Museum practices and the Belgian colonial past: questioning the memories of an ambivalent metropole

Abstract

This article questions the traces left by colonialism on Belgium's museums. Adopting a comparative approach to specific museographic representations of Belgium's colonial past, we examine the images they convey of this period. Museums directly concerned with Belgian colonisation are analysed (the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, the Musée Africain de Namur, and the Musée Belvue). This discussion is framed within the context of past exhibitions, but also by a consideration of more recent temporary exhibitions which express the need for Belgium to confront its colonial legacy in more complex and creative terms. The task of confronting the past and of assessing the role which colonialism played in glorifying the Belgian nation reveals the uniqueness of the ‘postcolonial’ Belgian context in which this problematic history has been debated within a broader national identity crisis that has put into question the very future of the country itself.