1880 African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana) specimen from the Brussels Zoo, 2019-12-03

@KevinB Have you been to the Royal Museum of Central Africa? If so, do they have a gallery of African wildlife specimens also, or is that all presented at this museum?

@DavidBrown
I have not yet visited that museum - that has by the way publicly called itself just 'AfricaMuseum' since it reopened in 2018. However my mother did recently and she said that they did have a substantial gallery of Central African fauna besides ethnological and colonial materials.

Here is a link to the museum's map, indicating there is a landscapes and biodiversity hall.
The permanent collection | Royal Museum for Central Africa - Tervuren - Belgium

I am planning to visit that museum at point (perhaps this year?) and probably document some of it on ZooChat. However there are no concrete plans at this point.

@DavidBrown
I've visited the Central Africa Museum several times but it's some years since I was last there as the museum was closed for refurbishment on my last few visits to Brussels.

On my visits there were extensive zoology galleries featuring specimens mainly from the old Belgian Congo

@KevinB
I look forward to reading your thoughts on this museum in due course.

@Tim May From what I've gathered I think that the dioramas have now been scrapped as part of the refurbishment and are now changed beyond recognition.

@Onychorhynchus coronatus
It's a shame if they've all been scrapped.
I still haven't revisited this museum since its refurbishment but intend to go next time I'm in Belgium.

@Tim May I do totally understand why the ethnographic / anthropology displays were changed as they did reflect much of the vile attitudes in Belgian society dating from King Leopold and the colonial rule of the Congo towards Africa.

However, I just don't understand what the need was to scrap the dioramas as these were natural history exhibits and historical artifacts and really should not have been politicised in my opinion (yes, of course the Leopold regime used scientific progress.

They seem to be now presented in a more interactive display type way with information screens etc. (very mundane , just like every other museum now around the world) but I just personally don't particularly like that style over the art of dioramas.

@Onychorhynchus coronatus
Agreed: I'm certainly not defending the colonial attitude to the Belgian Congo but the old zoology galleries were very interesting so it's sad if they've been spoiled.

@Tim May Totally agree. I watched an old Belgian anthropology documentary sometime last year that showed the dioramas as they were (footage of the museum and its natural history dioramas appears at 26 minutes onwards) :



There is also this interesting blog about the dioramas and their history from quite an eccentric Belgian blogger.

Rowland Ward Taxidermist - Museum Menagerie

Honestly I find it a bit sad that making museum dioramas is such a lost art, and than they didn't keep at least some for historical reasons. An while I do understand the need for progress and modernization I always appre ciate the preservation of as much heritage and history as possible.

The Africa museum especially needed modernization and progress, given the messy and controversial history of Belgium and Congo and updated attitudes towards the inexcusable and awful parts of that history. Some people actually say they still didn't go far enough with that, mostly with regards to the anthropological and cultural parts of the museum. Some compromises also I believe that to be made in that respect, given the cultural heritage status of the museum buildings, which doesn't allow for the removal of certain historical elements and artwork. But I don't think this applies as much to the natural history displays, although admittedly there are some links between natural history and the colonial history that have to somehow be dealt with.

Small Belgian Congo side-note: in my book collection I actually have one natural history book that dates back to the era of Belgian Congo (it is from the 1950s).

I am not a big fan of the more modern interactive museum displays (and as such I really didn't enjoy the Antarctica exhibit in the Brussels museum that much, as it was almost entirely interactive and modern). I do see that information screens, videos, photo slideshows and so are useful, but personally I prefer for them to be integrated into and supportive of a more traditional display of natural history specimens rather than partially or entirely replacing them.

The pictures that I saw on the internet of the landscapes and biodiversity part of the Africa museum during some quick Googling and browsing of the museum's website do suggest that the museum still displays quite a few animal specimens, but not in the form of dioramas. The degree of "interactive-ness" is difficult to gauge from those images. But the exhibition does look somewhat interesting and appealing to me.

I did not have any truly concrete plans to visit the Africa Museum, and I am currently not going to make such plans. Now with Covid-19 (and especially now during a full-on second wave here in Belgium) museums and other entirely indoor attractions don't really appeal to me that much and I'm not really comfortable going to an entirely indoor venue if I don't absolutely have to - even if those places are still open and have had to take a whole set of safety measures to be allowed to reopen. Personally right now I prefer staying outdoors as much as possible when visiting attractions likes zoos and so on.

I would also like to return to the Brussels museum some day, given that they recently opened a new permanent collection with a lot of taxidermy specimens and their whale skeleton collection, but I think that unfortunately will have to wait. Probably for quite a while longer, as it now seems we will not be getting out of the Covid-19 era until at the earliest late 2021. If I do ever get to go to either museum again or for the first time I will definitely try to report on the visit here at ZooChat. But realistically such a visit isn't going to happen any time soon.

I have also realized I never actually completed my photographic report of my 2019 visit to the Brussels museum. I will have to work on that some day, but right now my 2020 zoo photos are my absolute priority and sole focus, so realistically those photos will be staying in their folder a while longer.

@KevinB Yes, I totally agree with what you have said about keeping the natural history dioramas for heritage reasons and I think this "decolonizing of museums" isn't really applicable when it comes to natural history and I think we risk losing these amazing dioramas to this.

However, I do think it is applicable to the ethnographic collection in this museum and especially because this was a deliberate attempt by the Leopold regime to justify to the "civilized world" and gloss over the atrocities of their vile rule of the Congo. For example, so many of those displays in that museum explicitly portray the Leopold "mission" as being an enlightened humanitarian response against the Swahili-Arab slave trade (which it goes without saying was also hideously evil) but of course we all know that the colonial Begians did exactly the same bloodthirsty evil things.