Paperwork enthusiast seeking new frontiers of paperwork. Former submariner, former Peace Corps Volunteer. Opinions, thoughts, and comments reflect no actual persons, living or in the Navy.
Though resplendent with purchases and a happy tired from looking at a bunch of yarn, after we had dropped off said yarn at the place we were staying the day was still young. Or at least young by Spanish standards. I have mentioned it before but I grew up with access to the Smithsonian museums and I always figured they were by far the best museums in the world. But they close at five. Like quitters. A wonderful emergent property of Spanish culture is that the museums stay open until 8 which is a much more reasonable time for a museum to close. We took full advantage of this by going to two additional museums in the afternoon.
The first, as you’ve guessed from the header image, was the Museo Sorolla. This museum is the former house and workshop of Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, and the museum is of course dedicated to him. Joaquín there was a painter and his favorite subject was “sun-soaked,” which is just a fantastic thing to be obsessed with (unless you are The Stranger I suppose). There is a handy Google Arts & Culture thing of the collections if you want to see better photos. The first main room of the museum is the room that was historically Sorolla’s showroom, and so they have it jam-packed with a bunch of his paintings just like they would have been back in the day. Except now you can’t buy them, though the museum does have a lovely little gift shop.
While we were there they had a temporary exhibit on the various things that Sorolla painted as he travelled through the Iberian peninsula, which was fun because it let me imagine travelling through the Iberian peninsula, which is what we were doing, except Sorolla got to do it for work and so far I haven’t been able to do it for work. I gotta explore a different line of work man. After that you went on into the rest of his house, which was also jam-packed, except now with artworks by other people and other curious. Also TILES! We were at this point just getting a little taste of what the rest of our trip through Spain would be like, but we loved the tilework. You can also catch just the smallest glimpse in the photo below, but in his yard was an orange tree and this was February and like, oranges in February! Bonkers. Little did I know what was to come. Lemme tell ya, wandering through a gorgeous house with fantastic gardens so we could look at sun-soaked art is a great way to spend the first half of the second part of your afternoon.
But since it was the first half of the second part of the afternoon, the day was clearly not over! We had hours left until the museums closed! So I convinced my super amazing wife to let us wander on over and check out the Museo Arqueológico Nacional, aka The MAN:
The MAN was really great! I wish we had been able to spend more time here but them’s the breaks when you are trying to do the third major activity for the day. Ancient Spanish history has never really come up in my U.S.-based education or my personal reading, so pretty much everything in the museum was new and exciting and a novelty to absorb. Like for example I had no idea there were Celtic cultures in ancient Spain, that’s totally new and I haven’t been able to really delve into the significance of that. I was very glad to learn about the influence of the Phoenicians too because that really put a lot into perspective. And MAN! The artifacts at the MAN! These were so good! So well preserved! Where was this stuff hanging out before someone dug it up and put it in a museum? I mean look at the stuff below! (I wish I could link to the museum’s own photos of these objects like I usually try to do but they have one of the worst online collections catalogues I’ve seen, though I suppose it’s nice they at least try)
Baskets, wood and plant fibers, 1st century, Mazarrón (left) and Rio Tinto (right)Water pump, bronze, 1st century, Mines of Sotiel-CoronadaUniversal planispheric astrolabe, signed by Adriaan Zeelst, Brass, 1569, LeuvenMosaic, 2nd-3rd century, VillaquejidaLex Coloniae Genitiuae luliae, Year 20-24, Urso
I mean look at those baskets! Two thousand years old and the plant fibers have survived! You could almost still use them to carry around ore! And that water pump! Like toss some new gaskets in there and I think you could once again use it to spray water on superheated ores to cause them to crack, so you can then load them into the plant fiber baskets! And the mosaic! Not as unusual in my experience as the baskets and the water pump but still that is a funky little octopus! And when I talk about “where were they keeping these things” I was really talking about these again two-thousand-year-old lead law documents! Where were those sitting? And finally I mean ASTROLABES AHHHHH!
For serious they had so much cool stuff and we barely glimpsed the collection. I am def going to have to go back someday with a full day to explore. I don’t even think you have to feel bad about looking at any of these things because they are Spanish things from Spain in Spain! And in another twist of glimpses of things to come, they also had stuff from the Alhambra, which was fantastic to whet our appetites. Speaking of appetites, after we dragged ourselves out of the MAN we were hungry and it was time for dinner. On the recommendation of a friend we went to Casa Julio where for the first time in Spain croquettes betrayed us by being too large, meaning we ordered much too much. And so, full on art, archeology, and food, we stumbled back to the pad to prep for our final full day in Madrid.
I wrote just last time that the reason we went to Spain was to go to art museums. Reader, this is a bald-faced lie. The real reason we went to Spain is for yarn. And so on our third full day in Spain we went to Love Yarn Madrid (site might not be updated as they prep for the next year, but they have an Instagram).
We are of course yarn people around here. We wanted to make the most of our time at the festival so we woke up early with the goal of getting there right when it opened. This didn’t quite happen but we weren’t far off the mark, and would have been on the mark probably if I had figured out the Spanish metro system better. I told you I would write about this later, but after finally navigating our way through the metro station and on to a train we had a lovely ride and got to enjoy the real sea of humanity that rides the Madrid metro. There was a guy who was riding holding a whole yerba mate setup in his hands, including a gourd and a thermos with more hot water, and another guy playing panpipes for cash but the guy I wanted to tell you about is a whole different guy playing the accordion, which marked like the second accordion I had ever seen played in real life, having been lucky enough to see a Weird Al concert at the Kennedy Center last year. That was great. So was this guy. But eventually the metro served its purpose, having delivered us to the Pabellón de Cristal and thus to the yarn festival itself.
This was of course a yarn festival and not a sheep and wool festival, so sheep were only there in spirit, but it was a really good festival. There was a great deal of enthusiasm and it was really well run and had a pretty excellent array of food trucks out back to satiate our baser desires (though on that note, I always thought it was a little overblown when Italians would get upset at American intpretations of Italian food, except here they had a Mexican food truck from which we got nachos, and man, like, I get it now). The first thing we did on arrival was to buy a tote bag and go to the coat check and then it was off to the races. We went through every single vendor stall to figure out scope out the selection, which again was really good. A lot of your standard yarns you see everywhere but there were some cool Spanish brands and my super amazing wife of course prefers the brands that are not only quality but have some history.
