Belgium To Begin Returning Looted Art to Democratic Rebublic of Congo

Belgium To Begin Returning Looted Art to Democratic Rebublic of Congo

Last month, a panel of independent art historians, scholars  and experts submitted a report that urged the Belgian government to identify and return art objects looted during colonial rule to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Belgian officials yesterday took steps to adopt this recommendation.

A government cabinet has now approved a plan for a bilateral partnership with the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo "to take a coordinated and shared approach to the question of objects acquired in an illegitimate manner during the colonial era.”

Belgium had controlled a large part of central Africa during the 1900s and this colonial rule period culminated in the 1960s. Missionaries, soldiers, and officials representating King Leopold II took items, often illegally and violently, from the DRC and other African territories Belgium controlled and carried them to Belgium. Some of these items ended up at the museums, while others were divvied by collectors and organizations and distributed across Europe and North America.

The Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren is Belgium's largest institutional holder of colonial era art and cultural artifacts, and its director, Guido Gryseels, stated that he fully agrees with the approved plan, stating that "things that have been stolen or acquired by violence should be returned." This sentiment is also espoused on the Royal Museum of Central Africa's website with a message acknowledging that it is “not normal for such a large part of African cultural heritage to be found in the West.”

A Belgian official Thomas Dermine told the Art Newspaper that about 280, or 0.3 percent, of the objects in the Royal Museum of Central Africa’s collection have been identified as loot, while around 60 percent were acquired legitimately. For the remaining 40 percent, acquisition circumstances remain unknown. However, the recommendation from the panel also advocate for the creation of a neutral entity to evaluate requests and conduct provenance research.

The proposed collaboration would include projects to conserve, research, inventory, and restore objects, and could involve Belgian government support for a national museum in DRC that opened in the city of Kinshasa in 2019.

Reflecting on Dermine's vision, Gryseels noted that “separating the legal ownership of the material from physical transfer...is very innovative." He further noted that the plan makes the provision for a legal representative to travel to DRC to decide whether objects that have been acquired through violence should be returned or if the DRC would prefer a “rental fee.”

He however pointed out that the biggest challenge to this provision is financial.

“It can only be feasible if [Dermine] gives additional means to do provenance research on our collection. At the moment, for a lot of objects, we simply don’t know where or when the exact process of ownership transfer happened.

“Second, you cannot separate this from a program for strengthening capacity and for building new storage spaces and training people in restoration and management of collections” in DRC, he said.

“We share his vision, but it will take at least a year to operationalize the whole thing,” Gryseels added.

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