Ethnographical Museum Antwerp

Ethnographic Museum Antwerp

Ethnografisch Museum -Hemba

AE 864 Ancestor statue Hemba (D.R. Kongo).
Wood, 89 cm
At the time of its purchase in 1930, this ancestor statue was world-renowned and was displayed in the 'Musée Imaginaire' of André Malraux

I live in Antwerp. You can visit me and combine it with this fine small Museum that shows art from all non African civilisations: African, Oceanic, Indian, ... .

Ethnografisch Museum Antwerpen
Suikerrui 19
2000 Antwerpen
BELGIUM
Tel: +32 (0)3 220.86.00
Fax: + 32 (0)3 227.08.71
etnografisch.museum (at) stad.antwerpen.be

You can see some masterworks in this small Museum, like the Hemba above.

If you want to have the following book published by the Ethnographical Museum in Antwerp, I can send it to you, it's a must read. Mail me private. Price: 75 € expedition costs included.David Norden

7th December 2001 - 28th April 2002
Frans M. Olbrechts (1899-1958)
in Search of Art in Africa

… a journey in search not of gold or ivory,
nor of ebony or radium, but of that which perhaps will
make Africa more famous than all these riches …
its art and artists. (Olbrechts 1940)

The Belgian scholar Frans Olbrechts had a huge influence on the study of African art. He may be regarded as the ‘spiritual father’ of the Ethnographic Museum.
Olbrechts was one of the first to describe and exhibit African art as art, rather than purely as ethnographica.

His fieldwork among various Native North American peoples and his travels in West Africa made him realize that the art of non-Western cultures could only be understood properly when studied in situ.

Two important ‘Antwerp’ events are at the heart of the present
exhibition: the ‘Congolese Art’ exhibition held in 1937–38 in the City Festival Hall on the Meir, and the ‘Ivory Coast Expedition of Ghent University and the Antwerp Vleeshuis Museum’, which was undertaken in 1938–39 with the support of a number of Antwerp patrons. Throughout the exhibition runs the theme of Olbrechts’s interest in the personality and work of the African artist.

Of the more than 1500 Congolese works of art Olbrechts assem-bled
in the Antwerp City Festival Hall, 72 have now been chosen from various Belgian museums and private collections.

Some of these rare and aesthetically outstanding works have not been exhibited since 1937–38.

The expedition to Côte d’Ivoire is illustrated in this exhibition by
a large number of masks, sculptures, utensils and jewellery, acquired in situ in 1938–39 by Olbrechts’s students Pieter Jan Vandenhoute and Albert Maesen during their fieldwork among the Dan, Wè and Senufo. These well-documented objects are placed in their original context by means of hitherto little-known photographs and films made during the expedition.

F. Olbrechts, P.J. Vandenhoute and A. Maesen
Ivory Coast Expedition
1938-1939.

back to the Belgium section

Ethnographical Museum Antwerp

Ethnographic Museum Antwerp

AE 864 Ancestor statue Hemba (D.R. Kongo). Wood, 89 cm At the time of its purchase in 1930, this ancestor statue was world-renowned and was displayed in the 'Musée Imaginaire' of André Malraux

I live in Antwerp. You can visit me and combine it with this fine small Museum that shows art from all non African civilisations: African, Oceanic, Indian, ... .

AE 864 Ancestor statue Hemba (D.R. Kongo).
Wood, 89 cm
At the time of its purchase in 1930, this ancestor statue was world-renowned and was displayed in the 'Musée Imaginaire' of André Malraux