Africa at the Tropenmuseum by LM Publishers

africa at the tropenmuseum

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AFR ICA at the Tropenmuseum paul faber sonja wijs daan van dartel

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CON TEN TS

Foreword

Preface

Africa at the Tropenmuseum

Status and position

Religion

Performance

111

Handmade

129

Contact and confrontation

158

Notes

160

References

163

Index

167

About the authors

1 Gates of Return II Julien Sinzogan (1957) Ink and gouache on paper 182 x 142.5 cm Benin / France 2009 6411-1. Purchase: October Gallery Trust, London, 2010. With support of BankGiro Loterij

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FOREWORD

A museum collection is much more than an assembly of objects. Considerable history is attached to each and every object. Viewed in this light, a museum collection serves as a gateway to an endless number of stories. Some of the stories concern the cultural world in which these objects originally functioned. They say something about the people that made them, saw them, used them and experienced them. Other stories concern the manner in which the objects passed from their initial owners into the hands of others, including traders, colonial officials and missionaries, collectors, anthropologists and art lovers. And there are also stories about the way in which the objects made their way to their new destination, where they continually acquire new significance. These stories are about curators and educators, restorers and designers, viewers and readers. The Tropenmuseum is an exceptional museum. Located in the unique historical building of the Royal Tropical Institute (Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, or KIT), it manages a collection of some 180,000 objects and 270,000 historical photographs. This collection is closely linked with both Dutch history and world history, and documents the numerous types of contact that occur between different peoples, cultures and nations. In the course of history, the museum has reinvented itself several times. It traces its origin back to a 19th century colonial collection that was brought together in a museum in Haarlem. In 1910, this collection became a part of the Colonial Institute Association (Vereniging Koloniaal Instituut), newly founded at the time, which had a new building built in Amsterdam. The museum then gained great renown as the Colonial Museum (Koloniaal Museum). After the Second World War, it was renamed the Indies Museum (Indisch Museum), and in 1950 became the Tropenmuseum. As a part of the Royal Tropical Institute, the museum profiled itself as a post-colonial museum with a global focus on 6

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economics, trade and culture. In the 1970s, the museum was radically transformed into a presentation centre for development-related issues and was supplemented with a children’s museum. The most recent transformation was completed in 2009: the Tropenmuseum as a dynamic institution focused on world culture, a place where a richly variegated balance is sought between colonial collections, classic ethnography, contemporary art, intangible cultural heritage and popular art. It is a museum that continually strives to play a signiﬁcant role in society, a museum that seeks contact with people and communities which recognize themselves in the heritage that the museum manages and the stories that it tells. A museum collects, studies and exhibits. Yet a museum also continually reﬂects on its own mission and provides access to its knowledge. For several years now, this has meant that the collections have been made available online so that they can be searched through. The museum has also felt a strong need to publicize the most important pieces in the collection, stories and the museum’s history in book form. The structure of the series is based on the areas of specialization embedded in the institute, including cultural regions and several themes. Of course, the books will reveal only the tip of the iceberg. We are, nonetheless, convinced that publishing these books in all their glory might well entice the reader to seek out and enjoy all the objects and stories that the museum houses. Africa at the Tropenmuseum is the third volume in the series. Africa has not been a part of the institute’s area of focus from the beginning. Although several older collections were already present, it wasn’t until 1950 that Africa was actually named as an important region for the Royal Tropical Institute and the museum. During the years in which development cooperation was the central issue, Africa became a prominent region. With the emphasis currently

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placed on art and culture, Africa has remained a central point of focus. I would like to extend a word of thanks to all authors, editors, researchers, photographers and designers in and around KIT-Tropenmuseum and KITPublishers who have helped to bring this vast project to life. Immense appreciation should be expressed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Development Cooperation, which has made our museum’s work possible for so many years. A word of thanks is also owed to the BankGiroLoterij, which has allowed us to use a part of the funds that we have received since 2006 for the further development of the collection speciﬁcally for the creation of this historical series of books on the museum’s huge collection. I wish you all much reading pleasure and I look forward to seeing you at the museum. Lejo Schenk Director of the Tropenmuseum

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PREFACE

This third volume in the series of books about the collections of the Tropenmuseum is dedicated to sub-Saharan Africa. In order to avoid having to repeat this somewhat long-winded term, this book hereafter refers simply to Africa when sub-Saharan Africa is meant. In places in the text where the entire continent is referred to, this will be clearly indicated. The regional focus on Africa south of the Sahara was institutionally established when Africa was expressly included as a part of the Tropenmuseum’s scope of activity in 1950. The Africa collection at the Tropenmuseum consists of approximately 16,000 objects and is very diverse in character. Some of these pieces have been part of the museum’s collection since 1920, others arrived in 2010. The museum also has a small collection of photographs and slides that were made in Africa, the majority of them in the second half of the 20th century. In this volume, we explore approximately 115 objects. They are some of the most striking pieces in the Africa collection, both in quality and importance. All chapters locate the objects within the context of their cultural origin. We explore how the Tropenmuseum obtained its Africa collection and how it has used it in different ways in exhibitions over the course of its history. In other words, this book places the objects within the context of not only the society from which they came, but also that of the museum. Each object provides access to an aspect of African creativity: a cultural expression from a very speciﬁc time, from a speciﬁc cultural context. Each object is connected with particular makers, customers and users whose names, unfortunately, we seldom know. It is also connected with numerous meanings, forms of use and artistic ability. On its often complex journey to the Tropenmuseum, the object was separated from this context, isolated from it, fragmented, battered and, as a result, much information about it was lost. Yet through the collection histories, each object has also become connected to numerous Dutch individuals, such 8

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as traders, scientists, development-aid workers and museum curators. It is these histories that this book explores. The motivation behind the museum acquiring these objects has always been the wish to show aspects of Africa and African cultures to museum-goers in the Netherlands. Yet the manner in which Africa has been represented over the years has changed: Africa as a territory for anthropological insights, Africa as an area for social and economic development, Africa as a stage for political and social struggles, Africa as a source of artistic expression. The shifting policy lines of the institute and the museum have had a major effect on what and how objects have been collected, documented and displayed throughout the years. The process makes it clear that museum collections are somewhat arbitrary and reﬂect priorities that shift with political and cultural climates. Our collection contains many remarkable pieces which bring with them a range of fascinating stories about Africa and Europe. Yet there are many gaps in these histories and therefore even more stories have been left untold. It is not surprising then that the book is entitled ‘Africa at the Tropenmuseum’. The text in this book provides information on Africa and African culture, as seen from the context of the Tropenmuseum. This is not an exhaustive study of African art, but rather a window onto the history of the museum as seen through a selection of objects. For that reason, the endnotes linked to the cultural context of the objects have been kept modest in scope. The original function of the objects has often changed and certain objects are no longer known or used. To avoid any anachronisms, the past tense has been chosen for the narrative. Almost all the objects shown here can be seen in the permanent Africa exhibition at the Tropenmuseum, which opened in November 2006. On the Internet, you can browse through the rest of the Africa collection and the other collections of the

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Tropenmuseum. The same goes for the other important Africa collections that are present in the Netherlands, i.e. those of the Africa Museum in Berg en Dal, the Museum of Ethnography in Leiden (Museum Volkenkunde Leiden) and the World Museum (Wereldmuseum) in Rotterdam. I would like to thank all the people who have contributed to making this book a reality. First, I would like to thank the documentalists Sonja Wijs and Daan van Dartel for their research. They conducted a large part of the research done on the objects. Sonja Wijs also conducted meticulous research into the history of the Artis collection. I would like to thank Elisabeth den Otter and Barbara Plankensteiner for their speciﬁc text contributions. Finally, I would like to thank Loed van Bussel, Frits Cowan, René Devisch, Henry Drewal, Ineke Eisenburger, Gerard van den Heuvel, Irene Hübner, Manuel Jordan, Ineke van Kessel, Nessa Leibhammer, Bas van Lier, Harrie and Clemence Leyten, Doran Ross, Siebe Rossel, Christopher Roy and Susan Vogel for their memories, comments, suggestions and the information they provided. Paul Faber

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I N TRO DU C11 TI O N

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AFR ICA AT T HE TROPENMUSEUM

