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Acknowledgments

A great many people and institutions supported this project along the way.

There are simply no words for the thanks I owe the staff of the IMNC in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi, and the many people who helped me during my stays in Congo. Désiré Kapata, and especially Dr. Muya wa Bitanko of the IMNC in Lubumbashi, made my stay there very productive. I thank Nicole Sapato and Kiat Wandand for helping me get to know the city. Also in Lubumbashi, Léon Verbeek generously shared the transcripts of his interviews and his wealth of knowledge about modern Congolese art with me. At the IMNC in Kinshasa, André Kule, Françoise Toyeye, N’Kanza Lutayi, and especially museum director Prof. Joseph Ibongo greatly facilitated my research. Francklin Mubwabu helped with access to the newly digitized images of the museum. Dr. Henry Bundjoko was generous with his time and knowledge and helped me both at the museum in Lubumbashi and in Kinshasa after his move there. Vera Melotte, Marius Mihigo, the late Guy Efomi, Liesbeth Bernaerts, and Koen Vanden Driessche helped make my stays in Kinshasa possible. A special thanks goes to Chantal Tombu, for being such a generous host and friend. Most of all, I thank Augustin Bikale, whose support was crucial to my stays in Congo, and whose conversation helped shape this book. Kinshasa mboka té!

I have benefited tremendously from the expertise and support of the staff of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium. Nancy Vanderlinden, Julien Volper, Mathilde Leduc-Grimaldi, Mathieu Zana Aziza Etambala, Anne Welschen, Hein Vanhee, Maarten Couttenier, Viviane Baeke, and of course director Guido Gryseels, who supported this project from the very beginning, have all helped make this book possible. Raf Storme and Pierre Dandoy helped me navigate the African Archive at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Brussels, and Emmanuel Gerard helped me locate material in the archives of the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces in Brussels. Darla Rushing and Trish Nugent gave me a very kind reception at the special collections of Loyola College in New Orleans, where I consulted the papers of Joseph Cornet.

Several institutions provided me with support and space to work on this project. At the Department of History of the University of Pennsylvania, Lynn Lees and Kathy Peiss provided me with insightful comments on numerous drafts. I cannot thank Lee Cassanelli and Bruce Kuklick enough for taking a chance on this project and for their continued and unfailing support of my work. This book would not have existed without them. Bruce and Tizzie’s devotion to the Low Countries has also been much appreciated. The Ohio State University, the Institute for Historical Studies (IHS) at the University of Texas in Austin, and the Käte Hamburger Kolleg and Centre for Global Cooperation Research (GCR) at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany provided further support for the writing and research of this book, and the National Museum of African Art (NMAA) at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, hosted me for four productive months. Janet Stanley of the Warren M. Robbins Library at the NMAA was always generous with her time and immense expertise, as were chief curator Christine Mullen Kreamer and Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives archivist Amy Staples. I thank IHS director Julie Hardwick and IHS staff member Courtney Meador for making my stay in Austin possible, and Markus Böckenförde, Tobias Debiel, Alexandra Przyrembel, Volker Heins, and the GCR staff for welcoming me to Duisburg. The staff and my colleagues at the Department of African American and African Studies at the Ohio State University, particularly Anthonia Kalu, Ike Newsum and Franco Barchiesi, have been very supportive. A grant-in-aid for manuscript preparation from the College of Arts and Humanities at the Ohio State University helped defray the costs of the many images in this book.

Several museums provided me with images and archival materials for this study. These include the RMCA, the IMNC, KADOC, the Documentation and Research Centre for Religion, Culture and Society at the University of Leuven in Belgium, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the National Museum of African Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the National Gallery, the Dayton Art Institute, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, and the Art Gallery of Ontario. The interlibrary loan staff at the Van Pelt Library at the University of Pennsylvania, the Perry-Castañeda Library at the University of Texas in Austin, and the Thompson Library at the Ohio State University, as well as Ohio State African Studies librarian Johanna Sellman, were incredibly helpful in my quest for published materials. A special thanks to the MAGNIN-A gallery and Chéri Samba for allowing me to use the beautiful Chéri Samba painting Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale. Réorganisation (2002) for the cover.

At different stages in this project, I have benefited from the advice, conversation, and help of David Binkley, Nancy Rose Hunt, Michel Verly, Jan Raymaekers, Louis Vos, Boris Wastiau, Louis de Strycker, Constantine Petridis, Idesbald Goddeeris, and Renaat Devisch. I am grateful for the confidence Gillian Berchowitz of the Ohio University Press has had in this project, and the expertise with which Nancy Basmajian, Samara Rafert, and Rick Huard shepherded my manuscript through the publication process. The comments and feedback of series editors Jean Allman, Allen Isaacman, and Derek Peterson, as well as the two anonymous reviewers, considerably improved the manuscript. This manuscript has also benefited enormously from the comments of the many other people who read part or all of it. I thank Lee Cassanelli, Bogumil Jewsiewicki, Steve Conn, Jan Vansina, Steven Pierce, Franco Barchiesi, Allen F. Roberts, and Joanna Grabski for their feedback. Special thanks to Alice Conklin, who not only read several versions of the manuscript, but whose advice, friendship, and mentorship also helped me navigate my years as an assistant professor. Naturally, all remaining mistakes are my sole responsibility. Parts of chapter 1 and chapter 3 have previously appeared as articles in History and Anthropology (vol. 24, no. 4 [December 2013]: 472–92) and the Journal of African History (vol. 56, no. 1, March 2015) (reprinted with permission).

This book would not have existed without the willingness of so many people to talk to me about their personal histories with the museums in Belgium and Congo. A full list is included in the bibliography, but I particularly want to acknowledge the generosity and hospitality of Shaje’a A. Tshiluila, Eugénie Nzembele Safiri, and the late Célestin Badi-Banga ne Mwine.

My family and friends have encouraged and sustained me through a long and sometimes difficult process. Marilyn Sinkewicz, Naomi Greyser, and Susanne Sreedhar were an incredible support during the writing process. Although my career choices have taken me far away from them, my family has always been supportive and encouraged me to keep going. My sister Liesje Van Beurden, her wife Els De Pessemier, and my friends in Belgium, the United States, and Congo have been patient and supportive. My love and gratitude go out to Brian, who has read every single word I wrote for this book, and who has cooked far more than his fair share of meals in the past years. I simply could not have done this without him. Most of all, I thank my parents for their unwavering support for me, always. This book is dedicated to them.