Science Museum Group Journal (Nov 2019)
Review: ‘Everything passes, except the past’: reviewing the renovated Royal Museum of Central Africa (RMCA)
Abstract
Decolonisation has been a global hot topic for museums over the last few years, whether through educational movements such as #Rhodesmustfall (Rhodes Must Fall, 2015), museum displays such as Birmingham Museum’s The Past is Now (Birmingham Museums, archival work such as the Pitt Rivers’ ‘Labelling matters’ project (Museum Next, 2019) or the New York Museum movements of ‘Decolonize Brooklyn Museum’ and #Decolonizethisplace (Decolonize This Place, 2018). Belgium is also no stranger to these discussions: in 2013 The Royal Museum of Central Africa (RMCA) closed its doors in order to renovate and revisit the colonial content and buildings of the Museum. Located in the municipality of Tervuren (just outside Brussels), the RMCA reopened in December 2018 aiming to ‘present a contemporary and decolonised vision of Africa’ through its galleries (RMCA, 2018a). The following article describes the author’s impressions of the new gallery. It discusses the successes and failures of this project, as well as its implications for UK museums. It is useful to first understand the meaning of colonisation and decolonisation within the context of museums. Whilst the literature on decolonisation is too extensive to be fully engaged with here, there are many texts which discuss the topic in detail.[1] As S A Saggar, author of the Decolonial Dictionary writes, ‘In the context of...current conversations around decolonisation in museums and wider society...[colonisation] refers to the European imperial project, and its offshoots in settler societies’. The definition also mentions that ‘whilst direct colonial rule over parts of the world was a historical project, we continue to live with these inheritances today, both in metropolitan centres and former colonies’ (Saagar, 2019). Decolonisation for museums often refers to the attempts made by historical institutions to change the negative inheritances and power imbalances of colonisation. Thus far, decolonial approaches within UK museums have often been limited to partial changes to a building, rather than a complete overhaul of the entire museum space. Temporary exhibitions, community outreach and workshop spaces are the most common attempts at decolonisation made by UK museums, though there have been calls throughout the industry for a bolder approach to the decolonising process. Sharon Heal, the Director of the Museums Association, encouraged museums in her article Who’s afraid of decolonisation? to ‘collectively stop making excuses’ and to embrace the ‘new narratives’ that decolonisation presents (Heal, 2019). Though work is being done within the UK to decolonise spaces, there is still more to do for sustained change to happen. Hence RMCA makes an important case study for the complete renovation of large colonial European museums. This article will assess how successful the RMCA has been in its aims to decolonise a colonial museum. After outlining the origins of the RMCA the paper will review the newly refurbished Museum, and then reflect upon the legacies and lessons learnt through this ‘decolonising’ project.
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