Late last month, on December 28 to be precise, I visited what is now branded as the AfricaMuseum in Tervuren, a suburb of Brussels. My visit, during a family vacation to Belgium, came just a few weeks after the museum had reopened, after being closed for about five years for extensive renovations. The 86 million... Continue Reading →
When It Turns Out That Your Great-Great-Grandmother Was, Sort of, a Museum Curator
A few days ago, I published a post about some aspects of my family history, based on family photos I found, as a tribute to my mother who passed away recently. It can be read here. One of the questions I raised was how the personalities and life choices of our ancestors are. consciously or... Continue Reading →
Roaming Photographically through my Family History
My mother, Maria Roose, passed away recently, on July 22, 2018. Since my father's death in 1989, she had lived alone in our hometown of Bruges, Belgium, surrounded by a mix of family heirlooms and newer things, and she lived an active and fiercely independent life, driving until very recently. We are still in shock... Continue Reading →
Art Museums and Social Hierarchy – Part I
This is the first of a two-part post. The second part, which takes the issues to the Caribbean and Jamaica, can be found here. Museums are managers of consciousness. They give us an interpretation of history, of how to view the world and locate ourselves in it. They are, if you want to put it... Continue Reading →