While she was deciding what yarns she wanted to buy we checked out some of the other sites. The funnest thing they had going on was a “Yarn Olympiad.” The idea there was a series of competition of standard yarn skills, such as yarn ball winding which is a fun idea. The competition was fierce and the prizes delightful. They had that throughout the day. They also had a yarn fashion show which I don’t recall seeing at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival. The particular show (they had a couple) that we stopped and watched featured the work of Midori Hirose, a designer I had not heard of but with which my super amazing wife was familiar. They had the models walk the little runway with the designs and then eventually Midori herself came out which, you know, amazing to be in the midst of yarn stardom.
Midori in the middle.
Having seen the sites and carefully considered which moves to make, it was time to buy stuff. The biggest single purchase was that my super amazing wife got enough yarn from a Bolivian brand for a sweater. Before we arrived we were not expecting to find so yarn sellers hailing from former Spanish colonies, but in retrospect it made perfect sense and the reason you come to a yarn festival in Madrid is to be exposed to a whole new segment of the yarn world you hadn’t through much about. The yarn from Bolivia is made from baby llama wool and man, so soft. Those baby llamas know what they’re doing. Unusually, I also got some yarn. It is unusual because I don’t knit, but my super amazing wife said she would make me a hat which is extremely kind of her. The brand is Xolla, and I thought it was cool because the wool they use is from Ripollesa sheep which, according to their website, is one of the three native Catalan sheep breeds, and all are endangered. So good to support! My super amazing wife wasn’t originally going to get any from that brand but then saw mine and totally got jealous and got enough to make herself a scarf. Her final yarn I think was of some alpaca wool, and she got enough to make some socks.
Exhausted at this point from all the yarn shopping and fashion shows and crowds, but resplendent with natural fiber purchases, we head on out and boarded the train back into central Madrid. Love Yarn Madrid is apparently one of the newer yarn festivals, but the organizers really knew what they were doing and there was a wide selection of vendors that we normally wouldn’t have run across. It was cool to get some yarn tied to sheep so particular to Spain along with more exotic fibers from overseas. I am sure we’ll go back someday.
The sheep at the festival were only there in spirit, like the above Ripollesa cuties.
One of the primary reasons we came to Spain was not for the rain on the plains (though it was kinda gloomy in Madrid when we first showed up) but for the art museums. So on the second full day in Madrid we got our butt over to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia as early as we could!
“As early as we could” was in fact early enough for breakfast, which we had at the trippy café (“70s fever dream,” I wrote in my journal) they have there. We were not so adept at flagging down waiters in the European style so it took us a while to get some traction and we were a bit grumpy due to low blood sugar because we hadn’t had breakfast (I was grumpy at least, maybe my super amazing wife wasn’t) but it was an alright breakfast in the end. I recall the Reina Sofia being almost oppressively large and confusing. Another grumpiness factor is that we had timed tickets to the “Picasso 1906” exhibition and were rapidly coming up on that time but had no idea where the room was. The Reina Sofia is a very large square but with other shapes poking out of it, and on multiple floors, and maybe our blood sugar wasn’t all the way up from breakfast, but we were at a little bit of a loss until we stumbled across the exhibit finally. I don’t think the timed ticket mattered anyway.
I did enjoy the exhibit on Picasso (I learned he sculpted in addition to his other work, I don’t think I knew that before), but I think the first thing I was really stunned by was the Dalí above. We of course have a long historywith Dalíon this blog, so I thought I knew the man. But lo! Here was something new, a normal-looking painting. Reading about the painting on the internet I found out that the left side of the window is actually missing (for composition purposes), and so maybe that is the surrealist touch. Or maybe the surrealist touch is a surrealist painting a non-surrealist painting as a huge meta commentary on something something something. It’s of his sister, Anna Maria. Later on in the gift shop we bought another portrait (titled “Portrait“) of Anna Maria, so enamored were we with this part of the ouevre. (Do you think when Salvador told Anna Maria he was going to paint her, she was ever nervous? “I’m not going to have large spindly legs and be striding across a desolate landscape or something, am I, Sal?” “No, of course not,” says Salvador, with a wink, “I would never ever do that to you Ann.”)
But back to Picasso. The biggest celebrity in the Reina Sofia is of course Guernica. It is not the only thing in the hall in which is resides, but it is the only thing anyone was looking at. We went on a gloomy weekday but there was still a huge crowd (as you can see above), with tons of schoolkids being lectured about the piece. The only other reaction I wrote down about the painting is that it is “really impressively large,” a controversial statement I am nonetheless willing to stand by. Or sit by maybe, like the kids did.
Speaking of the controversial, another thing hammered home in this museum for me is that context matters. Since the art in the Reina Sofia is more modern than the art in the Prado, I didn’t really know what was going on. I mean I’ve read Homage to Catalonia and I am aware that WWII happened, but the intricacies of modern Spanish history that so much of the art was responding to were rather lost on me. There was some people in the art world that will tell you not to read the label next to the art but when there are explanatory notes man do I find those helpful. But lacking those contextual clues I had to enjoy the below posters ONLY for the pretty colors:
Thankfully though, as we were wandering out in a contextless white void, we eventually stumbled upon something we did have a whole lot of context for, that being an exhibit on the works of Ben Shahn, whose artworks focused on “the rights or workers and immigrants” and “the abuses of the powerful and the privileged” in the U.S. (and globally) during the Depression, New Deal, and into the Vietnam war. We Americans abroad had finally found America abroad and it all made sense. I knew what was going on in this exhibit. An admission though. I included both the pictures below because I thought both works were by Beh Shahn, but it turns out the work on the left (A Mule and a Plow) is by Bernarda Bryson Shahn, who did happen to the “life partner” of Ben but man she’s good. Though unfortunately for Bernarda, Ben had the single funniest work of art in the whole museum, by virtue of naming the painting on the right “Pretty Girl Milking the Cow.” Man I love art.
Anyways full of art it was time to get full of food. To do this we went off to the Mercado de San Miguel, Saint Michael being (I assume from context clues) the patron saint of tapas. We spent a while wandering the place buying ourselves all the little treats we deserved, starting with a calamari sandwich and croquettas before giving into our baser instincts and picking up towering plates of cheese and washing it all down with some very fancy sangria. A wonderful way to spend an afternoon and maybe like in the museum context clues would have helped but are carbs not the universal language?