1 << Painted panel Wood, dye 46 x 83 x 22 cm Salampasu (culture) DR Congo Before 1964 3359-12. Purchase: P. Timmermans, 1964 2 Mask This mask is related to the Vili/Woyo mask (fig.84) and is attributed to the Sundi, Woyo or Yanzi, all neighbouring peoples from the delta region of the Congo River. This was, in all probability, a mask that was used within the Ndunga society. Wood, dye 31 x 21 x 17.5 cm Sundi, Woyo or Yanzi (culture) Lower Congo area, DR Congo End 19th century/early 20th century 4133-68. Purchase: S.H. Oudshoorn – Spaan, 1973. Former collections G. Oudshoorn, 1965, L. van Bussel, M. Couillard

The Netherlands and Africa 1850-1900 Halfway through the 19th century, the Kingdom of the Netherlands was a nation with a steadily expanding economy. Compared with its larger neighbours, its industrialization was moving at a modest pace, but the signiﬁcance of its shipping and trade grew steadily. The ports of Amsterdam and Rotterdam were the most important engines of this economic expansion. An important source of this prosperity lay in the East, the current-day Republic of Indonesia in the Netherlands East Indies, as it was referred to at the time. Shipping to Suriname contributed less to this prosperity while the Netherlands Antilles was actually losing money as an enterprise. This international trade network of the Dutch had centuries of history behind it and the African continent had always played a large role in this history. On route to Indonesia, the ships of the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, 1600-1799, or VOC) went around the southern tip of Africa. The establishment of a trading post in 1652 by Jan van Riebeeck on the Cape of Good Hope was a direct result of this route. The lesser known West India Company (Westindische Compagnie, 1623-1792) was concentrated

on the triangle of trade between Africa, colonies in the Americas and the Netherlands. For a long time it was the most important European trading company in Africa. Dutch traders played a significant role in the slave trade from fortified positions on the African coast, such as in Gorée (Senegal) and Elmina (Ghana). It is estimated that Dutch slave ships, under the auspices of the West India Company and others, transported some 600,000 Africans as slaves to colonies in Brazil, Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles. Over the course of the 19th century, the significance of the African continent for the Dutch economy declined sharply. The slave trade, already in decline by the end of the 18th century, was actively opposed in the early years of the 19th century, especially in England. In 1814, the Dutch and English governments signed a treaty to outlaw the international traffic in slaves. Additionally, with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1867, it was no longer necessary to sail around the tip of Africa to reach South and SouthEast Asia, which also affected shipping bound for Africa. By the second half of the 19th century, the Netherlands played a very limited role in Africa. Much of the Dutch activity on the continent was concentrated in three regions: Ghana, South Africa 13

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and the Congo. In Ghana, formerly known as the Gold Coast, the Netherlands built a range of forts in the 17th and 18th centuries. By the 19th century, the Netherlands reduced its position to only a few settlements, including the castle in Elmina, a former head station in the slave trade that had been won from the Portuguese in the 17th century. By the 19th century, the Dutch presence there was no longer proﬁtable, nor had it been for some time. The close inland ties with the Asante king led to attempts to recruit African soldiers for the Royal Netherlands Indies Army (Koninklijk Nederlandsch-Indisch Leger or KNIL) (see p.51), but in 1871, by signing the Treaty of London, the Netherlands agreed to hand over its possessions in the Gold Coast to Great Britain. The contents of the forts were sold to the British for 47,000 guilders. A consular post did, however, remain open, and Dutch trade continued (Fig. 3). The Dutch Cape Colony, which developed from the Dutch East India Company trading post, fell into the hands of the British in 1806. At the time, the area had been inhabited for several generations by more or less autonomous farming communities of

European descent who spoke Afrikaans and had secured a territory in the midst of the native peoples. Increasing regulations imposed by the British led to an exodus of these Afrikaner Boers (farmers), known as the Great Trek, and the establishment of the so-called autonomous Boer Republics of Transvaal (the South African Republic) and the Orange Free State. The discovery of diamonds and gold in these areas brought about intense confrontations that finally led to large-scale, fierce hostilities in 1899 – the South African War. The war ended in 1902 with the Peace of Vereeniging, followed by the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910. The establishment of the independent republics and the ensuing war in South Africa caused considerable commotion in the Netherlands. Among regular Dutchmen and even the royal family of the Netherlands, people felt a sense of solidarity with the Boers and the harsh response of the British troops, which included the use of concentration camps, filled many with disgust. Many Dutch people had gone to the Boer republics at the end of the 19th century to work there.

3 Personnel of trading company ‘Gebroeders ter Meulen’, Elmina Gelatin silver print 13.8 x 20.6 cm c. 1870-1890 60024045. Gift: Probably H.P.N. Muller

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The delta area of the Congo River had become a concentrated area of African-European trade over the course of the 19th century. This new economic activity had a considerable prior history. The Portuguese had already established relations with the King of the Kongo empire at the end of the 15th century. In the second half of the 19th century, a range of different European trading posts became active, particularly the city of Boma, which developed into a small, but influential trading centre. There Dutch entrepreneurs set up the African Trade Association (Afrikaansche Handelsvereeniging). It grew out of the Rotterdam firm Kerdijk & Pincoffs in 1866, which had been founded in 1857 and ran several trading posts in the Lower Congo. After bankruptcy in 1879, Hendrik Muller Szn. (1819-1898) revived the company and set up the New African Trade Association (Nieuwe Afrikaanse Handelsvennootschap – NAHV). Dutch traders were also active elsewhere in Africa. The career of Hendrik Muller Jr. (1859-1941), son of the aforementioned Hendrik Muller, illustrates the different relationships that the Netherlands maintained with Africa. He succeeded his father as consul in Liberia and was active in the Mozambique Trading Company (Handelsmaatschappij Mozambique), which was later transformed into the East African Company (Oost-Afrikaansche Compagnie), and later merged with the NAHV. In 1884, he attended the Conference of Berlin as an interested observer, and ultimately became the honorary consul of Transvaal, where he tried to gain Dutch support for the Boer Republics. With modest economic interests, the Netherlands also had limited scientific interest in Africa. The Royal Dutch Geographical Society (Koninklijk Nederlands Aardrijkskundig Genootschap) launched only one scientific expedition to Africa. This took place in south-west Angola in 1884 and 1885 under the command of Daniel David Veth Jr. The expedition ended in a failure primarily due to the premature death of the expedition commander. In the area of Catholic missionary work, Dutch activity in Africa gradually increased from the 1860s. A wide range of foreign missionary congregations set up in the Netherlands. Protestant missionaries were particularly active in South Africa. It was at this time that the colonial scramble for

Africa erupted and became very intense. Many major European powers such as England, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, as well as Belgian King Leopold II, sought ways to expand their economic and political influence on the continent by using a range of justifications. The Conference of Berlin in 1884 and 1885 was a significant turning point in this competition for dominance over Africa as it was there that discussions were held on free trade and the ambitions of Leopold II in the Congo, among other things. The conference established rules how Africa was to be divided among different European countries. Although officially invited to the conference, the Kingdom of the Netherlands played only a marginal role in this geopolitical game in Africa. The Netherlands’ gaze still turned to the east, not to the south.

The Colonial Museum in Haarlem It was during this period of limited interest in Africa in the Netherlands that the world’s ﬁrst colonial museum – the Colonial Museum (Koloniaal Museum) – was founded in Haarlem. Established in 1864 to ‘Study His Majesty’s Colonies and Plantations in Foreign Lands’, the museum opened in 1871. Though the colonial collection was launched from private initiative, it was soon able to count on government support and the genuine enthusiasm of numerous institutions and entrepreneurs with interests in the colonies. The museum focused primarily on providing information about the natural resources, the cultivated crops and products and goods of the Dutch tropics. The collecting activity was broad in scope: ranging from minerals and stones, natural ﬂora and fauna, local food crops, and commercially grown plantation crops such as tobacco, sugarcane, tea, rubber and spices. The category named ‘products and goods’ encompassed a broad range of samples, semi-manufactured products, scale models and wax models, dioramas, implements and tools, examples of native industry and ethnographic objects. In accordance with the principles of the Colonial Museum, the ethnographic objects initially served to illustrate the manner in which the native population groups gave shape to their material culture. This primarily concerned wood carvings, plaiting and

