ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the meaning of central African art and its circulation in post-1960 Belgium to explore connections between decolonisation, art, and Belgian culture and to see what the place of Congolese artwork can tell us about the meaning of decolonisation in an ex-metropole. Belgium’s large collections of Congolese art are directly connected to overseas colonialism. Although founded as a ‘window’ onto Africa rather than as an art museum, the Tervuren Museum amassed a large assortment of African artwork. Equally illustrative of the prominence of Belgian collector-experts is the career of Marie-Louise Bastin, an expert on the art of the Chokwe, a people of southwestern Congo and western Angola. With generational change, there has been a move away more recently from colonialist relations towards more fruitful interactions between Congolese and Belgian art worlds.
