Guido Gryseels has been getting calls for a week, asking if he’d give some statues a new home. He’s the director of the Africa Museum in Tervuren, Belgium, and his institution, originally founded by Leopold II, might seem like a logical place to house monuments to the 19th-century king whose reign in Congo saw the murder and mutilation of at least 10 million Africans. One possible way to deal with a problematic statue would be to treat it like a bronze likeness of the deposed former president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah. A statue of him was beheaded during a 1966 military coup, and later placed next to its body on a plinth, with a plaque explaining the history of its desecration. He said it was a way to simultaneously present both the history of Nkrumah’s regime and of the revolution that removed him.
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
More Stories
Lagos Rising: Meet the African Designers Who are Ushering in a New Guard of Fashion
My Life in Food: Idris Elba on African Cuisine and Cooking with his Mum
In His Imaginative Debut Feature, Walé Oyéjidé Brings Together Elements of His Life’s Work
What is Zellige Tile?
Ousmane Sembène at 100: A Tribute to Senegal’s ‘Father of African Cinema’
Inside an Ultra-exclusive Lodge on the Fringe of Etosha National Park
Tourists Flock to Nigerian Cave And Waterfall For Its ‘Healing Powers’
Morocco is Just as Worthy for a Sun Trip
African Markets Offer Unique Goods and Experiences
Get to Know East Africa’s Art Scene
Mo Ibrahim’s Index Looks at Africa’s State of Governance
France to Give Burkina Faso What It Wants