Magazines - Tribal Art Spring 2009

By Jonathan Fogel

Introduction
Located in an impressive structure in the midst of Brussels’ Parc du Cinquantenaire (Jubilee Park), the Musée du Cinquantenaire serves as the city’s central history museum. While the Musées royaux du Beaux-Arts house most of Brussels’ most iconic European paintings and sculptures dating from the fifteenth century onward, the Cinquantenaire addresses the histories of cultures around the world. It is the most prominent institution of the Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, an administrative mantel that it shares with the Musée des Instruments de Musique, the Musées d’Extrême-Orient, and the Porte de Hal.
Entering the stately but well-worn marble lobby of the Cinquantenaire, there is little that hints at the up to date or cutting edge. A step into adjoining galleries does little to allay this impression. Many show few apparent signs of having been improved in decades and indeed some appear to retain the original showcases from the opening of the museum (although these were, in fact, designed by Victor Horta for Maison Wolfers in 1912, and are part of the Art Nouveau display). So vintage is this environment that one might not be especially surprised to turn and see a fellow museum-goer wearing a beaver hat or a bustle dress. But the museum is being updated bit by bit, and on October 2, 2008, it unveiled ten revamped galleries that flawlessly display an impressive collection of some 1,500 objects spanning the native material culture of two continents and five millennia of the Americas. A smaller cluster of galleries devoted to many of the cultures of Oceania also reopened with new installations at the end of that same month.