Provenance research and collaboration between Belgium and DR Congo: the PROCHE project

[in French] The PROCHE project, implemented by the Royal Museum for Central Africa, is part of the 2022 Belgian law on the restitution of colonial collections. It aims to retrace the conditions of acquisition of the museum's so-called "ethnographic" and musicological objects, in close collaboration with Congolese institutions and cultural actors.

Lili Boros, Célia Charkaoui and Madelon Dewitte write:

By combining archival research, field surveys and biographical methodology, the project adopts a heuristic approach to contextualize the conditions of acquisition of objects and make the data accessible via an open access database.

However, this work highlights the methodological challenges faced by provenance research, particularly in the face of colonial sources that are often incomplete and biased and the political and social issues of restitution.

It highlights the need to broaden approaches, while calling for institutionalizing provenance research and fostering truly collaborative and inclusive approaches.