EO.0.0.35776
Fragment van een kumbi bedstijl / Fragment d’un montant de lit kumbi / Fragment of kumbi bedpost. Kangu, Kongo-Central, RD Congo. [Yombe]. Late 19th century. Wood (Adansonia digitata), black pigment. Gift from N. De Cleene. 1934. EO.0.0.35776.
Object acquired by a missionary
This section of a kumbi bed frame was acquired by a missionary, most probably in the early 1900s. In this early period, the missionary corps and its entourage were placed under a strict authoritarian regime within which violence was not a rare occurrence and objects used in non-Christian rituals were often confiscated or destroyed. This object was offered to the museum in 1934 by the family of Dr. Natal De Cleene, one of the main theoreticians of colonial ethnography and indirect rule in the 1920s-1930s. He was the nephew of an eminent missionary, Mgr Natalis De Cleene.