Belgian imperialism: the colonisation of the Congo | Thinkpiece | Architectural Review
▻https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/belgian-imperialism-the-colonisation-of-the-congo/10034809.article
The architectural and urban colonial legacy of the Congo should not be seen through the prism of a Belgian-Congolese context, but from a global perspective
Early December 2018, the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) in Tervuren, built between 1904 and 1908 at the initiative of Leopold II, is going to re-open its doors after a long and intensive renovation process. Following a masterplan by Flemish architect Stéphane Beel, the old building is now restored to its original grandeur by dismantling ad hoc interventions that occurred in and on the historical building over the course of time. A newly designed reception pavilion and a series of underground rooms for temporary exhibitions will completely reconfigure the approach of the world-renowned collections, encompassing ethnographic artefacts, historical maps and documents, zoological species, mining resources, etc. The RMCA is deeply entangled with the identity of Belgium. As Herman Asselberghs and Dieter Lesage noted in their 1999 provocative plea for rethinking what they considered the ‘museum of the nation’, it is the Belgian place par excellence that embodies most effectively ‘the strangeness of our own history’. Rather than just displaying ‘foreign masks’, the museum in their view illustrates first and foremost that at one point in history, Belgium had an interest in ‘displaying and looking at such foreign masks’.