The remainder of the day was spent wandering in and out of little shops to buy souvenirs and the sort of knick-knacks and olive oil bottles that really drive home to any visitors we have that my super amazing wife and I are seasoned world travelers. To top off the evening, on our final walk back to where we were staying we also of course stopped by to say hi to Cervantes. I left with a sudden urge to buy myself an old suit of armor.
A Working Woman by Elvira Navarro, translated by Christina MacSweeney
I have discussed before in this forum my Spanish roommate that I had during my Firstie year at the Naval Academy. His name was Francisco and he was a semester-long exchange student from the Spanish naval academy. He had been an enlisted sailor before going to the academy, and as such his lived experiences were unimaginable to me (specifically he was 29 and married). I still have fond memories of Francisco and the deep life lessons he bestowed upon me (see the linked post about sandwiches), and so in tribute to Francisco’s service in the afternoon of our first full day in Madrid my super amazing wife and I visited the Museo Naval!
If you Google the Museo Naval you will find reviews describing it has a “hidden gem” and man that is true. The entrance is unassuming and I wrote down in my journal that the foyer was “dingy.” I had greeted the nice lady at the front desk with my limited Spanish and she seemed very disappointed when I said I preferred English as she handed me a pamphlet on Jorge Juan (they had a special exhibit on him at the time). But you ascend the stairs and man WOW. It’s gotta be one of the better if not the best naval museums in the world. It is surprising how big it is as you wind through the twists and turns that reflect the twists and turns of the Spanish navy’s history. You really oughta go but if you can’t luckily it appears Google has turned it into a street view thing so you can catch a glimpse yourself.
The museum takes the prudent choice of starting at the beginning, with the early history of the Spanish navy (or I guess the Aragonian and Castilian naval forces). Apparently it took about a century between cannons being introduced to Europe in the 12th century and people thinking of putting them on ships in the 13th century, but the museum had the above examples of early 16th century shipboard artillery which is pretty neat.
Especially exciting for me was all the bits about early navigation. The collection here really was especially extraordinary. I have just talked about how much I like astrolabes (man I want an astrolabe), and the museum had them in spades. They also had all sorts of old maps, including even a huge globe dating from 1688. The crown jewel of their map collection was the Juan de la Cosa map, below. This is the oldest known map to feature America. Ole Juan there took part in Columbus’ voyages and only 8 years later in 1500 was banging out the below relatively detailed depiction of the Caribbean to demonstrate the majesty and extent of the Spanish empire. On that note, the museum is pretty laudatory and I don’t recollect them struggling to cope with the cruel nature of colonialism. They had a pretty huge painting of Columbus and a collection of Taíno artifacts to really drive home the number of people subject to the Spanish crown. However even in the midst of all this what I personally was most interested in when it came to the Juan de la Cosa map is the depiction of Africa, especially how the Nile and Congo rivers meet in a lake in the mountains of the moon, because I have my very particular interests and those interests are boats and Africa and navigation and steam power and integrated farming.
Really the sheer number of artifacts on display in the museum was overwhelming. They even had a whole section full of objects recovered from the Spanish nao San Diego, which was sunk by the Dutch in 1600 in the Philippines. A whole room choc-a-bloc with Chinese porcelain and Phillipines pots and Thai jars and man, you know, commerce! History! Boats! Stunning. And of course how could it be a naval museum without being absolutely stuffed to the brim with SHIP MODELS!!!!
After our visit to the museum my super amazing wife suggested I get into ship model building and I don’t think she knows what she is suggesting. I could become so obsessive, you don’t even know. She clearly doesn’t. But they had a whole bunch of ship models, of ships from every era and from so many locations (check out the Malaysian war boat above), and not just of ships! I just told you I love steam power and they had a whole intricate model of the turbines from España-class battleships and even (not pictured) a model of a water-powered sawmill they used to saw all the planks to build all these ships! Unclear if the model sawmill sawed model planks for the model boats.
So all in all a great museum, perhaps the best Naval Museum. Spanning centuries and full of intricate details and all sorts of information about the huge lifespan of the Spanish Navy, presented in both English and Spanish, if you are in Madrid man you gotta go. And then, I forgot to mention in the last post, after the museum we went off and got churros and chocolate, and if you are in Madrid you have to do that too. Do both. Ships, and churros. This is what is best in life.
My super amazing wife and I got married about a year ago (as loyal reader(s) of this blog will recall) but we never went on a honeymoon so we decided it was time to go on a honeymoon. We also decided that honeymoon is a state of mind and that we can call any vacation a honeymoon but this is the first vacation we called a honeymoon so we had to go big. Specifically, we had to go to Spain.
Travel to Spain was straightforward and everything went perfectly smoothly. The first city we were going to was Madrid. We arrived in the evening and got a taxi to the place we were staying, the biggest hiccup being that I couldn’t figure out how the key worked but luckily my super amazing wife saved the day and so we had a place to sleep. We were pooped but needed dinner so we grabbed something easy, spotting on the way a fantastical-looking pastry shop which we returned to for dessert. The only mistake we made here is that within mere hours of landing in Madrid I had one of the best cheesecakes I have ever had in my life and I spent the rest of the trip chasing that same high with only varied success.
The next morning our first destination was yet another wondrous pastry shop where we got some heavenly pastries for breakfast. Fortified, we quickly made it to our first big honeymoon adventure: Museo del Prado. The museum was great! For those that haven’t clicked the link, it’s an art museum, and a big one, focused on classical art. In line with their pre-20th-century vibe, photography was not allowed, so I can’t do my normal thing of showing you bad photos of great art. Instead I will have to simply describe the journey and use links along the way.
Overwhelmed by the layout, the first wing we managed to focus on was where they kept all their Hieronymus Bosch works. I already used “fantastical” in this post to describe a pastry shop but man that was a waste because now I need to talk about Bosch. The biggest work with the biggest crowd was The Garden of Earthly Delights of course. I had seen pictures of that thanks to the Spanish classes I did poorly in (I would also have seen it if I had done well), but his other works were more astounding. I am disappointed to learn it is merely attributed to the “workshop of,” but the single most surprising was The Temptations of Saint Anthony Abbot, which features prominently an old lady that is also a house (which apparently makes it a brothel? Or maybe it is the naked lady that makes it a brothel. Not knowing St. Anthony I don’t know which is the tempting part for him). I mean, look, if this was a Dalí that would be run-of-the-mill, pedestrian, expected. But Bosch(‘s workshop) painted this in 1510! How did they know to do that? The past is both a foreign country and yet exactly the same, I don’t know how they do it.
