The burden of history

历史的重负

A revamped museum endeavours to tell the vexed story of colonialism

It is a officially called the Royal Museum for magnificently bizarre hybrid. Still Central Africa, but better known as the Africa Museum, it cannot help but（禁不住） ooze colonial triumphalism, despite recent protestations of egalitarian diversity. Housed in a majestic purpose-built（为特定目的建造） palace 20 minutes’ drive east of Brussels, it stands above a lake amid parkland. Immaculate gravel paths sweep around the site. However radically the interior may have been refashioned to reflect new attitudes to Africa, the grandeur of King Leopold II’s design and the fervour of his desire to promote his imperial venture into the continent’s heart still overwhelm the visitor. The monarch ruled Congo as a private estate nearly 80 times
bigger than his European homeland from 1885 until a year before his death in 1909; his double-L motif is embossed on almost every wall and above many an alcove

这是一个官方称为皇家博物馆的奇异混合体。 尽管最近出现了对平等主义多样性的抗议，但仍然是中非，但更为人所知的是非洲博物馆，它不禁渗透殖民地的胜利主义。 酒店位于布鲁塞尔以东20分钟车程处，坐落在一座宏伟的专门建造的宫殿内，位于公园绿地之间的湖泊之上。 完美的砾石路围绕着它。 然而从根本上说内部可能已经过改造，以反映对非洲的新态度，利奥波德二世国王的设计宏伟，他渴望推动他的帝国冒险进入非洲大陆心脏的热情仍然令游客感到窒息。 从1885年到1909年去世前一年，这位君主将刚果统治为一个比其私人庄园大80倍的私人庄园，他的双L图案几乎压印在每一面墙上和许多壁龛上

Short of（不管不顾，不在意） knocking the entire edifice flat, the museum’s current regime, run since 2001 by Guido Gryseels, a 66-year-old agricultural expert, has spent the past five years behind closed doors（暗中地） seeking to put a modern imprint on an irredeemably archaic structure. It reopens on December 9th.“We’ll be criticised on both sides,” predicts Mr Gryseels, who, like many modern museum bosses, is perforce a canny diplomat.“For not going far enough and for being too politically correct.”
博物馆的现有管理层，自2001年以来由66岁的农业专家Guido Gryseels经营，在过去的五年里一直在闭门造车，寻求在一个不可挽回的古老结构上施展现代印记。 它于12月9日重新开放。“我们将受到双方的批评，”Gryseels先生预测，他和许多现代博物馆老板一样，都是一名精明的外交官。“因为没有走得太远而且政治上太正确了。”

The result is a brilliant, weird, tantalis�ing hotch-potch of old and new. A glass ob�long now encases a new entrance, restau�rant, conference hall and auditorium a stone’s throw from the main building, to which it is connected by an underground tunnel-cum-gallery painted in bright white that hosts a huge dug-out canoe carved out of a single tree. On the other side of the main palace, a separate pavilion, a century old, still houses a library holding the archive of Henry Morton Stanley, the Victorian explorer commissioned by Leo�pold to advance the king’s imperial inter�ests ahead of his European rivals.