Century of Art with / without Papers" challenged the specialist and engaged the general public by shedding new light on the 125 pieces considered to be the masterpieces of the Tervuren collection. It aimed not only to provide for the first time a critical reflection on the history of these holdings but to start an open-ended debate on the museum's role in the future, and consequently on what kind of museology should replace the colonial presentation of the permanent collection. The dramatic opening suggested these intentions: the first object encountered was an anthropomorphic Ngata coffin, presented diagonally within a large rectangular case. It acted as a metaphor for entombment, interpretable both as a reference to the depletion of material culture from the African continent and as an expression of the curator's view of a museum stagnating in its mission and old-fashioned museology.

The title of the exhibition provided the basis for its organization. The first section, "Exit Congo" (Fig. 1), traced the ways in which these pieces left central Africa during the colonial period through military and ethnographic campaigns, trade, missionaries, collectors, and museum curators. The second, "Ex-CongoMuseum-`Congoworld,'" examined the various new functions or "lives" of the objects once they entered the Muse Royal de l'Afrique Centrale (Fig. 2). The exhibition's curator, Boris Wastiau, adjunct curator in the museum's department of ethnography, explains in the accompanying catalogue that "initially the objects were used as colonial propaganda, later became mediators in the formation of a popular image of the Congo and its inhabitants," and then were used to illustrate "Primitivism," "authenticity," and style (ExitCongoMuseum, p. 37). He underlines the flaws in each of these functions, flaws which derive from colonial domination and Eurocentricism. The latter is reflected, for example, in "the rejection of cultural hybridisation and transformation," developments that occur in the making of objects over the course of time. This historical point of view, however, has already begun to be addressed in both scholarship and exhibitions, precisely so that "the casting of objects in molds that suggest static identities"--a prevailing approach in the past--is indeed giving way to an understanding of the "fluid nature of regional interaction and exchange systems." (1) The third and final section, "Exit Museum, The Contact Zone," opened a debate that aims to establish an interaction between the viewer and the object so that the museum may become "a real meeting ground between cultures, and a true contact zone" (Wastiau, catalogue p. 37).

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How were these concepts articulated visually? Almost all of the 125 objects presented in the first two sections, ingeniously displayed in red wedge-shaped wooden modules (diagonally bisected cubes) two meters tall, illustrated and connected subthemes of the three major section themes. These connections, however, were not easy to understand except in the case of the subthemes that related directly to the histories of the various owners of these works--"Soldiers and Trophies," "Missionaries and Fetishes," "Administrators and Borders." Other secondary themes, such as "Arbiters of Authenticity" and "Preservers of the Primitive," required the viewer to read the extensive documentation accompanying the objects in order to even understand the reason for the grouping. The last section presented a series of commissioned pieces by contemporary artists that spilled over into the museum's permanent galleries.

Each module in the first two sections displayed objects below eye level--often one had to bend to see them--as crowded, poorly lit ensembles. In some instances, such as the cluster of works relating to the theme of "collector," the presentation prompted the visitor to disregard the object and only read the panels and labels or look at the slides projected on the side walls alongside maps and drawings. Wastiau clearly stated his intent about the role of the works in this exhibition, writing in the catalogue that the show did not "concentrate on the objects' `universal' aesthetic qualities, but on their `moving' history, their displacements, the actual and intangible borders they [had] crossed and the social and cultural interactions in which they [had] played a part, frequently the role of mediator" (p. 9). One must ask, however, whether it was necessary to diminish the objects in making these points. As it was, the installation might well have turned away visitors interested in both the art and the ideological content of the exhibition. This provocative presentation certainly made its point, in the second section, particularly in connection with the theme of the anonymity of the African artist, but what was the rationale for its presence in the first?

