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FATHER VIEGEN 123 statues were no longer together on top of the cabinet in the museum. In 1913 they had all been attached to a wooden frame, undoubtedly made by Brother Hamers, but just before Viegen’s return, they had been removed from it again. This was because of the MSC’s participation in the first missionary exhibition in the Netherlands. Missionary exhibitions were among the most successful of the many activities set up in the Netherlands to support the Catholic missionaries overseas. Thousands of ethnographic objects were sent to the Netherlands, and from these, collections and small missionary museums were formed. These ethnographic objects were used mainly for missionary propaganda, but many of them were also sold in order to raise money and thus found their way to private collectors, benefactors, and museums. Numerous activities related to mission and missionary work were organized during so-called “mission weeks,” which were held in cities all over the Netherlands. People could see processions, movies, and mission plays, but the center of such a week was usually a missionary exhibition. The first Catholic missionary exhibition in the Netherlands was held in Breda in August 1919, and in the following year seven missionary exhibitions were organized. Visitors entering these exhibitions felt transported to foreign lands and were able to absorb something of the atmosphere of life there. These exhibitions were extremely successful until the 1950s and the MSC participated in them from the very beginning. The catalog of the 1919 Breda mission exhibition28 indicates that the MSC was one of a total of six participants. A photograph, published in the Katholieke Illustratie shows part of the installation that the MSC put together (fig. 11). The objects collected by Viegen were prominently present. Among others, the catalog mentions “Two sculptures from New Guinea’s interior, originating from the Gambas, an entirely wild tribe” and “four shields from New Guinea’s interior.”29 All the Asmat shields in these photographs are also to be found in the sepia photographs of Viegen’s objects taken in Merauke. A year later, ten congregations partook in a mission exhibition in ‘s-Hertogenbosch. In a photograph of the MSC installation (fig. 12), four Asmat sculptures and two shields are visible. They are hung quite high and are partly in shadow. Although not found in the sepia pictures, they were also collected by Viegen in 1912. These shields are now in a private collection and were bought from the MSC Mission House in Tilburg in 1950. At the time, the collector was told that Father Viegen had collected these shields, and reference was made to the account of his “Journey to the North West River” in the FIG. 20: Ancestor figure G, visible in figs. 9 and 11. Asmat, Manu village, Unir River, Coastal New Guinea. H: 125.7 cm. Ex Th. P. P. van Emden, administrator of Dutch New Guinea. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Donated by Nelson A. Rockefeller in 1979, 1979.206.1589.


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