From Bosch we wandered into some religious iconography which I am usually pretty whatever about, but all the works in the Prado were bright and beautiful and being a big fan of art restoration YouTube I was desperately impressed by their restoration department. Those people know what they are doing, it is evident. Another extremely fun exhibit they had was “Reversos,” which was all about the backs of paintings. A couple of things fell under that bracket. One was the literal backs of paintings, which held other sketches and earlier works and clues to the history of the paintings on the front. Another batch were painters being cheeky, imagining works from another perspective or painting the literal backs of paintings as a meta-joke. Even meta-er was the painting we bought a print of, which featured a cat busting through some canvas to try to eat some sardines that are hanging off the back of a painting, which is not where I would store sardines but there you go.
You of course also can’t go to the Prado without talking about Goya. They got a lotta Goya at the Prado. A whole lot. Multiple rooms are dedicated to the Black Paintings. I knew about the Black Paintings and was expecting all of Goya to be surreal and dark and wicked but the Black Paintings wing was one of the later ones we visited, and there is whole other wing full of his earlier works which are bright and cheery and meant to portray beauty. These are also cheeky in their way, the museum displayed side by side both The Naked Maja and The Clothed Maja, which is funny in addition to being an interesting exploration of the cultural background of the time. Sometimes I think I should spend more time in art museums focused on single paintings, but zooming through such a massive collection of one person’s oeuvre has its attractions as well. In the rest of the museum there was tons more to see, and just to name some others I liked there was La suerte de varas,Margarita delante del espejo, La aguadora (so achingly bright even in paint), and The Pearl and the Wave (which is funny for the name alone).
Full of art, we needed to get full on food and found a wonderful little cafe for lunch. Full of lunch we needed to get full of Naval History and so then went to the Museo Naval! But they let me take pictures so I will cover them in the next entry. After the Museo Naval we then had some time to poke more around Madrid and carved a touristy path, exploring the shops and the statues and the Plaza Mayor (above) before finally winding up back at the place we were staying and checking out the closest restaurant which had the significant advantage of being achingly delicious. I did not know if I would be a fan of the blood sausage but I didn’t want it to stop, as you can see below. As a final note, man I enjoy being able to order “una cerveza” and subsequently being served a cerveza without all the hassle of picking one. This is the height of luxury, don’t let anyone lie to you.
Tales from the Dark Continent edited by Charles Allen
Journey into Africa by James McCarthy
Having stumbled out of the Royal Museum for Central Africa and into the daylight (well into the overcast skies), I proceeded to make my way into Brussels proper. Since the trolley out to the museum was undergoing maintenance, this involved a bus ride to the metro station and then a lovely metro ride into the city center. Except I didn’t really mean to go into the city center, that was too far, I meant to go to the city edge because there was supposed to be a yarn store which I was going to check out on behalf of my super amazing wife, but then I couldn’t find it which made yarn hunting feel a bit demoralizing so trying to figure out what else to do in Brussels I went to the Royal Museums of Fine Arts! Oh also there was an accordion player on the metro when I was riding it. When we were in Spain (which I will write about later) there was an accordion player on the metro and now here I was in Belgium with a metro-bound accordion player so I assume this is a European thing?
The first thing to know about the Royal Museums of Fine Arts is that “Museums” is plural. I did not realize this for quite a while and it made the whole experience rather bewildering. Not helping was the fact that I entered the place about two hours before closing and I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to see every single piece of fine art within that time and by golly I wanted to get my money’s worth. So I beat through the crowds and rushed over to the ticket machine and got what I thought was a general entry ticket to the singular Museum which noted what I thought was just a special exhibit: IMAGINE! 100 Years of International Surrealism. Ticket in hand I wandered off to the first exhibit I thought might be interesting to see, the Magritte Museum.
I found the Magritte Museum (what I at that time thought was the Magritte exhibit) and first had to figure out how to work the lockers so I could store the bag of Belgian chocolates I got for my super amazing wife at the behest of the friend I came to Belgium to see. With that done I got into the rather long line for the Magritte exhibit and waited and waited and finally got to the front where you scan your ticket only for my ticket to not work. Because it was actually a ticket for the surrealism exhibit, and the docent eventually told me that I had to go to that exhibit and couldn’t come into the Magritte exhibit. Stressed and put out, I went down to the surrealism exhibit, only to come across another barrier. Besides my time limit and being bewildered, the other off-putting thing about the museum was that every single other tourist there was as confused and bewildered as I was, so here I was trying to get into an actual exhibit to see some actual art in this museum only to find another tourist arguing with the docent there and it took a while. I mean maybe like 2 minutes but I was stressed! I just wanted some culture! And I was very annoyed at not being able to see any Magrittes in this town where Magritte lived! I didn’t even want to see any Magrittes before I came to Brussels but now that I was here I wanted to see some Magrittes and I had been thwarted! The whole thing was very annoying! But eventually I got into IMAGINE! and it turns out it had a pretty good chunk of Magrittes anyway.
I really liked the one above, “The Dominion of Light.” I have a cousin who told us once proudly that she knew she had good taste because everything she likes turns out to be expensive. In that case I have really great taste because another one in the series sold for £59.4 million. I think I like what everyone else likes about it, the paradox that makes you work hard to try to understand it. Plus he paints really good. Pretty big plus if you’re a surrealist.
A few other works jumped out at me. Having been to the Dalí Museum, I find it fun to see a Dalí anywhere else. Like, you’re a Dalí! You should be in the Dalí Museum! That’s where Dalís go! Of course that is silly but that is the way my brain works so it is extra surreal to see the surrealist elsewhere. My two absolute favorite pieces in the surrealist exhibit however were in a section that gave you a little warning that some topics might be sensitive for particular viewers. They meant sex, sex is the topic that might be sensitive. The first was the sculpture? object? in the gallery on the left by Mimi Parent. A whip made out of two braids of hair, two pigtails, is pretty provocative, but then you title it “Mistress” and man (woman?) that is the height of wit. I loved it. The other probably wouldn’t have been so great on its own, Duchamp putting a boob on a book, but the museum itself managed to put together just an absolutely exquisite meta-artwork by taking a sculpture titled “Please Touch” and putting it under glass.