The extensive historical documentation took the form of written texts, 18 maps and drawings, and 148 slides of archival photos. These slides, projected on the walls in thematic groups of ten to sixteen, visually reinforced the stories of the objects' complex journeys. The graphic beauty of many of the historical documents added an unexpected aesthetic dimension to the otherwise straight forward display. Three striking examples come to mind. At the entrance one saw a photograph of the port of Antwerp, taken at the turn of the last century; the image, depicting boats leaving for the Congo, was enlarged to a monumental scale and projected onto a floating white cloth that sent visitors off on their own exhibition journey. Another effective document was the delicate and intricate cross-section drawing (1907) by the museum's architect, Charles Giraud, illustrating the arrangement of the galleries with the panoply of weapons. Finally, a monumental Congo map (1928) painted on canvas by Allard L'Olivier--a commission for the railroad company of the Lower Belgian Congo-closed the second section. This map symbolically takes up the theme illustrated in the photograph opening the exhibition by visually reinforcing the theme of the voyage, the movement and displacement of human beings and objects.

Whereas the ten modules in the first two sections provided visual coherence, the display in the final section--of contemporary works contrasting in scale, media, and concept--challenged the visitor (Figs. 2, 3). The curator of this final section, the Congolese artist Toma Muteba Luntumbue, invited seven other artists to work with him: Edith Dekyndt, Luc Tuymans, Johan Muyle, and Philip Aguirre y Otegui of Belgium; David Hammons of the United States; Audry Liseron-Monfils of Guadeloupe; and Barthelemy Toguo of Cameroon. All their pieces except for David Hammons's were commissioned for this display. To pursue the investigation of the museum's possible new role, contemporary works were scattered throughout the permanent galleries.

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Could one view this section as a rupture with the historical past? As a new interpretation of this past? As a stimulus to each visitor to imagine new museological orientations for the Musee Royal de l'Afrique Centrale? Indeed, the presence of these contemporary works was not necessarily conceived to arouse aesthetic feeling but rather to allow various audiences and communities to bring to the museum "a wide range of historical experiences and political agendas." (2) As noted in the website for this exhibition, in this way "unlimited and contradictory points of view" were offered to the visitor so that the museum became a "space for critical expression."

I was drawn to two contemporary works: Luntumbue's Le Musee de Gilberte, an experiment in practical criticism, (3) and David Hammons's breathtaking Chasing the Blue Train. Both pieces in their own ways echoed issues presented in the first two sections, as they addressed indifference and the displacement of peoples and raw materials.

If "ExitCongoMuseum" intended to present many hidden stories of Tervuren's 125 masterpieces in a provocative deconstructionist discourse in which the object was approached from a sociological and economic point of view, it definitely succeeded. It also succeeded in thwarting some of the visitor's expectations by occluding the "traditional" Congo object as a formal sculptural work and by including provocative contemporary pieces in order to open up the debate on the museum's new orientation. The exhibition did break old molds, and its curator can be recognized for challenging conventions. Successfully critical, did "ExitCongoMuseum" offer constructive alternatives? Did its discourse of "otherness," new to the Musee Royal de l'Afrique Centrale, add to the already fertile postcolonialist interrogations?

(1.) Alisa LaGamma, "New Direction for the Arts of Equatorial Africa," in East of the Atlantic, West of the Congo: Art from Equatorial Africa: The Dwight and Blossom Strong Collection by Leon Siroto, ed. Kathleen Berrin (The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1995), p. 54.

(2.) James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 20; cited by Wastiau in the catalogue, p. 80.

(3.) Toma Muteba Luntumbue was the first Congolese artist to have been asked by the Tervuren museum not only to participate but also to take on an active role as a guest curator for the contemporary section. In Le Musee de Gilberte, Luntumbue asked Gilberte, a museum guard who had just retired, to choose the contents. Tellingly, none of the selected pieces were related to her experience of discovering the objects and history of the Congo.

Two catalogues related to the exhibition are available from the Musee Royal de l'Afrique Centrale, Tervuren: ExitCongoMuseum: An Essay on the "Social Life" of the Masterpieces of the Tervuren Museum" (2000; 94 pp., 43 b/w illustrations, 12 maps, bibliography; 250 BEF softcover), with an essay by Boris Wastiau; and "ExitCongoMuseum: Contemporary Art" (2001), edited by Toma Muteba Luntumbue and Claire Poinas.

MARIE-THERESE BRINCARD, formerly director of the exhibition program at the African-American Institute in New York and senior curator at the American Federation of Arts, serves as a curatorial adviser to American and European museums. Her publications include Sounding Forms: African Musical Instruments (1989) and The Art of Metal (1983),