Authentically African: arts and the transnational politics of Congolese culture by Sarah Van Beurden (review)

The cover image of Authentically African is a 2002 painting by Congolese artist Chéri Samba from the collection of the Royal Museum of Central Africa, Tervuren, depicting a struggle between the Belgian staff of the Tervuren Museum and a group of Congolese officials from the Institut des Musées Nationaux du Zaire (IMNZ). The grand edifice of the Tervuren Museum is on the left; an imperious Belgian director oversees a corpulent museum worker tugging on the straps of a dolly holding a towering bronze statue of a Leopard Man–a reference to the secret societies that, at least in the eyes of the Belgians, terrorized the Congo. At the base of the steps stand Congolese museum officials who are pulling the Leopard Man away from the museum, surrounded by forest foliage and elephants. One has to wonder whether Chéri Samba painted this picture for the book, since it so perfectly illustrates the themes that run through Van Beurden's trenchant history of the cultural politics of the Congo in the colonial and postcolonial periods.

Using extensive archival documentation from Belgium and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as well as interviews with many of the key players, Sarah Van Beurden explores how cultural objects, collected as ethnology or art, have been used for over a century to define and justify the Belgian colonial project, as well as in Mobutu's promotion of Zaire and himself, and in the construction of the image of the Congo in the international arena. Ongoing arguments over claims of restitution and changing strategies of acquisition and exhibition in Belgium, in the Congo, and in the United States from the 1960s to the 1980s are explored in depth. Van Beurden shows how the collections in Tervuren and the IMNZ were used politically and economically in these different contexts.

The history of the Tervuren Museum, originally constructed by King Leopold II to promote his 'accomplishments' in the Congo Free State, is placed in the context of an ongoing dialogue between Belgians in the colony and those in Europe, as well as with various Congolese players. The plundering, exportation and marketing of Africa's cultural treasures is well known, but this book also describes attempts to establish local museums, art workshops and training programmes in different parts of the colony. The tensions between Belgium's roles as both plunderer and guardian are replicated in the colony and later in post-independence Zaire in struggles between the capital, Kinshasa, identified with Mobutu, and the diverse cultures and regions within the country.

The history of the IMNZ as a creation of the Belgians, its role in Zairianization and Mobutuization, and its struggles in the aftermath of Mobutu's reign is a fascinating and often overlooked part of African history. We would be well served to have other such detailed studies from other countries, both because they are histories of art and because the lens of cultural politics enables us to grasp the way in which nations fashion and project themselves.

Authentically African examines the history of Belgian collecting and the establishment of the museum in Tervuren. The author first describes the different types of collecting carried out by explorers, missionaries, colonial officials and eventually government ethnologists, at times with the assistance–but often in the shadow–of Congolese facilitators. She examines the way in which the many exhibitions that took place in Tervuren, or that Tervuren circulated elsewhere, created and used the categories of ethnography and art, stylistic areas and ethnic groupings. Alongside the economic exploitation of the natural and human resources of the Congo, and the political conflicts surrounding these activities, art and ethnography seemed to be a benign playing field. This book deftly explores the way in which art also became a marketable resource and a source of conflict in different contexts.

Van Beurden's central argument...