Full of surrealism I now had an hour left before the museums closed. What to do? I had already paid I think €18.50 to see the surrealists, and I was in a bit of a huff that didn’t cover the entire museum, did I really want to pay another €10 to see more stuff when I only had an hour? I waffled but eventually decided that art is priceless and got a ticket (correctly, this time) to see what I thought was the actual Fine Arts museum itself but now reading the website I realize is the Old Masters Museum. It was still not smooth sailing from here, because first I had to confirm what ticket I needed, and then wait in line for that, and then try to enter only to be told I needed to recheck my chocolate bag because I had retrieved it, and that being accomplished I was then once again in a line behind other bewildered tourists, and the poor docent who must be at least trilingual and is therefore very impressive was trying to explain to the bewildered tourist what to do while other tourists were skipping the line which annoyed me and the lady in front of me but we eventually got there, we figured it out, I entered the museum, and admired some old masters.
View of the entry way from the Old Masters Museum itself.
Old masters are not normally really my style. I probably waffle on that but like religious iconography just doesn’t really vibe with me. Maybe if I knew more Christian lore it would but I don’t. Plus I was annoyed by the whole process of getting in the door so it took me a bit to settle down and what really did it for me was going into the Bruegel room. It wasn’t a huge collection but the neatest part (for me) was the two different versions of “The Numbering at Bethlehem” but Bruegel I and Bruegel II. Kinda fun to paint the same painting as your old man just to prove you got the chops. I assume that is what he was doing, I don’t know. They weren’t directly next to each other so you had to shuffle between the two to take in the pair, but overall I thought it was pretty neat and it chilled me out enough to really examine the rest of the artwork in a levelheaded manner.
Of the rest of the paintings the one that really caught my attention was “The Art Lover’s Gallery,” which was displayed just sorta tucked away in a hallway. It wasn’t a major focal point of the collection but it had exactly the thing to appeal to me: an astrolabe. I noticed that the dudes in the frilly collars had a whole set of navigational instruments and man do I love navigational instruments. Plus the room is decorated in a way I would like to decorate, choc-a-bloc with paintings and other curiosities. I had almost walked away when I realized too that my astrolabe tunnel vision kept me from noticing the black boy that looks to be maybe a servant wandering in with tea? I’m not sure. But since this painting is from 1621 there is a whole world to be unearthed just from his presence in the painting. Unfortunately I did not have the time and do not have the knowhow to unearth that world, but it was a pretty neat way to end my time in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts.
Cabinet d’amateur, attributed to Hiëronymus II FranckenHot hot navigational tools action.A cool dude.
The timeline of the official date of this post and of subsequent posts aren’t going to make a lick of sense but that is what happens when I am behind on writing and I feel bad about it. But anyway for undisclosed reasons I recently found myself in Brussels for a day. I had a friend to see and I wouldn’t ever tell her this but she was actually only my second priority for the day, the first priority being seeing the Royal Museum for Central Africa!
I learned about the museum from Adam Hochschild’s book, King Leopold’s Ghost (available in the gift shop). He does not exactly speak highly of the museum in the book, but given it is a repository of so many artifacts from central Africa (and more specifically the DRC, Rwanda, and Burundi), I wanted to go, trusting myself to contextualize what I was seeing appropriately. Since the publication of King Leopold’s Ghost, and possibly spurred on by it, the museum closed down for five years between 2013 and 2018 to rethink and revamp its collections and displays, and Adam Hochschild had a chance to revisit it, which he wrote about in The Atlantic. In the article Adam describes taking “one of Europe’s loveliest urban journeys” to the museum via the trolly. I was so excited to see the museum that I took a slightly different path, going to the museum via the bus straight from the airport (still an extremely lovely trip). I think I was the very first guest in the museum that day.
I knew the museum had been revamped and had reopened in 2018, so was hoping that it would embrace more modern views of what this sort of institution ought to be. After entering the museum the very first exhibit I saw was “Rethinking Collections,” and the very first artifact I saw in that very first exhibit was the dude above. A more proper name for this dude is “a kitumba sculpture stolen by the Belgian tradesman Alexandre Delcommune from the Congolese chief Ne Kuko” (okay full disclosure the very first artifact you actually see is in the hallway to that exhibit, which is this extremely cool pirogue) (as a second parenthetical I was going to call the pirogue “potentially problematic” and alliteration aside that applies to every artifact so I am going to skip it generally). There is of course a sign next to the kitumba sculpture and I was worried about the tone it was setting. The sign notes that Ne Kuko asked Delcommune for the statue back, and Delcommune refused. The sign then notes that a descendant of Ne Kuko has asked for the statue back more recently, but that the museum hadn’t given it back then either. Then the story on the sign ends, leaving me wondering, you know, why the heck they didn’t give it back. Maybe I missed it in the exhibit itself but it wasn’t until I was able to review the museum’s page on the statue (linked above), where they note that “there is still no legal framework for the restitution of objects and human remains,” explaining why they still have it.
I am in many ways very sympathetic to this excuse, being a dedicated government bureaucrat myself, and if I was a museum administrator that would kind of be the end of the story for me. But as a society that excuse is awfully thin. Laws are all made up, you know? We can just change them. Returning to the moment in the exhibit, I was just left with a sign that said they had turned down requests for restitution twice, which wasn’t encouraging. The purpose of the “Rethinking Collections exhibit was to ask “How do we trace the origin of collections? What new insights can be gleaned from these provenances? And what should become of such collections, within and beyond museum walls?” For this visitor at least it missed the mark a bit, but as Adam Hochschild pointed out in his Atlantic article, these signs in this museum are the result of compromises. As we evolve maybe we’ll get closer to a better answer.
Having gone through that exhibit, I finally went upstairs into the main building itself (you enter through an annex and then go through an underground hallway). The building was first opened in 1910, purpose-built for this museum, and it is constructed as like a palace to display the grandeur of Belgian colonialism. Let me tell ya it is certainly awe-inducing. I was overwhelmed by the sheer mass of the collection. The picture above is just one small corner and I think it would take days to give every artifact its due consideration. It’s in a big square, with two layers of rooms, and I chose to go through the museum counter-clockwise. This had me starting with the I guess you would say ethnographic portions of the museum. As you can see above and below these displays are chock full of artifacts collected during the colonial era, and reflect the western interest in the more “exotic” aspects of the Congo basin cultures the colonialists were encountering.