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weaving techniques, the working of precious and nonprecious metals, and the use of organic materials such as seashells, horn, and tortoise shell. This technical approach of ethnographic material was far removed from the approach taken by the classic museum of ethnography, which collected objects in order to offer a sense of the lives and thinking of non-European peoples. From the start, therefore, the Colonial Museum was not a typical ethnography museum like the two other large museums in the Netherlands, the Museum of Ethnography (Museum Volkenkunde) in Leiden, founded in 1837 as the Ethnographic (Ethnografisch) Museum and the World Museum (Wereldmuseum) in Rotterdam, founded in 1884 as the Museum for Geography and Ethnography (Museum voor Land- en Volkenkunde). To a significant degree, the Colonial Museum took on the character of a trade museum. Due to the rapidly growing economic significance of the colonial economy in the East Indies and the related need for knowledge and expertise in numerous fields, the Colonial Institute Association (Vereniging Koloniaal Instituut) was founded in 1910. The Association launched an initiative to construct a large building complex in the nation’s capital of Amsterdam in order to house the institute. A part of this complex was set aside to house the collections of the Haarlem Colonial Museum. After the Ministry of the Colonies in The Hague, the Colonial Institute in Amsterdam was the most important public organization for overseas territories. It was set up to be a bastion of expertise, experience and research in economic, medical and cultural fields. The enormous size and rich furnishings of the Institute, with its lavish symbolism and images of historical figures and founders, symbolized the ambitions of Dutch colonial enterprises and the material wealth and intellectual challenges that the East Indies especially provided. The realization and financing of the building therefore took some time. It was not until 1926 that the institute was officially opened. In view of the orientation toward the Dutch colonies, Africa and African art and culture were not given a place either in the Haarlem museum or in the new museum. Outside the walls of the institute, however, interest in Africa did increase modestly in the Netherlands. 16

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African art in the Netherlands By the end of the 19th century, the ethnographic museums in the Netherlands – particularly those in Leiden and Rotterdam – had built up Africa collections. With regard to the manner in which African objects were viewed in the Netherlands, the classic dilemma between scientific approaches and artistic appreciation soon arose. In 1912, the Rotterdam Museum of Geography and Ethnography organized an exhibition on Congolese art. Reflecting on this premiere, Otto van Tussenbroek, director of the Museum for Applied Arts (Museum voor Kunstnijverheid) in Haarlem, wrote in 1920: ‘…with so much care and warm affection, with so much deep admiration, Snelleman placed the fetish figures in the Rotterdam museum at the time; this made him a delightful exception to all those people who could only view these things through the lens of an ethnographer, without realizing that all of this was art in the best sense of the word.’ 1 African art was also present in missionary museums, which reached their peak from 1920-1960 when missionary exhibitions travelled through Catholic parishes and were very popular. Missionaries especially displayed objects that represented so-called heathenism. This was intended to induce Catholic visitors to give money to missionary congregations that took the Gospel of Christianity to Africa. Daily newspapers like De Bode showed how the public responded to the ‘Amsterdam Missionary Action Exhibition’ of 1920: ‘Their inquisitive amazement was immeasurable when any image of worship from central Africa was displayed. You could see it on people’s faces – they were enthralled about seeing such awful idols at close quarters. They had undoubtedly read so much about these images in one or other missionary magazine.’2 The tone of the aesthetic appreciation for African art was primarily set in large European centres of art, with Paris leading the way. Well before the First World War, there was a warm interest in African art on the part of avant-garde artists such as Picasso, Derain and Matisse. After the war, a genuine ‘mode nègre’ arose in Paris, which was expressed in exhibitions, novels, design, dance and music. German enthusiasm also rose, particularly in the circles of expressionistic painters. In 1915, the first serious book on African art, ‘Negerplastik’ (Negro

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4 Portrait of Carel van Lier Harmen Meurs (1891-1964) Oil on canvas 115 x 90 cm 1928 Location unknown

Sculpture) by Carl Einstein, was published there. In the Netherlands, interest in Africans and African art remained subdued because of its lack of colonies and a somewhat provincial climate for the arts, but this changed in large part due to the art dealer Carel van Lier (1897-1945). Van Lier’s primary passion was Dutch modern art. Yet in the 1920s, he carefully began combining the works of Dutch painters with ethnographic objects from Africa and Oceania. In 1921, he opened a business on the Damrak in Amsterdam, where he was the ﬁrst person in the Netherlands to sell what was then known as ‘negerplastiek’3 or Negro sculpture. After a short time, Van Lier moved to Laren, but returned to Amsterdam in 1927, where he settled at Rokin 126. Through these years, he steadily expanded his collection of African art, which was exhibited in January 1927 in Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum. Describing the exhibition, art critic Kasper Niehaus wrote: ‘The collection of negro sculpture

exhibited at present in three ground-ﬂoor halls from the collection of Kunstzaal Van Lier in Laren has been expanded considerably since it was last discussed here some years ago. So much so that, currently, though not the oldest (…), it is one of the largest and best in our country.’4 For the most part, Van Lier bought his collection abroad, travelling regularly on the art circuit to London, Antwerp, Paris and Germany. In 1937, he put together an exhibition from the collection of the famous Parisian art dealer Charles Ratton. Other parties began to show interest in African art. In 1925 the Amsterdam branch of Van Metz and Co presented a selection of Bundu masks. At other exhibitions in the Netherlands in the 1920s and 1930s, examples of the so-called ‘Negro Art’ were shown as well. Art critics such as Niehaus, Wiessing and De Gruyter became enthusiastic advocates. Due to these activities, and following the example of colleagues in France and Germany, Dutch artists cautiously began to collect African art, although not everyone could afford it. The well-known expressionist painter Jan Sluijters bought a modest, but interesting collection from Van Lier (Fig. 4). In several of his paintings, this interest in African art can be seen. All of these developments went unnoticed by the Colonial Museum. After its opening in 1926, the museum exhibited material only about and from the Netherlands East Indies and, to a lesser degree, Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles. But in museum storage – not yet on display – African materials began to accumulate. The museum received donations of African objects from various private individuals, the most prominent of which was a series of 15 bronze sculptures from Benin in 1926. In fact, the museum acquired the most important collection even before its opening, as a part of an enormous transfer of objects from Artis, the Amsterdam zoo. This gift plays a role in practically all parts of the collection at the Tropenmuseum. The Africa section of the so-called Artis collection was to stir a great commotion (see p.26).

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The ethnographic collection of Artis The Amsterdam zoo was founded in 1838 by the Royal Zoological Society (Koninklijk Zoologisch Genootschap) Natura Artis Magistra (N.A.M.) or Artis for short. It was the first modern zoo in Europe and strived to become an internationally recognized scientific institute. From its founding until the start of the 20th century, Artis functioned as a private society of the well-todo citizenry and middle class of Amsterdam and, apart from zoology, also focused on cultural activities. In 1851, a Natural History Museum was established at the zoo, also referred to as the Large Museum (Groote Museum). It provided space for the zoological, geological and ethnographic collections of the zoo. The collections grew so rapidly that, ten years later in the building of the ‘Sociëteit Amicitiae’ located nearby, a separate Ethnographic Museum or the Small Museum (Kleine Museum) was set up. Soon, this building, too, proved unable to house the steady stream of donations and, once again, a larger building was sought. Finally, in May of 1888, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Artis, the new Ethnographic Museum opened its doors in the building ‘De Volharding’ (The Perseverance). In addition to the large collection of its own, the collections of the then Netherlands Colonial Association (Nederlandsche Koloniale Vereeniging) were displayed to visitors.5 The fact that ethnographic objects occupied an important place within a zoo complex was not uncommon for the time. Under the influence of Darwinism and its ideas about the relationship between humans and the natural world, Artis had the maxim: ‘in any zoo there must be place reserved for the human species… the most highly organized creature in zoology’.6 The ethnographic collections in Artis were brought together by private individuals, including missionaries, civil servants, commercial agents and societies from the business community and science. The ethnographic collections had no specific focus; all parts of the world were represented. People could also find various types of objects there, from raw materials to implements, as long as they were characteristic for the part of the world concerned. When precisely the first objects from Africa arrived can no longer be ascertained. All ethnographic 18

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objects were included in one series and information on the date of registration and the collector and donor was seldom recorded. Later, a transition was made to using separate serial numbers that encompassed the entire collection of a particular donor. The museum received the first WestEquatorial African collection in 1884 from L.S. Anema. In the following year, Artis acquired another important collection from the Lower Congo area. Later the same year, the Congo collection was set up as a separate exhibition. For this occasion, the society had a catalogue printed entitled ‘Collection of Ethnographic Objects from the West Coast of Africa’. It presents a good overview of which objects were exhibited at the time. The catalogue contains 101 items. The exhibition was built up around the collections of three agents of the New African Trade Association. With his name next to 49 catalogue numbers, L.S. Anema (Fig. 6 ) contributed nearly half of the objects put on display. The exhibition was divided into four themes: trade and industry, war, religion, and the household. For each object, its significance and use was explained. The objects that were displayed for each theme varied widely; for instance, displayed under ‘trade and industry’ were the ivory ‘king’s trumpet’, which announced the arrival of a new trade caravan at a factory, tobacco and carved elephant tusks, as well as a gravestone and memorial statue displayed as a ‘sample of inland sculpture’. The category ‘war’ included a large number of spears, shields, knives, powder horns (no rifles) and two pieces of ‘war clothing’. Under ‘religion’ could be found the wellknown Nkisi or power figures, presented to the Dutch public as ‘fetishes’ and ‘idols’ and two masks (Figs. 7, 9). The last and largest category was ‘the household’. This category encompassed everything that did not fit into the previous three categories. It included musical instruments, pots, pipes, baskets, and mats as well as princely jackets and caps (Fig. 54, 111), and combs and canes (Fig. 50). This Africa exhibition probably was on display up to the closing of the Small Museum. In the new Ethnographic Museum that opened on 1 May 1888 in the ‘De Volharding’ building, the Africa collection was set up in the first section of the gallery. Nearly half of the collection came from the Congo region, ‘from which the Museum received numerous contributions from Honorable Gentlemen L.S.

