FEATURE FIG. 23: Photograph by J. A. de Moraes, Loanda, of Dutch merchant L. S. Anema (1854–1918), c. 1883. Private collection. 130 from the Loango Coast, Congo. Washington, DC, National Museum of African Art. Pechuël-Loesche, E. (1907). Volkskunde von Loango. Stuttgart, Strecker & Schröder. Regeer, J. W. (1882). Schetsen van Afrika’s Zuidwestkust. Brieven uit Sonjo. (manuscript) Rotterdam, s.l.: s.n.. Roberts, Allen F. (1995). Animals in African Art: From the Familiar to the Marvelous. New York, The Museum for African Art. Ross, Doran H. (ed.) (1992). Elephant: The Animal and its Ivory in African Culture. Los Angeles, Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA. Schildkrout, Enid and Curtis A. Keim (1990). African Reflections: Art from Northeastern Zaire. Seattle etc., University of Washington Press. Schildkrout, Enid and Curtis A. Keim (1990b). “Mangbetu Ivories: Innovations between 1910 and 1914.” Discussion Papers in the African Humanities, AH Number 5. Boston, MA, Boston University, African Studies Center. Stanley, Henry Morton (1878). Through the Dark Continent, Or the Sources of the Nile around the Great Lakes of Equatorial Africa and down the Livingstone River to the Atlantic Ocean, 2 vols. London, Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington. Steiner, Christopher B. (1994). African Art in Transit. Cambridge etc., Cambridge University Press. Thompson, Robert Farris and Joseph Cornet (1981). The Four Moments of the Sun: Kongo Art in Two Worlds. Washington, National Gallery of Art. Vansina, Jan (1990). Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa. Madison, Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin Press. Wijs, S. T. (1998). Toeristenkunst in Neder-Kongo. Een materiële reactie op het contact tussen twee werelden. Universiteit van Amsterdam (unpublished). ——— (2008). De Indisch-Afrikaanse Connectie. Overdracht van een Afrikaanse Collectie. Museum Volkenkunde, Leiden (unpublished). ——— (2013). “Ivoren verhalen,“ Jaarboek 2012. Amstelveen, Vereniging Vrienden Etnografica. NOTES 1. The NAHV was created from the Kerdijk & Pincoffs Company of Rotterdam, which was established in 1857, and became part of the Afrikaansche Handelsvereeniging (AHV) in 1866. The latter managed several commercial trading posts in the Lower Congo. After a bankruptcy in 1879, Hendrik Muller Szn (1819–1898) revived the business by founding the Nieuwe Afrikaansche Handelsvereeniging (NAHV) (Muller, 1977). 2. This observation is the reason for this article. An abridged version of it has previously been published in Dutch (Wijs: 2013). 3. Final paper in anthropology and non-Western sociology studies at Amsterdam University. 4. The term Lower Congo began to be used in nineteenthcentury literature to designate the area around the mouth of the Congo River. The area extends from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pool Malebo in the interior, the current locations of Kinshasa and Brazzaville. The rest of the river and the hinterland are part of the Upper Congo. The Lower Congo area extends from both sides of the river, from Loango in the north to approximately Loanda in the south, and includes Cabinda, parts of which are now the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Northern Angola. 5. Wereldmuseum of Rotterdam: 12 pieces; Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde of Leiden: 17 pieces; Tropenmuseum of Amsterdam: 11 pieces. The latter two museums merged with the Afrika Museum on April 1, 2014, to become the National Museums of World Cultures. 6. Officially, the slave trade continued for a few more years. According to the records, the last ship with slaves on it left the Loango Coast in 1868 (Martin, 1972: 148). 7. Anton Greshoff (1856–1905), the chief agent at Banana, played a key role in assembling the Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde’s Congo collection. His correspondence with the museum’s former director reveals that he regularly asked his staff to put together collections especially for Leiden and was intensively looking for interesting material (Collectiearchief Volkenkunde, dossiers 10, 13, 34, 514; and Wijs, 1998: 59–62). 8. Graburn (1976), Jules-Rosette (1984), Schildkrout and Keim (1990), Steiner (1994). 9. Their ability to reproduce their white clients’ writing and signatures on the tusks, despite their supposed illiteracy, won the Loango artists the whites’ admiration (Bridges, 2009: 39). 10. In the vicinity of Banana in 1887, L. S. Anema collected a wooden hat “made by the negroes, but not worn by them ... these hats were sometimes manufactured by the negroes during their leisure time, and offered for sale to whites.” 11. From 1861 to 1888, the Ethnografisch Museum of the Genootschap Natura Artis Magistra was located in the “Amicitiae” (Little Museum), and then moved in 1888 to the “Volharding” (Large Museum). In 1910, the Genootschap gave its collection to the recently founded Vereeniging Koloniaal Instituut, which is now the Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, but it was not physically moved there until 1920. The brief name change to Indisch Institut (1945–1950) was the reason for one of the Tropenmuseum’s most regrettable deaccessions. In 1947, the Institut transferred its entire African collection to the Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde, which caused it to lose one of the oldest and finest collections of African art in the Netherlands. The Loango ivories were among the few objects that were kept (Wijs, 2008, and Faber, Wijs and Van Dartel, 2011). 12. Tropenmuseum Archives, Anema file, NAM series 136; Marcussen file, NAM series 137; and Cremer file, NAM series 142. The objects in question are currently in the Leiden Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde, identified as series 2668, formerly in the Natura Artis Magistra collection. 13. In 1897 the pursuit of ethnographic objects led to the compilation of an acquisition list of desired objects by Schmelz, director of the Rijks Ethnografisch Museum (now the RMV). This list accompanied Greshoff on his collecting trips for the museum. Around the same time, at the behest of King Leopold, representatives of the “Congo State” also conducted a relentless search for objects.
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