I had been familiar with much of the sorts of types of objects on display, having done my reading and visited places like the Smithsonian Museum for African Art. The nkisi mangaaka I actually recognized from the book Kongo: Power and Majesty, which my super amazing mother-in-law had given me for Christmas last year, so that was a bit like seeing a celebrity in person. However a whole category of objects I had no idea existed were what the museum called “currency in the shape of throwing knives.” There is a spectrum I think between actual throwing knives and currency in the shape of throwing knives, but some examples are below. They had even more elaborate versions but those did not photograph well on my smart phone camera so you are left with these ones that I think are slightly closer to the “actual throwing knives” part of the spectrum, but not by far (there’s also a ceremonial axe). The sheer artistry of the metalwork in these knives (along with, you know, every single other metal object in the museum) is overwhelming and extremely cool and I dunno man if I was a young bride-to-be in Congo I think I would want my husband to come up with some of these things in order to bond our families together, you know? They had some really nice hoes as well but you also gotta throw in some of these knives man. They’re so cool.
One of the more impressive things which I did not expect to see (besides the knives) were several gigantic maps of central Africa, depicting various aspects of Belgian colonial interests. I used a selfie in the picture below to try to give you some sense of scale, but man it doesn’t hit. These things are huge. The building itself is huge, with 50-foot ceilings (or something like that, they are TALL), and these maps go from nearly the floor to nearly the ceiling. The one above depicts the routes various European travelers took through Africa (you should be able to see Cameron and Livingstone labelled above). Others depicted political boundaries or natural resources. As a man who likes maps (i.e. I guess a man), these were about the mappiest maps you could map. They were scattered throughout the building and provided impressive backdrops to the displays.
If I recall correctly, the displays the particular map above were backdropping were, fittingly, about the various horrors of colonialism. It is quite the mix of artifacts. I was excited to spot a sextant and then a little stunned to discover it was owned by Stanley. I have read about Stanley a lot and he seems almost not real. Then you come across an actual object he used, one I’m familiar with. That same feeling went for the objects below associated with Tippu Tip. Tippu Tip! When I was in Zanzibar we went to a Chinese restaurant that I later think I figured out what in Tippu Tip’s old house, which doesn’t help make the man seem real. My super amazing wife and I have been to Rick’s Cafe in Casablanca (I will write about that eventually), and you know that’s fake, and so I guess Tippu Tip’s house felt the same? But here you have a necklace supposedly owned by him (link in the caption for more details), and a dagger owned by his son. The actions of Tippu Tip and his fellows was used to justify so many of the actions of the Europeans took in Africa that again he is much larger than life, too large to have been real, and yet here is his stuff. Lest the section is entirely the Big Man theory of history, it also gets down to more of the brass tacks of colonialism. They have several examples of the hippo-hide chicottes (whips) on display, along with photos of the horrors inflicted on the people of the Congo.
The next part of the museum was about the natural resources in central Africa:
Another criticism of this and similar museums as an institution that I hadn’t thought about too deeply until I read the Atlantic article is the fact that people, animals, and geology are all lumped together into a single museum. This is not a pattern that is replicated in museums about more “western” subjects, with western peoples getting their own museums separate from western animals and western geology. The Royal Museum addresses this a little bit obliquely, in some signs about the “crocodile room” (pictured above). They’ve preserved the crocodile room to look like it would closer to 1910, meant to catalogue all the items under Belgian colonial rule, both natural and man-made. The paintings lining the upper parts of the walls are also meant to depict an idealized Congo, peaceful and prosperous.
That being said it was neat to see the different animals and shells. Some of the more interesting things for me (pictured above) were a tilapia (because we’re big tilapia fans around here), along with shells named after various famous British travelers in Africa. One oversight I noticed is they neglected to include (as far as I could tell) any examples of the most important specimens, my main man Ed Hore’sTiphobia horei. Later on they also had examples of more robust fauna:
Also notable in this general section was a whole room dedicated to the mineral resources of the country. They had discussions on the some of the political implications of the exploitation of these minerals from the DRC, but as these rocks sit there sterile on a shelf it is hard to imagine the suffering they can help perpetuate:
The focus of the section on the natural resources of the Congo was the “paradox” it creates, where DRC is sitting on trillions of dollars worth of minerals and other resources and yet still remains poor due to exploitation. The section had a long discussion on what those resources are and how they have been exploited and what resources the Congolese people themselves use. As can be seen from the ivory bust of King Leopold below, that all is put in stark terms.
From the accompanying plaque: “Spurred on by King Leopold II, the Compagnie Belge Maritime du Congo (CBMC) was founded in 1895. The aim: a regular shipping connection between Antwerp and Congo.” The boat model is of the Ville de Bruxelles.
In the second half of the museum, which I didn’t really get great pictures of because at this point I was exhausted just from the sheer scale and trying to see it all, the exhibits turned towards the more modern eras of the Congo and its relationship to Belgium. A particularly interesting section talked about the Congolese diaspora in Belgium post-independence, and another highlighted the relationships between traditional music and modern-day Rumba. But the single most powerful section trying to address the modern and historical relationship of Belgium and the Congo was in the rotunda.
The Grand Rotunda of the museum was designed (like the rest of it), to showcase the glory and what have you of the Belgian empire. Besides being a gigantic and impressive room, it features four gilded bronze sculptures by Arsène Matton. The sculptures represent a colonial vision, with the Belgians presented (according to the sign) “as if there had been no civilization beforehand… African women are sexualized. An Arabo-Swahili slave trader tramples a Congolese who tries to protect his wife. It is clichéd colonial propaganda, but it is still effective more than a century later.” Apparently “the statues in the niches are part of the protected heritage building and may not be removed.” Like I said above the legal excuse I think is a pretty thin one but in this case it meant the museum was forced to be a little more creative in how it addressed the statues.
The art project they have done instead is called RE/STORE, and for it “the museum invited Congolese artist Aimé Mpane to create a project that would serve as a counterweight.” The result are these translucent banners hung in front of the statues that speak to them and provide an alternative vision of colonial-era Congo, one where there is civilization and the horrors of colonialism aren’t excused. I thought it was really cool how instead of just acting as a counterweight the banners really speak to and respond to the statues themselves for a super stunning effect, and is a great example of how to communicate with these previous idioms of how we view our relationships with other peoples.
And that was my visit to the Royal Museum for Central Africa. The place is far from perfect but they seem to be trying, and I hope we can put in place in the near future the institutions needed to bring some justice to the colonial relationship with Africa. Everyone should be able to see the treasures the museum holds, especially the people that should rightfully own them.
