The museum has nearly 2,000 pieces from Africa, Asia, America and Oceania. African art is best represented by an old University collection assembled in the early 20th century in the context of Belgian colonial activity, and then divided with KULeuven in 1968.
Several donations have been added to this collection since then. The most important of these are the bequest of Dr Charles Delsemme, which sets up a dialogue between objects from different cultures and eras, and the collection donated in 2013 by the anthropologist and psychiatrist Robert Steichen (emeritus professor at UCL), which offers a contextualised approach to objects which testify to ritual practices still alive today.
Belgium's role in the Belgian Congo has had a considerable influence on the collections we have acquired. For more than 50 years, the Belgian economy was closely linked to trade and colonial conquest. Many of the objects in our collection from this period reflect complex interactions between different peoples and cultures. The stories are many-sided, but they often reveal histories of colonial exploitation, oppression and violence. The staff of UCLouvain and the Musée L have begun a process aimed at deconstructing the colonial discourse in order to assess the collections in a fairer and more ethical way.
