Why Belgian museum could return artifacts to Congo

Masks, animal hides, necklaces, statues, knives, gems, spears, drums and skeletons are just a selection of the many items of cultural importance to the Democratic Republic of Congo that are sitting in collections outside of the country.

Belgium's Royal Museum for Central Africa has started the process of researching and cataloging its enormous collection of 129,000 cultural objects. It is a first step towards the possible restitution of items that were stolen during imperial times, when Belgium colonized what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In 2022, Belgium adopted a law calling for works that were stolen or obtained by manipulation to be returned to where they came from.

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The Royal Museum for Central Africa, which is based in Tervuren, has now launched a 'Rethinking' exhibition to shed light on different approaches to provenance research. Two-thirds of the museum's collection comes from the DRC, which Belgium ruled between 1885 and 1960.

The museum's director says improving international ties are easing the way forward for possible restitution. "We see that our relations between Europeans and Africans, for example, are more and more becoming a relationship between equals which before, certainly in the colonial era, was not the case," said Bart Ouvry, the director of the Royal Museum for Central Africa.

"And so it's this partnership which means we need to look at our past with a very open and sometimes critical mind.”

The Royal Museum for Central Africa was built in 1897 for Belgian King Leopold II to showcase his personal possession - the Congo Free State.

The king wanted to use the building to publicize his enormous colony - where he said he would guarantee free trade but which became symbolic of the violence and exploitation of European imperial rule in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Some European colonizers kept ledgers and registers of the artifacts and animal trophies they took, and those records can help with tracing an object's history. Photographs also aid curators in their research.

But often working out where an artifact came from, who it belonged to, when it was acquired, and how it made its way to Europe is almost impossible.

"In so many cases, we simply don't have any documents to know about when it is about the earliest period before the First World War," said Hein Vanhee, a historian and researcher.

"You kind of also rely in most cases on oral history that otherwise could be studied still, so it is extremely difficult. You need to be lucky as a provenance researcher.”

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