VERVUREN: The Belgian African Museum, once the celebration of the country’s colonial government, will begin a multi-year process to return stolen art to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Belgian government said on Tuesday.
From the end of the 19th to 1960, thousands of artwork including wooden sculptures, elephant ivory masks, scripts and musical instruments may be taken by Belgium and other European collectors, scientists, explorers and soldiers.
Following a reshuffle of 66 million euros ($ 78 million) the African Museum to take a more critical view of the Belgian colonial past, the government is ready to fulfill the DRC call for restitution.
“The approach is very simple: everything obtained through illegal ways, through theft, through violence, through looting, must be given back,” said Minister of Junior Belgium Thomas Dermine told Reuters.
“It’s not ours.” Millions of Conglings are expected to have died because of the end of the 19th century when the first Congo was the personal Fiefdom of King Leopold II, before becoming a Belgian state colony.
Belgium will transfer legal ownership of artifacts to DRC.
But it will not immediately send artwork to the country from the museum in Vervuren, right outside Brussels, unless they are specifically requested by the DRC authority.
That’s partly because the museum, which has been proven popular since renovation and attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors before the Covid-19 pandemic, wanted to keep artifacts on display.
One option is to pay the borrowing fee to the DRC.
Belgium said the Congo Authority was aware of a larger audience in Belgium compared to the DRC, which is one of the poorest countries in the world, according to the United Nations.
It has several cultural centers or storage facilities.
“The museum believes will be able to work with the Congo Authority, as in international institutions, to maintain objects in Belgium through a loan agreement,” said the Director of the Gryseels Guido Museum.
The museum also has a large number of artifacts that are originally unclear.
It hopes to use a team of scientists and experts for the next five years to identify them and separate those obtained legally by the museum.
“In five years with many resources we can do many things, but it can work for the next 10 to 20 years to be truly sure of all the objects we have, that we know the right situation where they are obtained,” said Gryseels , Placide Mumbembele Sanger, an anthropology professor at Kinshasa University who worked in the museum in Tervuren, said the process was simple.
“This is an object that returns to their natural context so I don’t see why we have to ask so many questions,” he said.
“As if you go out and someone stole your wallet and that person asks if you are ready to have it or not.”
Belgium started a long way to restore Congolese artwork looted