Rev. William Charles Willoughby Born: March 16, 1857, at Redruth
Rev. W.C. Willoughby studied at Spring Hill College and was ordained on May 1, 1882 [Jul 1882], slated for Urambo [Jun 1882]. He departed England on May 17, 1882 [Jul 1882], arriving at Zanzibar on Jun 19 [Sep 1882] and at Urambo on October 31, 1882 [Jun 1883]. Due to failing health, he returned to England, arriving August 21, 1883 [Nov 1883]. He resigned from the London Missionary Society in December, but was eventually reappointed to South Africa.
Dr. George Ashton Wolfendale, L.R.C.P. & L.R.C.S. Born: November 18, 1868, at Tutbury, Staffordshire
Dr. G.A. Wolfendale studied Medicine at Edinburgh, under the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society and was appointed medical missionary to Urambo. He departed England on June 9, 1890 [Jul 1890] and arrived at Urambo by December 24 [Feb 1891]. Due to ill-health he returned to England, arriving on July 23, 1892 [Sep 1892] and resigned from the London Missionary Society [May 1893].
Rev. Alfred John Wookey Born: March 4, 1847, at Llanelly, Brecknockshire Died: January 15, 1917, at Mowbray, Cape Town
Rev. A.J. Wookey studied at Lancashire College and Highgate. Originally appointed to the Bechuana Mission, he was ordained May 4, 1870, at Chase Side Church. He departed England for Bechuanaland on May 18, 1870. Eventually returning to join the Central Africa Mission, he was slated to work at Ujiji and again departed England on April 16, 1880 [May 1880]. He departed Zanzibar on June 14, 1880 [Aug 1880], and arrived at Urambo on September 11 [Nov 1880] and then Ujiji on October 3 [Dec 1880]. Due to repeated attacks of fever [Nov 1881], he returned to England and arrived August 14, 1881 [Sep 1881]. Rev. Wookey was then re-appointed back to Bechuanaland [Apr 1882]. His wife was born Jane Bevan. She joined him in Bechuanaland but did not join him in the Central Africa Mission [Apr 1880].
Rev. Robert Stuart Wright Born: March 28, 1858, at Edinburgh Died: 1926, in New Zealand†
Rev. R. Stewart Wright’s father was a master boot-maker and the family lived in Newcastle-upon-Tyne†. Rev. Wright left school at fourteen, becoming an office boy with a local railway and draper’s assistant before studying at Rotherham College†. He was ordained on May 5, 1887 [Jul 1887], and departed England on May 11, 1887 [Jun 1887]. He arrived at Fwambo on September 21, and then in March 1888 went to Kavala Island and then to Niamkolo. Due to ill-health, he returned to England, arriving December 13, 1890 [Jan 1891]. In 1892 he accepted a temporary pastorate [Mar 1892] but resigned from the London Missionary Society in December 1893 [Feb 1894]. He worked for the African Lakes Company on Lake Nyasa from 1896-1899, and then for the British Central Africa Protectorate in Blantyre†. Reappointed in 1902, Rev. Wright departed England on April 30 [Jun 1902], and was assigned to Kawimbe [Jan 1903], reaching there on August 3, 1903. He arrived in England on furlough on August 31, 1905 [Oct 1905], departing again on July 9, 1906. He was transferred to Niamkolo, visited England again from August 6, 1910 to September 2, 1911, and returned England again from Central Africa on May 27, 1915. He retired from the London Missionary Society in 1916, but then visited Australia on a Deputation in 1920, subsequently settling at Maungaturoto in New Zealand.
Notes:
Unless otherwise noted, missionary biographies are derived firstly fromLondon Missionary Society: A Register of Missionaries, Deputations, Etc. From 1796 to 1923, prepared by James Sibree, D.D., Fourth Edition, published by the London Missionary Society, London, 1923. Brackets with [Month Year] indicate the issue of The Chronicle of the London Missionary Society which records the preceding event. Information denoted by a dagger (†) is from Christian Missionaries and the Creation of Northern Rhodesia 1880-1924, by Robert I. Rotberg, published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1965. Other sources are denoted by a footnote.
Bernard Raleigh Turner Born: July 4, 1878, at Hackney College Died: 1943†
Mr. Bernard Turner apprenticed and worked as a builder, with additional experience in printing and brick and tile-making [May 1903], as well as studying at the Haberdasher’s Guild School† and taking courses in medicine and surgery at Livingstone College [May 1903]. Inspired by Rev. William Thomas, he became a missionary and departed for Central Africa on April 10, 1903 [May 1903]. He arrived at Kawimbe on June 24 [Aug 1903] and was appointed to Kambole on January 12, 1904 [Feb 1904]. There, he had building responsibilities and was in charge of Industrial Training. On June 27, 1905, he married Gertrude Alice Coates at Mbala (then Abercorn) [Aug 1905]. They worked in Central Africa until 1940†.
Gertrude Alice Turner, née Coates Ms. Coates departed for Kambole on April 8, 1905 [May 1905] and married Mr. Bernard Turner on June 27, 1905 at Mbala (then Abercorn) [Aug 1905]. They worked in Central Africa until 1940†.
Dr. Harold Edgar Wareham, M.B., Ch.B. Born: January 8, 1873, at Guildford Died: 1955†
Dr. H.E. Wareham studied at George Watson’s College and worked in a mercantile office before studying Theology at Edinburgh Congregational Hall and Medicine at Edinburgh University [May 1902]. He married Rebecca Purves Stewart on April 19, 1902 [Jun 1902]. With Dr. Wareham appointed as a medical missionary, the couple departed England on April 30, 1902 [May 1902], slated for Kambole [Jan 1903]. The couple had a daughter on March 18, 1903 [May 1903]. In October they transferred to Kawimbe. They worked for the London Missionary Society until 1931 at Kawimbe and Mbereshi, and founded a station at Kafulwe in 1922.
Rebecca Purves Wareham, née Stewart Ms. Stewart married Dr. H.E. Wareham on April 19, 1902 [Jun 1902] and departed with him for Central Africa on April 30, 1902 [May 1902]. The couple had a daughter on March 18, 1903 [May 1903]. In October they transferred to Kawimbe. They worked for the London Missionary Society until 1931 at Kawimbe and Mbereshi, and founded a station at Kafulwe in 1922.