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5 Exhibit in the Ethnographic Museum ‘De Volharding’ at Artis In the gallery to the far left is a display case with African objects, including the Wojo / Vili mask (see Fig. 84). c. 1890 000395000449 Amsterdam City Archives

Anema, J.C.W.H. and C. Cremer, F. Hanken, D.D. Veth, J.M. Westerouwen van Meeteren and others. The Fetishes were especially well represented. In the other half of the gallery, one finds a collection of objects brought together by the late Mr. J. M. Schuver from the region of the Upper Nile along with countless pieces of jewellery etc. from the Kaffers and a small collection from N. Africa’.7 A rare photograph shows one of the three halls where the Africa gallery can clearly be recognized. To the right is the collection of Schuver. To the left, in the first display case, the large Vili/Woyo mask of Anema can be seen, together with many Congolese power figures. This exhibition probably stood in the ‘De Volharding’ building until the physical transfer of the Artis collection to the Royal Tropical Institute in 1920 (see p. 20).

The New African Trade Association Without the presence of Dutch traders on the African coasts and hinterlands in the 19th century, the number of objects from this region in Dutch museums would never have become so large. In the Lower Congo region, for example, the collecting of objects was facilitated and stimulated by the New African Trade Association. This was probably due to the personal enthusiasm of its head agent, Anton Greshoff, and fuelled later by requests from Dutch institutions. The Association possessed many trading posts in the estuary region of the Congo River, the so-called Lower Congo region that runs from the Atlantic Ocean to the Malebo Pool, on whose shores Kinshasa and Brazzaville are located. At the end of the 19th century, the trading posts

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reached as far inland as the Upper Congo. The commercial agents often came from the upper middle classes. They were young men with an average age of 20 and a good education who were attracted to the adventure of an extended stay in a distant land. In addition to the large trading posts on the coast, there were inland posts that were usually manned by a single agent. The length of an agent’s stay varied from a couple of years to several decades. Agents regularly changed posts and some of them returned to the Netherlands in between missions. Above all else, the commercial agent was responsible for the operations at his trading post. Their workload was often enormous. One agent wrote in his journal that he ‘leaves home once a fortnight on a Sunday for a couple of hours’. 8 Commercial agents clearly did not have much time for collecting activities. As a rule, they collected objects in the immediate vicinity of the trading post or during missions. The uncommon and unhealthy climate presented a danger for the Europeans. Almost every employee of the New African Trade Association at some point wrote a letter complaining of illness. They were often bedridden with malaria, tuberculosis or attacks of fever. Several of the Artis collectors died on location.9 The collections gathered together often involved large purchases, both in terms of quantity and material value. The carved elephant tusks were particularly precious; ivory became increasingly more expensive as the elephant population fell sharply towards the end of the 19th century. Unfortunately for us, the agents did not record how and with what resources they obtained the objects.

Transfer to the Colonial Museum A shortage of space seemed to have been a persistent problem at the Ethnographic Museum of Artis. At the start of the 20th century, the new building named ‘De Volharding’ was also bursting at the seams. The collection at the time counted between ﬁfteen and twenty thousand objects. Artis became the victim of its own success and actively started to look for another place to house the collection. This was accompanied by a discussion as to whether ethnographic objects were actually properly at home in 20

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the zoo. The initiative to establish a Colonial Institute in Amsterdam seemed to be the ideal solution to this problem. In the founding year of 1910, the board of Artis wrote a letter to the Colonial Institute Association in which it presented its plan to donate the ethnographic collection on the condition that the Institute would be located near Artis. The gift was gratefully accepted, though it took until July 1920 for the physical transfer to take place. In the ﬁrst few years after October 9, 1926, the ofﬁcial opening of the Colonial Institute, the African objects from Artis were, however, not a part of the exhibitions. Because the African objects did not relate directly to the Dutch colonies, they disappeared into the depot.

1940: The first Africa exhibition In the winter of 1940 to 1941, Africa was put on display for the ﬁrst time in the Colonial Museum with the temporary exhibition ‘African Art’ (Afrikaansche Kunst). The reason this exhibition was launched is not known. The timing was unexpected since six months earlier, the Netherlands had been occupied by German troops. In the preceding years, economic malaise sharply reduced the institute’s income, and salaries decreased annually by 10%. Concerning the exhibition itself, we do not know much. All that remains is a stencilled catalogue with one photograph and a list of objects. Only from the annual report may we learn that the exhibition took place in the Colonial Museum itself, in the space reserved for changing exhibitions. Yet the very extensive photographic archive of the museum, which also contains photographs of the museum’s interior during the war years, shows nothing that appears to be an exhibition on Africa. Most of the objects used in the exhibition were part of the museum’s own collection. The photograph in the catalogue shows the two Chokwe ﬁgures (Fig. 10), which apparently were considered masterpieces even at the time. Next to the pieces owned by the museum itself were objects borrowed from several art dealers and private individuals.

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lieuwe sybrandsz . anema (1854–1918) Lieuwe Sybrandsz. Anema started working for the African Trade Association (AHV), the predecessor of the New African Trade Association (NAHV), on 1 May 1877. The harsh environment demanded young and vigorous staff. Since men often began to work for the NAHV at the age of 18, he was one of the older employees at 23. At the end of 1877, Anema travelled to the Lower Congo region, where he was stationed at several trading posts. In 1883, he was the deputy head agent in Banana, the head ofﬁce in the Congo. Anema returned to the Netherlands in July 1884 on the steamship Afrikaan. Although he left Africa, Anema remained with the New African Trade Association. He moved to the head ofﬁce in Rotterdam, where he worked until his retirement in 1913. In the 7 years and 4 months that Anema worked in the Congo region, he assembled a diverse and unique collection of objects that he donated to Artis. In a letter dated November 14, 1884, Westerman, the director of Artis, expressed his appreciation for Anema. Anema was sent a Diploma as an Honorary Member with the following words: ‘the wonderful series of ethnographic objects is a remarkable addition to the collection (…). As soon as space is created for the objects, the splendour of the Collection will become surprisingly evident and your esteemed name will be called to mind on many an exhibit

6 Lieuwe Sybrandsz. Anema with servant, Loanda Carte de visite Photographer: possibly J.A. de Moraes Albumen print, paper 1877-1884 PI 000148 Private collection

label’.10 In total, the Anema collection numbered more than 100 objects, including a large number of power ﬁgures (‘fetishes’), musical instruments, caps and weapons. There were also several unique pieces, such as the Tombela mask (Fig. 9) and a Ndunga mask.11 Anema provided Artis with a detailed description of the objects, their function and use. Unfortunately, no information was kept about the manner in which he collected the objects. Anema began to build his collection at the time he was stationed in Cabinda. In view of the choices he made, he certainly

had a good eye and talent for collecting. In his position as head agent in Banana, the most important trading post in the Lower Congo, Anema had access to better pieces than other NAHV agents. This seems to be conﬁrmed by the high-quality collection that the head agent preceding him, Mr Greshoff, was able to put together for the Museum of Ethnography in Leiden. The unique and valuable collection that Anema gave to the Ethnographic Museum of Natura Artis Magistra in 1884 came into the possession of the Tropenmuseum with the transfer of 1920. SW

