Magazines - Tribal Art Summer 2011

By Françoise Barrier, publisher of Tribal Art magazine.

Introduction
For François Boulanger, whose good-natured silhouette is well known to every Belgian tribal art dealer, “collectors do not readily appreciate the true value of small ethnographic pieces.” That is how humbly he qualifies the works in his collection, which is as atypical as it is exceptional.
In the course of the last twenty-five years, François, with the unwavering support of his wife Françoise (many collectors would envy him for her limitless devotion to the cause of the collection), has amassed no fewer than 900 African works. “But these are only small objects,” he says, a bit defensively, “musical instruments, 500 sanzas— at one time, I had nearly as many as Tervuren. And there are also the drums and whistles.”