Object Biographies and Museums: 100 X Congo in Antwerp, Exhibition at the Museum aan de Stroom, Antwerp, Belgium, 3 October 2020 - 12 September 2021

Authors

  • Hugo DeBlock Ghent University and Royal Academy of Fine Arts/School of Arts Ghent

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29311/mas.v19i3.3783

Keywords:

art, anthropology, museology, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Belgium

Abstract

The Museum aan de Stroom (MAS) in Antwerp, Belgium, opened the doors of its long-anticipated exhibition, 100 X Congo, on 3 October 2020, highlighting the presence of a Congolese art collection that has been owned by the city for a hundred years (1920-2020). Tackling the often uneasy history of how these things ended up in museums in the colonial ‘motherland’, this exhibition signals a step forwards in museology in Belgium, away from mere aestheticism of Congolese and, by extension, African arts, towards, in contrast, a focus on provenance, context and cultural importance.

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Published

11/01/2021

How to Cite

DeBlock, H. (2021). Object Biographies and Museums: 100 X Congo in Antwerp, Exhibition at the Museum aan de Stroom, Antwerp, Belgium, 3 October 2020 - 12 September 2021. Museum & Society, 19(3), 395–409. https://doi.org/10.29311/mas.v19i3.3783

Issue

Vol. 19 No. 3 (2021): Open Issue

Section

Viewpoint

License

Copyright remains with the author(s) of the article. This article can be re-used according to the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0  licence.