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initiation mask According to the collector Anema, the indigenous name of this mask was ‘Tombela’ and it was used by the ‘sorcerer’ at the burial of princes. He also stated that ‘these masks are very difficult to obtain, you can normally find only one in each village of any importance.’12 According to recent interpretations, the mask was used in initiation ceremonies by the members of the secret Mukanda or Nkanda society. The political leadership rested with the members of this society, who underwent a training process, an initiation in the ‘forest school’ (Nkanda). The conclusion of this period and the associated circumcision were accompanied by many festivities. The members of the society performed mask dances (tudansi) for the gathered population. At the end, the masks were collected and judged. The maker of the most beautiful mask received an honorary title: Kimvumbu. Only one person in each village could be given this title. This mask is a unique specimen. The bright green colour that was applied to both temples and under the nose is not found on any other Nzombo mask from this period. It does not seem to be a local pigment, so most likely the dye was imported from Europe. An even more remarkable feature is the mask’s physiognomy. The facial features do not show any characteristics of related masks like those of the Yaka, or of other local figures. The narrow, sharply

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carved nose in the fairly naturalistic face, in particular, raises the question of whether the maker was perhaps depicting the face of a European here. The mask was remarkable enough for Leo Frobenius, one of the ﬁrst European ethnographers in Africa to feature it in his publication Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas (1898) (Fig. 8) along with another mask (Fig. 7) that was also collected by Anema. Based on its style, this mask very probably came from the Vili from Cabinda. According to Anema, the mask was already very old at the time and was used when it had not rained for a long time. The native name was ‘N’Doenga’ (Ndunga) and its origin was said to be in the regions of the Massabe

River. A similar mask is described as a mask that was used as a part of initiation ceremonies under the name of Buko Tchigundunga.13 Frobenius must have seen both masks in the Ethnographic Museum of Artis. Anema collected the masks between 1877 and 1884 in the Lower Congo region and donated them to the museum in 1884. SW

7 Mask Wood, plant fibres, dye 21 x 16 cm Probably Vili (culture) Cabinda, Angola 1850-1884 A-11045. Gift: Artis, 1920. Former collection L.S. Anema, 1884 8 Illustration from Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas, 1899, Figure 40, Tab. IV 9 Initiation mask, Tombela Wood, plant fibres, dye 54 x 47 x 10 cm Nzombo (culture) North-west Angola 1850-1884 A-11014. Gift: Artis, 1920. Former collection L.S. Anema, 1884

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chokwe couple The two figures represent an ancestor couple or mythical chiefs. Both figures are wearing an arched headdress, the ‘mutwe wa kayanda’, reserved for Chokwe chiefs and dignitaries. In the male figure, the beard is made from real human hair. In the hole above the navel, a copper nail probably once resided. On the chest of the woman hangs a cimba pendant. The cimba was a white disc of shell that symbolizes the moon, which was worn by a chief as an insignia. It is possible that the figures depict the cultural hero Chibinda Ilunga and his wife Lweji. They are considered to be the mythical founders of the Chokwe kingdom. According to the myth, Chibinda Ilunga entered the territory of the female Lunda chief Lweji while hunting. Chibinda Ilunga was the son of the Luba king Kalala Ilunga and was known as a great hunter that excelled in strength and intelligence. Lweji saw the importance of these qualities for her people and married him. Chibinda introduced the idea of a sacred kingship to the Lunda and the peoples that they ruled.

Figures that are considered to depict Chibinda Ilunga (the identification is of a much more recent date than the figures themselves) bear the headdress of a chief and a hunter’s gear, often depicting a rifle, as here. The figures were collected around 1885 by F. Hanken, an agent of the New African Trade Association (NAHV) at Landana in Cabinda (Angola). At this time, the Chokwe largely lived in what is currently North-east Angola and the border areas with the current Democratic Republic of the Congo. Hanken’s collection arrived in the Netherlands in two shipments, the first of which he extensively documented. But these figures were a part of the second shipment and he described them only briefly: ‘Bakiessi. Two large… fetish figure(s)(sic) of the Bihé Negros. S.W. Africa.’14 Unfortunately, there is no further contextual documentation on the significance and use of the two figures. This lack of information extends to all Chokwe figures in this unique style: all date from before the end of the 19th century

and nearly all were acquired on or via the European trading posts on the coast, far from their original context. There is no concrete information on the function of these types of figures, nor is there any certainty that they represent Chibinda Ilunga and Lweji. Stylistically, they belong to the Chokwe court art and they display characteristics of the Musamba style. The faces are mask-like and flat, with a strongly protruding jaw and geometric facial features and their bodies are also very stylized. Their slender, elongated posture makes them fairly unusual. During the negotiations surrounding the transfer of the Africa collection from the Indies Institute (Indisch Instituut) to the Museum of Ethnography in Leiden in 1947 (see p. 26), there was an intense dispute over the two figures. They were finally listed separately as being on loan and were the only objects whose ownership was not transferred definitively. In 1952, the Chokwe figures returned to the Tropenmuseum and since then have been a part of all permanent Africa Departments.15 SW

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10 Ancestor couple This might depict the mythical ancestors Chibinda Ilunga and Lweji. Wood, hair, plant fibres, dye 46/50 cm Chokwe (culture) Border area between Angola and the DR Congo Mid-19th century A-11025, A-11026. Gift: Artis, 1920. Former collection F. Hanken, 1885

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Also in 1940, the little book Cameroon and the Congo, from the series ‘Primitive Art and Culture’ was published under the auspices of the Colonial Institute. The book was probably written by the then young Swiss psychoanalyst and collector Werner Muensterberger. The text is illustrated with objects from different museum collections, but also from the private collections of Van Lier and the collector Georg Tillmann. Here, too, the Chokwe ﬁgures occupy a prominent place, as does the Punu mask (Fig. 86), which at the time was still owned by Tillmann and was transferred to the Colonial Museum in 1947. In hindsight, the exhibition can be seen as a farewell exhibition. After the war ended in 1945, the board of the institute decided to make a clean sweep with its Africa collections.

A sensitive transition Immediately after the Second World War, the Netherlands entered a difﬁcult process of decolonization. Despite everything that had transpired during the Japanese occupation of the Netherlands East Indies, the Dutch government was convinced that, following the Japanese capitulation, the pre-war relationships could be fully restored. In November 1945, the Colonial Institute decided to change the association’s name to the Indies Institute (Indisch Instituut) and change the Colonial Museum to the Indies Museum (Indisch Museum).The new names carefully avoid the term colonial. But what was still considered to be the indissoluble unity between the Netherlands and the East Indies continued to be expressed for years to come. In the Ethnographic Department of the museum, then headed by Prof. Mr. C.T.J. Bertling, the specialization that was implicit in the name change compelled a revision of the collection. It had for some time been clear that the objects from Africa did not belong in a museum focused on the Netherlands East Indies. The Africa collection was not only an ideological ‘obstacle’, its physical presence too made any further expansion of the East Indies collection difﬁcult. Bertling lamented, ‘The (African) objects have lain here under a layer of dust in the attic since time immemorial without a soul giving them a single 26

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glance (…). The collection would be much more at home and appreciated in the National Ethnographic Museum, where it would be of use to the public and experts from within the country and abroad.’16 The search for a solution led to a meeting between the boards of the Indies Museum and the Museum of Ethnography in Leiden. The latter seemed to be very willing to take possession of the Africa collection, but neither party agreed on the terms of the transfer. The Museum of Ethnography pressed for a transfer of ownership of the entire Africa collection, while the Indies Museum wanted to give only a selection of the collection on loan. The ﬁnal compromise was a combination of exchange, loan and purchase. Not all African objects were eligible to be transferred. The museum wished to keep a number of speciﬁc objects, such as the musical instruments for the comparative musicological collection, the objects that were a part of the then permanent exhibition, a small number of objects in the depot and objects on free loan, such as those from the Tillmann collection. The African objects that did not fall into one of these categories were eligible to be transferred. The Indies Museum received 6,000 guilders for its Africa objects and a Javanese dance costume which the Museum of Ethnography already had seven of in its Leiden collection. In total, more than 3,200 pieces left the Indies Museum.17 The transfer made a new investment in the East Indies collection possible. One year later, the museum bought a large private collection of Hindu-Javanese objects. In the transfer of 1947, the museum lost one of the oldest Africa collections in the Netherlands. The only thing that somewhat softened the blow was the availability of several exceptional African pieces from the collection of Georg Tillmann, an extremely important collector for the Tropenmuseum. Tillmann (1882-1941) was a German-Jewish banker who, due to political developments in Germany, moved to Amsterdam with his entire family in 1931 and settled there permanently in 1932. When the approach of war became evident, the family moved to England in 1939. From there they decided to go on to America. Tillmann reached the US in April 1940, but died shortly afterward.18 From a young age, Tillmann’s mother had stimulated his passion for collecting. In the Netherlands, he

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came into contact with the art of the Netherlands East Indies, became fascinated by it and began to collect. He published a range of articles on this area of interest and collaborated on different exhibitions. On his departure for America, he placed the collection with the Colonial Museum in Amsterdam, with which he had maintained close contact. Due to his sudden death, the collection remained there as a long-term loan, until his son decided to donate the collection to the museum in 1994. Among many extraordinary items, the Tropenmuseum became the owner of an exceptional Benin plaque (Fig. 125), a magniﬁcent Punu mask (Fig. 86) and a very ﬁne Baule mask (Fig. 12).

