Olbrechts, qui fut directeur de Tervuren de 1947
jusqu’en 1958, date de sa mort, portait un tout
autre regard sur les collections du musée et fi t fi gure
de réel précurseur dans l’étude stylistique des arts
africains. Au sein du cercle des conservateurs de
musée, le regard qu’ont porté les uns et les autres
sur l’art africain ne s’est pas modifi é de la même
manière ni à la même vitesse.
Certes, au tout début du XXe siècle, les objets
collectés n’étaient guère qualifi és d’oeuvres d’art, si
ce n’est par les artistes occidentaux d’avant-garde ;
il s’agissait d’artefacts qu’il fallait conserver parce
que témoins d’une culture en voie de transformation,
26
voire de disparition. Dans les années trente
par contre, la reconnaissance esthétique de l’art
africain progresse en Europe ; bien qu’encore fort
timide, elle sort du cercle restreint des « Primitivistes
». Cette mutation du regard occidental sur
Thankfully, though, other Belgian academic
voices were making themselves heard and proposed
different paths to follow. Beginning in
the 1940s, Frans Olbrechts, who had been the
director of the Tervuren Museum from 1947
until his death in 1958, had a completely different
perspective on the museum’s collection, and
he was a visionary with regard to the systematic
stylistic study of African art. Among most
museum curators, however, changes in the way
African art was perceived came about in very
uneven ways and at a very uneven pace.
At the start of the twentieth century, objects
in the collection were not considered artworks
except by Western avant-garde artists. They
were instead seen as artifacts of cultures that
were in transition or, frankly, disappearing, and
for that reason they had to be preserved. It was
not until the 1930s that the aesthetic recognition
of African art made signifi cant strides in
Europe. This move was timid at fi rst, but the
art began to emerge from the shadows of the
narrow circle of “primitivists” to which it had
at fi rst been limited. This transformation of the
Western perception of African art accelerated
sharply in the early 1960s. As it achieved recognition
as an art form, a market for it developed
as well.
The pupae at the Tervuren Museum had become
butterfl ies, and by the early 1970s the
l’art africain s’accéléra fortement au début des
années soixante. L’art africain avait désormais
conquis ses lettres de noblesse… ainsi qu’une cote
sur le marché de l’art.
Les chrysalides du musée de Tervuren s’étaient
muées en papillons, et, à l’aube des années soixantedix,
cette institution s’est brusquement retrouvée à
la tête d’un immense trésor artistique.
Le temps passa, et lorsque vers la fi n des années
soixante-dix je vins me documenter au musée, les
deux conservateurs de la section d’ethnographie
étaient non seulement parfaitement conscients de
la valeur esthétique des collections qu’ils géraient,
mais, en outre, Albert Maesen, disciple de Franz
Olbrechts, comptait parmi les meilleurs experts
en art africain, tandis que Huguette Van Geluwe
maîtrisait davantage les arts de l’Océanie et de
l’Afrique de l’Ouest. Les étudiants en histoire de
institution suddenly found itself in charge of
an enormous collection of artistic treasures.
Time passed, and at the end of the 1970s,
when I was a student using the museum’s resources
for my research, the two curators of
the ethnographic section were not only fully
aware of the aesthetic value of the collections
they were managing, but Albert Maesens, a
disciple of Olbrechts, was among the most recognized
authorities on African art, while Huguette
Van Geluwe had great expertise in the
fi elds of Oceanic and West African art. Art history
students, scholars, researchers from other
institutions, and collectors all came knocking
on their doors. Over a period of just two
decades, the museum’s reserves had acquired
a reputation as the mythical Ali Baba’s cave,
but only a few visitors had the “open sesame”
privileges that would unlock the gates. The
collection in those reserves had continued to
grow due both to Maesen’s collecting expeditions
of the 1950s and to the transfer in the
1960s and 1970s of large parts of the African,
Native American, and Oceanic holdings of the
Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire (MRAH)
to Tervuren. Managing the ethnographic collection
was nearly a full-time task for two
curators. Although they did comparative and
stylistic research on the collections they were
in charge of, they seem to have had neither the