Rev. David Williams Born: February 10, 1856, at Llangadock, Carmarthenshire. Died: September 24, 1881, at Urambo [Dec 1881]
Rev. D. Williams studied at Carmarthen and Western Colleges and was appointed to Urambo in the Central Africa Mission. He was ordained April 9, 1880 [May 1880] and departed England for Zanzibar on April 16 [May 1880]. He left Zanzibar June 14 [Aug 1880] and arrived at Urambo September 11, 1880 [Nov 1880].
Notes:
Unless otherwise noted, missionary biographies are derived firstly fromLondon Missionary Society: A Register of Missionaries, Deputations, Etc. From 1796 to 1923, prepared by James Sibree, D.D., Fourth Edition, published by the London Missionary Society, London, 1923. Brackets with [Month Year] indicate the issue of The Chronicle of the London Missionary Society which records the preceding event. Information denoted by a dagger (†) is from Christian Missionaries and the Creation of Northern Rhodesia 1880-1924, by Robert I. Rotberg, published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1965. Other sources are denoted by a footnote.
Alfred James Swann Born: September 14, 1855, at Shoreham Died: 1928†
Mr. A.J. Swann was appointed Mate in the Marine Department of the Central Africa Mission, slated to join the “missionary vessel” [Jun 1882]. He departed England on May 17, 1882 [Jul 1882], arriving in Zanzibar on June 19 [Sep 1882]. He assisted in conveying the parts of the Morning Star to Ujiji, arriving on February 23, 1883. He took part in the construction of the Good News at Liendwe and then followed the steamer to Kavala Island. He departed Kavala Island on September 8, 1886, and arrived in England on furlough on January 28, 1887 [Mar 1887]. Mr. Swann married Jane Emmelar Housden on June 16, 1887 [Aug 1887], and the couple had a son, Harold Livingstone, on May 2, 1888 [Jun 1888]. Mr. Swann was appointed to take over the vessels of the London Missionary Society on Lake Tanganyika. On June 2, 1888, the family departed England [Jul 1888], and then departed Zanzibar for Ujiji on July 17 [Sep 1888]. On July 26 Harold died at Kikwazo [Oct 1888]. The Swanns arrived at Kavala Island on October 18 [Ninety-Fifth Report]. They eventually moved to Niamkolo, where they had a daughter, Eva, on November 23, 1890 [May 1891]. Eva died at Niamkolo on January 9, 1890 [Jun 1891]. On June 24, 1892, the Swanns had a son, Hector Lancelot [Dec 1892], who died on October 25, 1892 at Niamkolo [Apr 1893]. The Swanns arrived in England on September 2, 1893 [Oct 1893], and on March 20, 1894 the London Missionary Society accepted Mr. Swann’s resignation [May 1894] so he could join the administrative service of the British Central Africa Protectorate†.
Jane Emmelar Swann, née Housden Ms. Housden married Mr. A.J. Swann on June 16, 1887 [Aug 1887], and the couple had a son, Harold Livingstone, on May 2, 1888 [Jun 1888]. On June 2, 1888, the family departed England [Jul 1888], and then departed Zanzibar for Ujiji on July 17 [Sep 1888]. On July 26 Harold died at Kikwazo [Oct 1888]. The Swanns arrived at Kavala Island on October 18 [Ninety-Fifth Report]. They eventually moved to Niamkolo, where they had a daughter, Eva, on November 23, 1890 [May 1891]. Eva died at Niamkolo on January 9, 1890 [Jun 1891]. On June 24, 1892, the Swanns had a son, Hector Lancelot [Dec 1892], who died on October 25, 1892 at Niamkolo [Apr 1893]. The Swanns arrived in England on September 2, 1893 [Oct 1893].
Rev. William Thomas Born: February 8, 1859, at St. Clears, Carmarthenshire
Rev. W. Thomas studied at Carmarthen and Lancashire Colleges and served as a pastor in Oldham. Inspired by the Self-Denial Movement, he was appointed to the Central Africa Mission and departed England on May 9, 1893 [Jan 1893]. He reached Fwambo in October [Mar 1894] and settled at Niamkolo. Due to ill-health he returned to England, arriving on April 27, 1896 [Jun 1896] and resigned from the London Missionary Society [Sep 1896].
Rev. John Boden Thomson Born: April 14, 1841, at Kirkpatrick, Kirkcudbrightshire Died: September 22, 1878, at Ujiji [Feb 1879]
Rev. J.B. Thomson studied at Western College and Highgate. Originally appointed to Matabele Land in South Africa, he was ordained June 17, 1869, at Trinity Presbyterian Church, Newcastle-on-Tyne. He departed England for South Africa August 6, 1869. He arrived at Inyati on April 29 and after a short time opened the new station Hope Fountain. He returned to England to take part in the Central Africa Mission on January 20, 1877 and departed again May 6 [May 1877]. He arrived at Kirasa in November with the expedition where they waited for the next travel season. They departed Kirasa May 29, 1878 at arrived at Ujiji on August 23, 1878 [Dec 1878].
His wife was born Elizabeth Edwards in 1842 and she was with Rev. Thomson in South Africa. She did not join him in Central Africa and died at Peckham on September 16, 1900 [Nov 1900].
Dr. John Kay Tomory, M.B., C.M. Born: July 21, 1860, at Constantinople
Dr. Tomory studied medicine at Edinburgh University and, appointed as a medical missionary on Kavala Island, he departed England on September 25, 1886 [Nov 1886]. A year later he departed to return to England via Lake Nyasa. En route, he joined a party to relieve missionaries besieged at Karongas. He arrived in England on April 17, 1888, and married Marie Werder in Edinburgh on July 3, 1888 [Aug 1888]. They had a child on March 26, 1889 [May 1889], but their connection with the London Missionary Society ceased on April 30, 1889.
Notes:
Unless otherwise noted, missionary biographies are derived firstly fromLondon Missionary Society: A Register of Missionaries, Deputations, Etc. From 1796 to 1923, prepared by James Sibree, D.D., Fourth Edition, published by the London Missionary Society, London, 1923. Brackets with [Month Year] indicate the issue of The Chronicle of the London Missionary Society which records the preceding event. Information denoted by a dagger (†) is from Christian Missionaries and the Creation of Northern Rhodesia 1880-1924, by Robert I. Rotberg, published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1965. Other sources are denoted by a footnote.
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