1950: From the Indies Museum to the Tropenmuseum As a result of the aforementioned trade and sale in 1947, the Africa collection was reduced to a few hundred objects. Because at the time it was thought that exhibitions on Africa would never be organized, this was not seen as a problem, but a solution. That view would soon change.

The independence movement in the East Indies was unstoppable. Following years of military action, the Netherlands ﬁnally had to resign itself to the inevitable. For some time, faith was placed in a different, but just as intense form of collaboration with the new Indonesia, but that dream soon vanished. The Republic of Indonesia became a uniﬁed nation and set its own course. The role of the Netherlands was for the time being reduced to a minimum. The Indies Institute decided to reinvent itself. In December 1950, the Institute became the Royal Tropical Institute (Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen) and the Indies Museum became the Tropenmuseum. The expertise present in the institute in the area of trade, tropical products, health care and culture was refocused on new regions. In delineating a new policy, tropical Africa and South America were seen as the most important areas of expansion. During these years, two departments managed museum activities, the Department of Tropical Products (TP, formerly the Trade Museum [Handelsmuseum]) and Cultural and Physical Anthropology (CPA). Both managed their own

11 Africa exhibition in the Light Hall, 1951-1952 10000457

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a collection history The history of how this Baule mask came to be part of the Tillmann collection can be reconstructed fairly precisely. It was produced in the Ivory Coast by a carver of the BauleAtutu, probably around 1933. This information was provided by Hans Himmelheber (19082003), a German ethnologist who was one of the first to make extensive study trips to Africa. He was also the first ethnologist to focus a part of his research explicitly on the artistic dimension within African culture. Like many others, Himmelheber became fascinated by the artistic qualities of African sculptures, but even more, he realized that very little was known about the makers. At the start of 1933, he travelled by ship from Hamburg to Abidjan. First he visited the southern Baule and later also the northern Baule and their neighbours, the northeastern Guro. He interviewed a large number of carvers, including important master carvers, and purchased many objects from them. He asked them questions about their choice of profession, their training and practices, and about the method of production, the material and the techniques used. Finally, he studied their views on their own work with respect to its function, its aesthetics and the creative capacity, and the interpretation of an object. From this field research came a dissertation at the University of Tübingen and a book,

Negerkünstler (Negro Artists), which reveals, among other things, that the Baule own certain woodcarvings only for their beauty and the prestige they represent. During a second expedition to the Baule of the Ivory Coast, Himmelheber was assisted by the photographer Martin Lippmann. They built an ethnographic collection for the Basel Ethnological Museum (Basler Museum für Völkerkunde) and made sound recordings for the Berlin Ethnological Museum (Ethnologisches Museum Berlin) on 65 wax cylinders. After the ﬁrst expedition in 1933 and after the expedition of 193435, an exhibition of the objects that Himmelheber had purchased was held in Frankfurt, thanks to the interest of Leo Frobenius. After the exhibition, the collection was broken up: important pieces went to the ethnographical museums in Frankfurt, Munich, Lübeck, Basel, Geneva and Neuchâtel. Individual objects were purchased by the Parisian art dealer Charles Ratton, including this mask. On loan from Ratton, the mask was a part of the famous exhibition ‘African Negro Art’ held in 1935 in New York at the Museum of Modern Art. A mask from the same master woodcarver which was collected at the same time as this mask entered the collection of the Munich State Museum of Ethnology (Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde). From the Ratton collection,

the mask was purchased by Carel van Lier, perhaps for the exhibition that Van Lier put together in 1937 using 50 pieces from the Ratton collection. Tillmann, in turn, purchased the mask from Van Lier. The back of the mask shows traces of this odyssey: a sticker from Ratton, and the remains of a label from the Indies Institute and the letters GT (Georg Tillmann).19 Despite the fact that Himmelheber spoke extensively with many woodcarvers and called them by name, in the records he kept on the works that he purchased and pictured he did not record any of the artists’ names. So we unfortunately do not know who made this mask.

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12 Mask, front and back Wood, dye 33 cm Baule (culture) Ivory Coast 1930-1935 1772-2006. Gift: W.G. Tillman, 1994. Former collections G. Tillmann, Carel van Lier, Charles Ratton, Hans Himmelheber (collected between 1933 and 1935)

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departments in the museum. Occasionally they worked together, though not always in harmony. This two-track management determined the presentation policy of the Tropenmuseum for a long time. The new geographic orientation prompted both departments to build up new collections. The CPA Department concentrated on obtaining acceptable African ethnographic objects. It was a job that called for considerable patience – the loss suffered in 1947 was next to impossible to put right. In the TP Department, this led to the retrieving of samples of coffee, wood, cocoa and a wide range of other products that found their way into regional exhibits. The department collaborated with the Africa Institute (Afrika-Instituut) in Rotterdam in organizing an exhibition at the exhibition centre (Jaarbeurs) in Utrecht, shown afterwards in the Tropenmuseum from December 1951 to February 1952 (Fig. 11). After the art exhibition in 1940, this was the second time that the focus was turned towards Africa, but now in a very different way. The central panel bore the title ‘Africa Under Development’. The stand displayed maps, products and investments. It was a social-economic glance towards the African continent. This glance was important for the Royal Tropical Institute, but not only for the institute. In the Volkskrant newspaper of March 28, 1952, it was reported ‘that the Amsterdam Africa Fleet currently transports the vast majority of all cargo from continental Europe to Africa and in the reverse direction as well.’ And: ‘Africa – treble the size of Europe – is a land (sic!) with unlimited, still unexplored mineral wealth. The Netherlands, which has lost its colonies in the Far East, is trying to establish itself economically outside Europe as much as possible and, in this attempt, Africa is becoming more important by the day. For some time, Amsterdam has been making a good contribution to opening Africa up and when the Royal Tropical Museum announced a reorientation not so long ago in connection with the changed relations with Indonesia, it became apparent that this ‘turnaround’ would, to a large degree, also include Africa as a part of the new work terrain.’ In view of the new objectives of the Tropenmuseum, it was therefore important to give Africa a 30

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permanent place on the exhibition ﬂoor. This would however be realized very slowly. Africa only played a supporting role in theme-based exhibitions such as ‘The Wonders of Wood’ (1952), ‘Acquisitions’ in 1952/1953 and ‘Beads, Pits and Shells’ (1953), which featured several pieces. In the early 1950s, the museum faced the almost impossible task of bringing the Africa collection back to an acceptable standard. Curator Jager Gerlings embraced this challenge with the spirit of enterprise. There was hardly any money for purchases, but the museum was open to exchanges. This had occurred earlier in the history of the museum. And in the large Indonesian collection especially, there were duplicates of many objects. In the 1950s, a long list of partners was created with whom objects could be exchanged, or from whom gifts could be received in a few cases. Among these partners were numerous museums, such as the Ethnographic Museum in Antwerp (Fig. 48), the Museum of Ethnology (Museum für Völkerkunde, now Museum der Weltkulturen) in Frankfurt (a large Borana collection) and the British Museum in London,20 but also many traders and private collectors. The new acquisitions were very welcome, but could not assuage the disappointment concerning the loss of the African objects of the Artis collection.

