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Julien Bobineau, Assistant Professor, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

Belgium's AfricaMuseum has a dark colonial past – it's making slow progress in confronting this history

DRC Prime Minister Jean-Michel Lukonde (L) at Belgium's AfricaMuseum in 2022. Jasper Jacobs via Getty Images

Racist displays and stories remain on display in several western European museums. They include grotesque objects depicting African people as “savage” and “wild”. Narratives of a “continent without history” and fantasies of European superiority are still told in ethnographic museums, like the Humboldt Forum in Berlin and the Musée du quai Branly in Paris.

These museums have been criticised by scholars and activists since the 1970s. Their handling of objects looted during the colonial period, especially from Africa, is seen as an indicator of the political relations between Europe and African nations.

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