to a minimum, with only a brief identification of the object (such as “chief’s seat” or “statue of woman”) and the “tribe” of origin. In some cases Olbrechts added an extra line about the style (such as the “Buli style”) or the person depicted (in the case of the royal Kuba statues).
The decision to focus on a limited number of objects, stripped of their context, represented a culmination of the trend whereby certain pieces of African material culture migrated from the status of artifact to the status of art. This “art-culture system,” “a system of thinking in which a binary opposition—in this case “art” and “artifact”—generates a field of meanings,” as James Clifford described it, reinvented African objects as singular, universally beautiful, and “authentic.”96 Olbrechts’s use of the concept of “masterpiece” shows his ambitions for the status and place of African art objects in the museum. Traditionally used in Western art to refer to the most skillful and beautiful pieces, the term implies a creation that rises above the general level of production of art. In the context of African art, and in particular at Tervuren, the concept of the masterpiece functioned in a number of ways. While elevating the culture of origin to the level of an art-producing civilization, it simultaneously removed the objects from that cultural background and made them symbolic of the collection itself—in this case, the museum of Tervuren.97 Their recognition as masterpieces was situated entirely in the West and appropriated them for Western collectors and museums. Locating masterpieces among the African objects stimulated the cultural, but also the financial, value of both these objects and of others like them, benefiting mostly collectors and dealers of African art and stimulating their continued circulation.
Arjun Appadurai has described this process as the “aesthetics of decontexualization,” a process of “diversion” of the regular flow of commodities whereby the value of things increases by placing them in an unlikely context.98 The heightened profile of certain sculptural objects, raised by scholarship and display, increased their economic value. This commodification contributed to the objects’ redefinition as another exceptional resource for the colony, in turn supporting the idea of Congo as an exceptional place and justifying the welfare colonialism of the Belgian state. As with many other colonial resources, the financial value generated by the exchange of similar pieces by art dealers remained in Western hands.
The term “masterpiece” refers explicitly to the creator of a piece, the artist. While acknowledging the (unconscious) creative genius within African culture, applying the term to an African object accentuated the absence of information about the creator of the object. So while the singularity of the object increases, and with it the potential respect for its culture of origin, the individuality of the African artist remains a void. Sally Price characterized this approach: “Any work outside the ‘Great Traditions’ must have been produced by an unnamed figure who represents community and whose craftsmanship represents the dictates of its age-old traditions.”99 Arguably, the void is filled either by the scholar or the collector responsible for “discovering” the piece, or by the museum institution functioning as the “guardian” of the object. Removed from their original context and only vaguely identified, the masterpieces become “signs” for the museum that possesses them, muting them as signifiers of another culture. Any reassessment of the “primitivism” of African cultures in a favorable light is redirected to the role of the museum—and, by extension, the colonial state—as a guardian of the material.
Along with the promotion of certain choice pieces from the museum’s collection as “masterpieces,” the museum also reinstalled the art room. The idea of an art room was not in itself a new concept for the museum, as we’ve seen above. There were significant differences, however, between the older displays of Congolese art and the new art room. The new “Congo art room” contained a much smaller selection of objects in a modernist setting with a much more spacious arrangement against a white backdrop.100 Most ceramics and series of weapons and shields had disappeared. Instead, a careful selection of objects, each occupying a place in Olbrechts’s stylistic classification, was presented in a spacious, well-lit, simple setting designed to bring out the aesthetic qualities of the objects themselves, although some contextual information was provided.101 The display was organized by style area and substyles, as delineated by Olbrechts’s scholarship. Each style area was accompanied by a short introduction of the characteristics of each style. In figure 1.7 we see part of the display on the Luba on the left and in the second and third cases from the right. Also visible are a large Kongo statue, one vitrine of Kuba objects, and one vitrine devoted to the less-defined northern styles (to the far right). The functional descriptions of the objects were reduced to a bare minimum. In the case of the Luba, for example, the two cases to the left are accompanied by the description “Chief’s insignia; seats, arrow holder, scepters and ax.” By minimizing references to the objects’ function, elaborated upon in the ethnographic displays, Olbrechts created room for the visitor to focus on the appearance of the objects in a setting that encouraged admiration. This technique represented a change from the 1936 art room, where references to function were omitted entirely and display cases were crowded.
FIGURE 1.7. Congo art room, 1963. HP.1963.1.205, collection RMCA Tervuren; photo J. Loddewijck, RMCA Tervuren ©.
There was a noticeable difference between Olbrechts’s scholarship, however, and the installation of the Congo art room. In the museum display, the contextualization of the pieces has to take a back seat to their display as art objects, illustrating the different demands placed upon the scholar versus the museum professional. The latter, while also respecting the museum’s scientific identity and ensuring that the displays reflect the current state of scholarship, is forced to make decisions about the amount of contextualizing information that can be included in a display and to decide how to integrate the displays into the overall narrative of the museum.
Most of the visitors to the museum probably had very limited knowledge of the various cultures in Congo. The lack of a printed guide to the ethnographic and art room before 1967 meant that, despite the presence of a large ethnographic map above the door, the diversity of cultures might have blended together into a more homogenized image (after all, the art room was named the Congo Art room).102 Nonetheless, the message, both visual and written, about the ability of Congolese people to produce true “Art” was likely to make an impression. An audience used to visiting Western art museums would have interpreted the limited availability of information and labels as an expression of the value of the pieces. The presentation of the pieces also affirmed their autonomy and singularity.103
An essential requirement for objects to make the transition to art was their “authenticity.” Olbrechts used the term to refer to their origin in a rural and traditional precolonial past, untainted by the influence of Western modernism—and thus unattainable for the current African cultures in decline. He believed it was revealed in the sculptural and aesthetic qualities of objects, which, conveniently, also heightened their exhibition value.104 Authenticity was thus not only present in the object but was also projected upon its community of origin and proceeded from “assumptions about temporality, wholeness, and continuity.”105
By giving certain African objects access to the universal and timeless category of art, Western art lovers changed the values attributed to these objects and to their cultures of origin. However, as Sally Price has noted in her exploration of the “universality principle,” the “‘equality’ accorded to non-Westerners (and their art), the implication goes, is not a natural reflection of human equivalence, but rather the result of western benevolence.”106 While the visitors to the art room at Tervuren affirmed their modernity by viewing African material culture as art—an aesthetic experience—Congolese people were denied that same modernity on the basis of their assumed inability to experience that same aesthetic experience.
In