South Africa In the exhibitions of the 1950s, considerable attention was given to South Africa. Following the Second World War, relations with South Africa were reestablished with difficulty, due to the sympathy for Nazi Germany shown by some Afrikaner nationalists.21 Also, the National Party took power in 1948 and increasingly implemented a policy of segregation. Despite this, official relations between the Netherlands and South Africa during this period quickly became warm, justified in the Netherlands by a wish to make up for the loss of the Netherlands East Indies, economic prospects and the fairly large numbers of Dutch people emigrating to South Africa. Both countries saw the historical ties and linguistic affinity as a strong basis for political and economic cooperation. In 1951 a cultural treaty was signed and the following year many festivities were

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held in both countries to commemorate the landing of Van Riebeeck at the Cape 300 years earlier. In the Tropenmuseum this was commemorated with the exhibition ‘South Africa 300 years’, which was held from 27 March to 27 April in 1952 in the Light Hall. This exhibition was initiated by the South African ambassador, who found the Royal Tropical Institute willing to collaborate. The exhibition showed historical documents, maps, paintings and personal objects originating from a large number of Dutch organizations and private individuals who provided objects on loan. The historical story told relied heavily on the Dutch/Afrikaner contribution, with a focus on ﬁgures such as Kruger, Botha and Smuts. Also a large photomontage of the South African Union was displayed. In the auditorium, ﬁlms about South Africa were shown. The tenor of the exhibition was evident from the Afrikaans title: ‘Ons bou een nasie’ (We are Building a Nation). The exhibition was designed by the well-known Dutch designer Dick Elffers and was presented in the front section of the Light Hall. In countless newspaper articles, there was little criticism of the words used by Ambassador Colonel P.I. Hoogenhout and the South African Professor N.P. Van Wyk Louw, who called Van Riebeeck Day a public holiday ‘for all our people, white, brown and black’. In a report of the Information Bureau of the Royal Tropical Institute, it was stated: ‘As kinsmen of the Afrikaner people, who are giving our great Culemborger, Jan van Riebeeck, all the honour he deserves on this occasion, it is only natural that we, the Dutch, warmly wish to share in the biggest commemoration festivities in a wide range of ways.’22 Attending the Van Riebeeck exhibition was Mr J. van Dalsen of the State Information Bureau in Pretoria. He proposed that the Tropenmuseum set up a permanent department for South Africa, and committed to a contribution that would cover the costs. The proposal was supported by the South African Embassy. The Tropenmuseum initially responded somewhat coolly: South Africa lay largely outside the tropics (!) and there was a lack of space at the museum. It would be more logical to imagine South Africa being included in a permanent exhibition that was focused on all of Africa. H. Offerhaus, the then Deputy General Secretary of the Royal Tropical Institute, informed the embassy on 26-1-1955: ‘We agree, I think, that an exhibit as

you envisage should have a mixed economic/cultural character, i.e. that the finished products made from the wide range of raw products, both agricultural and industrial, should be placed as much as possible within an environment that reflects that of the country. This could be used simultaneously as an opportunity to depict the country, its inhabitants and their development. In this context, attention should also be given to the acculturation problems, which of course have an economic side.’ These ‘acculturation problems’ exploded in 1955 with the forced clearance of Sophiatown, the ‘coloured’ district of Johannesburg. Whether or not it was due to increasing political sensitivity, the project became drawn-out. Different people in the museum and the institute, as well as people from the South African side, interfered with the project’s progress. Halfway through the process, in 1956, a small photo exhibition was held that was focused on the ‘Kaapse Wijnplaase’, farmsteads built in the Dutch architectural style of the Cape. But the permanent department on South Africa was not really progressing. The exhibition was finally opened on November 7, 1958, still unfinished, by the South African Ambassador, dr F.E. Geldenhuys. Photographs from the time give the impression of a mixed exhibition with historical information, photographs of Dutch architectural styles, a range of products and some ethnographic objects such as beadwork.

The Congo The fact that, in addition to South Africa, the Congo also attracted an above-average interest from the museum probably had to do with the still extant trade connections with the Lower Congo region23 and the associated collection pieces that remained from the Artis collection. Moreover, in the 1950s the Congo was still a colony of the Netherlands’ neighbouring country, with which it was most closely connected: Belgium. Antwerp and Brussels were close by. The curator, Jager Gerlings, expanded the museum collection through exchanges with traders and other museums in Belgium. In 1955 the museum exhibited Congolese ethnographic objects in combination with paintings by Floris Jespers under the title: ‘The Congolese in Western and His Own Art’.

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13 Africa Department 1958 At right, mask A-11048 10000055 14 Exhibition ‘Congo Contrasts’ 1959 60059319

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In the second half of the 1950s, a type of permanent Africa Department was created on the second ﬂoor of the museum. The aforementioned South Africa presentation was also a part of this. Also Congolese objects from the museum’s collection were included.

of the General Information Bureau, Pennink, apparently was sensitive to this fact: ‘One point of vital importance with respect to the Congo Day being organized is the significance of public opinion (…). Our institute faces very sensitive issues with respect to “the colonial mindset”. We actively distance ourselves from everything that even hints at that mindset. Yet I now wonder whether, by sponsoring a Congo Day, we are not helping to promulgate a particular public relations aim for the Belgian Congo administration. As a result, in view of the current riots taking place in the Congo, we might have actually placed our image on unstable ground. In other words, could public opinion perhaps formulate it as follows: “The Tropics Institute says that it has let go of the colonial mindset in order, instead, to develop a progressive activity concerning the Tropics. Yet if the opportunity arises, it is still willing to step into the breach to support colonial relations.”24 The day finally came on 6 May 1959, about a year before the independence of the Congo. In June, a travelling exhibition called ‘Congo Contrasts’ opened. It focused on the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi. The exhibition had come from Belgium and had been curated by Inforcongo, a government body. Here, too, socialeconomic developments were stressed. Photographs and scale-models of mining activities and ‘African districts’ were displayed, among other things. The exhibition was actually brought in to fill the gap created by the delay of the Mexico exhibition. Inforcongo delivered the exhibition material, with the exception of several historical additions from the Netherlands and a few ethnographic objects from Dutch collections, and set up the exhibition. The exhibition ran from 19 June to 16 August and attracted more than 25,000 visitors. Considerable attention was given to historical relations (including Dutchmen in the Congo in the 17th century, the New African Trade Association and Stanley), as well as to the current state, with presentations on transport, social and political development, education, medical care, agriculture and mining, an electricity project and Leopoldville (now Kinshasa).

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1961: The Sahara The Congo and South Africa presentations can be seen as the prelude to the development of an Africa Department in which the entire continent was presented. This commitment continued with a large and spectacular temporary exhibition in the summer of 1961, ‘Sahara’. With Sahara, the Tropenmuseum was also emerging as a museum with ambitions in the area of modern exhibition techniques. In addition to large blow-ups of (black and white) photographs, ‘Sahara’ also displayed native environments, including an authentic Bedouin tent. To give the public the opportunity to imagine themselves in this environment, the large central hall of the museum was ﬁlled with desert sand. ‘Sahara’ became the large predecessor to a long line of experiments with native environments, replicas, authentic experiences, smells, colours and sounds, and the newest audiovisual equipment. The Sahara exhibition could to a large extent be attributed to Dr. Jager Gerlings, who was named Head Curator in 1959. During its ﬁrst 6 weeks, the Sahara exhibition drew 12,000 visitors.

1962: The first permanent Africa Department Throughout the 1950s, lengthy discussions took place on the desirability of a permanent Africa Department. By the end of the 1950s, there was a space on the second floor of the museum devoted to Africa. In 1958 a part of this space was reserved for South Africa. But the ambition extended further. Discussions held around 1960 reveal the difficult coordination between the two pillars of the museum, the Department of Tropical Products (TP) and the Department of Anthropology (CPA). A chronic shortage of money and capacity did not make the negotiations any easier. The institute secretary, Offerhaus, thought a country-related focus was a good idea so that the museum could approach embassies, as had happened with South Africa. Van Baal, head of the Department of Anthropology, later Social Scientific Research, responded scathingly. He thought that exhibitions should

be guided by scientiﬁc viewpoints, not by ﬁnancial opportunities. At the end of December 1960, the plan for an entirely new Africa Department was postponed for a year due to lack of money and lack of consensus. The discussions that were held within the Advisory Committee of the Royal Tropical Institute reveal that the discourse on the new Africa Department was not seen as a museum issue alone. In these discussions, the institute’s activities were reviewed in the light of international political shifts: ‘Mr Fentener van Vlissingen is very much interested in setting up an Africa Department. If the speaker shows up with African relations, he would like to show them something good in the museum. (…) In follow-up to the 1961 plan of action, Van Baal requested that special attention be given to South America. Last year it was agreed that much greater attention would be concentrated on Africa and, to do this, South America would be largely set aside. Since then, the most recent Bilderberg conference, which he (Van Baal), dr. De Kat Angelino and the General Secretary attended, has caused him to start vacillating. For the little more distant future, he requested that attention be given to South America as the newest area of communist action. (…) Fentener van Vlissingen would like to discuss again how important Africa is economically for Europe. Now that this territory is garnering so much attention, it would certainly be sensible to give attention to Africa – also in the museum.’25 Partly because of these considerations, Head Curator Jager Gerlings felt imprisoned in a network of interests. He had little elbow room, above or below. He proposed appointing a museum committee on which the Directors of CPA and TP would sit with the Head Curator, Jager Gerlings himself. A museum workgroup was also set up that he led. Jager Gerlings thus became a type of museum director that could quiet the old discord. Jager Gerlings defended his proposal to set up a new Africa Department as follows: ‘The African continent is currently occupying the centre of attention to such an extent that it needs to be well-represented in our museum. Now that the Africa collection that has been built up in recent years enables a good illustration of the most prominent aspects to be focused on, it is time to establish a new Africa Department.’26

