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Museum of Cultures | EXHIBITION ARCHIVE
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TRACES OF CONGO
The Nordic Countries in Congo - Congo in The Nordic Countries
9.5.2006 - 8.10.2006
The travelling exhibition Traces of Congo is a joint project involving the ethnographic museums of the Nordic countries and the Swedish Travelling Exhibitions. The project has been awarded the Nordic Cultural Fund's prize of 3 million Danish kroner.
The ethnographic museums in the Nordic countries house more than 40,000 artefacts from Congo, which tell their concrete story of the 130 years that Scandinavians were present in the country. The exhibition Traces of Congo aims to highlight the involvement and role of the Nordic countries in one of Europe's most brutal colonisation projects. It tells about Nordic missionaries and engineers, soldiers and explorers, and the imprint they left on the history of Congo at the end of the 19th century and early decades of the 20th century.
Ever since its establishment in 1878 Svenska Missionsförbundet (Swedish Mission Society) has done missionary work in the Congo. The army of King Leopold II, Force Publique, consisting of African mercenaries was in command of the white, as much as a third of whom were young Scandinavian officers. Steamboats on the rivers transported colonial products, rubber, palm oil and ivory to the markets in Europe. The boats had Finns working as machinists, some even as captains. The exhibition tells e.g. of a Norwegian botanist, who was only 31 when he died in Congo, of a Danishman, F. Olsen, who seized the opportunity opening for a poor boy and made a career as a soldier in Congo and a Finn, C. T. Eriksson, a big game hunter and ore prospector in the southern parts of Congo. The exhibition also provides insights into the present situation and what Congo has meant for the Nordic countries.
The exhibition was inaugurated in November 2005 at the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm. It will be open at the Museum of Cultures in Helsinki from May 9th till Oct. 8th 2006 travelling then to Copenhagen to the National museum of Denmark and finally to Oslo in February 2007. The Swedish Travelling Exhibitions takes charge of the tour.
A catalogue with the same name will accompany the exhibition. The author of it, a Danish journalist and lecturer Peter Tygesen has a deep interest in Africa. The publication entitled Kongospår has already appeared in Swedish.
Running parallel with the exhibition there will be seminars designed both for researchers in the field and the general public. There will be a research seminar, a seminar on crisis management and peacekeeping in the Congo on May 8th and a teachers' forum on May the 9th at Hanaholmen Swedish-Finnish Cultural Center.
Further information
Heli Lahdentausta, Curator
tel. +358 9 4050 9817
heli.lahdentausta(at)nba.fi
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