RM* reports news about collections from former colonial territories and their future.
RM* enables heritage lovers to inform themselves about developments in this field and reduces the knowledge gap between the global south and the global north.
RM* is for all heritage enthusiasts around the world – both professionals and others – concerned with decolonising collections from colonial areas.
Long ago, it was in Goma (DR Congo), I held this Congolese mask in my hands. The dealer claimed it to be very old; he was keen to sell it. But unlike other wooden pieces, which he offered for little money, he asked a big sum for this one. Perhaps, it was indeed old and valuable. Back then, the mask struck a chord with me. Nowadays, it still does.
Missionaries played a significant, yet often overlooked, role in the formation of European museum collections. An example are the Congolese collections in the Dutch-speaking and French-speaking universities of KU Leuven and UCLouvain. The research project Missionary Networks and Colonial Education of the two universities challenges the assumption that these missionaries were holders of mere ‘soft power’ for the colonial ambitions of the Belgian Empire, instead they were major actors of an educational project with well-defined imperial aspirations.
Gender is almost absent in the repatriation discourse twice over. First in the record: the archives were mostly written by men, and provenance research built on those sources. Second in what we consider resistance: women who hid belongings, covertly protected their cultural heritage, or kept making them, did not leave the same trace as armed struggle. Repatriation, however, helps to rectify this longstanding problem.