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He also proposed moving the department from the 2nd ﬂoor to the ground ﬂoor, i.e. a more prominent place in the museum. Jager Gerlings was the initiator and chief framer of the encyclopaedic plan. This gave some attention to North Africa and the Sahara, but was primarily focused on Equatorial and Southern Africa. In addition, attention was to be given to the confrontation between traditional and modern life, the means of existence, social life, clothing, jewellery

and weapons, cultural life, economic development and European interference with it, medical problems and care, traditional and modern education and political life, as well as an overview of the most important information on the different African countries. South Africa was still to be discussed separately in this scheme. With respect to the execution of the plan, it had already been said: ‘Objects, scale models, photographs and texts should depict a number of the most important aspects of African society, including concepts such as patriarchal familial relations, secret societies, seasonal labour and political life. The current dry displays of ethnographic objects and products do not meet the objective that we have set for ourselves: to give the public insight into African life and enterprise.’ Other comments made about the proposed department included: ‘… the Department, which should be a living book of geography which highlights both economic and ethnologic facets, is being asked to bear in mind the necessity of presenting the continent as a whole, despite the pronounced internal differences: past connections with Europe will be left out of consideration.’ Although the original plan of including parts of the current Sahara exhibition in the region of North Africa seemed attractive, a decision was made against it. The ‘nomad tent’ was retained, since ‘this is an authentic article, not a replica’.27 After several technical and ﬁnancial hurdles, the proposal was adopted in 1962. In terms of design, a new course was set and the department broke free from the architecture of the building. The outside windows were boarded up, as was the view to the central Light Hall. Also, a lowered ceiling, painted black, was installed such that the natural light was replaced by artiﬁcial lighting. The character of the presentation was on the one hand clean and modern, yet also dark and inviting. The former phenomenon was common in the Tropenmuseum at the time, but the latter was new and can be attributed to Jager Gerlings. He strove to achieve an aesthetic experience instead of the sterile presentation of facts. The exhibition was opened on June 8, 1962. Among the invited guests, members of the business community were fully represented, but there were

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johannes hendrik (joop) jager gerlings (1917-2010) Joop Jager Gerlings began working at the Colonial Institute as a volunteer in 1941. In 1947, working as an Indologist at the museum (then the Indies Museum), he was appointed as curator of the Ethnology Department. He shared his office with Rita Bolland, a museum assistant at the time, and later curator of textiles. Bolland assisted Jager Gerlings with his doctoral research into Indonesian textiles, which he published in 1952. As curator, it was his task after 1950 to give shape to the new departments. The Tropenmuseum had very limited resources at the time, and these financial limitations stimulated Jager Gerlings to become extraordinarily creative and to use unorthodox methods to realize the desired diversity in the collection. He exchanged objects from the colonial collection with other museums for objects from Africa and America. He also exchanged and purchased objects from traders and private collectors. At the same time, he worked towards realizing new museum presentations. As a result of his efforts to establish a central management, the old chasm in the museum between the Department of Tropical Products (TP) and the Department of Cultural and Physical Anthropology (CPA) gave way to collaboration and integration. His vision for the future encompassed field research and holistic collecting, supported by detailed documentation through the use of photographs and film. In 1959, as

the Head Curator of the CPA, he became responsible for the operation that he had launched himself, i.e. to transform the museum from a colonial museum into an ethnographic museum that encompassed virtually the entire non-Western world. His drive towards renewal not only led to intensive collecting, but also to new methods of presentation. Objects were creatively combined with big photographs, sounds, and lifelike replicas of scenes. The Sahara exhibition was a striking example of this. He thus laid the foundation for the reputation of the Tropenmuseum as an experience-based museum. The daily life of people in the tropics and the promotion of knowledge about the development problems encountered there increasingly became important exhibition themes, which was reﬂected in the collecting policy of the museum. In the view of Jager Gerlings, the purchase of objects had to be socially relevant and related to the actual everyday lives of people. He relied on his own experiences, gained in 1955 through research conducted on location with his scientiﬁc righthand man, Douwe Jongmans, into the social developments among Berbers in the Moroccan Sahara, while also collecting numerous objects. In 1965 he was named the Assistant Director of the Department of Anthropology and Head of the Museum Department. He recorded his ideas for the future in an ambitious museum policy paper

in 1966, in which he made a plea for an enormous expansion of the exhibition area, the development of a children’s museum and greater attention to modern art. In 1969, he was named the ﬁrst Director of the Tropenmuseum, but he did not see himself as the right person to lead the radical change suggested soon afterwards by the Minister of Development Cooperation. In 1971, he accepted the position of Director of the Netherlands Open Air Museum (Openluchtmuseum) in Arnhem. In many respects he can be considered the founder of the postcolonial Tropenmuseum.28

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no representatives from African embassies. There was considerable publicity about the opening. KRO television’s Documenta reported: ‘This implies that not only a picture of a number of traditional cultures is given, such as they have generally been seen in ‘the West’ as being representative for the whole of Africa. On the contrary, a concerted effort has been made to show the young Africa against a background of its unmistakable, strong traditions, which as such would not be absent from the museum. What does Africa look like these days?’ Public interest exceeded all expectations: ‘In the study of visitors conducted in 1962, the new Africa Department scored very high. The department is undisputedly the most appreciated department at the museum.’29

Field research After the opening of the successful Africa Department, the museum turned its attention to other departments awaiting development. No Africa exhibitions were organized in the 1960s. But behind the scenes hard work was being done on plans for a modernized museum whose approach would go further than the Africa Department of 1962, which was then considered to be very modern. The development cooperation had set the tone for new relations between the Netherlands and the Tropics. Consideration was given to building new departments that were not based on individual objects, but rather on intensive ﬁeld research and collecting activities through which, in conjunction with audiovisual aids, a complete society could be reconstructed. Through this intricate approach, development issues could be communicated in detail. The bases for this new approach were set in the museum policy paper of 1966. They wanted an example in Africa where existing expertise could be combined with the objectives of the newly-formulated policy. The search led them to the Samo, a small community living in Burkina Faso, in the dry Sahel region. This community served as a model of a development issue to which Dutch engineers perhaps could ﬁnd answers. An employee of the Royal Tropical Institute had been working with this community for a long time: Jan Broekhuijse.

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Samo. An African savannah people in development After years of work, the exhibition was finally opened in 1971 by Prince Claus, who was a strong supporter for development cooperation. For the Tropenmuseum, the Samo exhibition was an appropriate illustration of the need for development cooperation, as it gave an up-to-date and complete picture of a society in the Tropics that was having to fight for its survival. The exhibition wanted to be a ‘…snapshot taken in the middle of 1970 of hard-working people and their problems without the unbearable heat and the haze of dust. The foreign influences, the powers that change life are pictured in a modern manner. Behind these images, reality lies within the reach of anyone that knows how to look through them.’30 To be able to produce the most truthful picture possible, numerous aspects of these people’s lives were recorded on film, audiotapes, in photographs and in text. The collected objects were primarily chosen for their functional capacity. The main point of focus was the representation of daily life rather than beauty. The insight gained in this manner was meant to identify and present the opportunities for development, as well as the problems that could arise for this development. To collect good and reliable ethnographic material, the trust of the local population was necessary. This was particularly true for recording situations on film, photographs and audio. That is why Cowan and Broekhuijse stayed for longer periods in those locations where the population supported the undertaking. Everyday objects were collected and then placed in displays that approximated the life-like settings of regular people. Some of the items included showed ‘primitive industrial’ processes, such as the production of beer, and ‘the more artistic religious objects such as masks and images’ were interesting. Because so much of the Samo region had been depleted by urban buyers, they had to go to the city to get these objects. The other objects were purchased from private households in the villages they passed through. Broekhuijse had nothing to do with the exhibition itself. ‘Frits Cowan and Joop Jager Gerlings created a magnificent, instructive ‘reality exposition’ from it all. For the first time in the Netherlands, the development process was brought alive in a museum.

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