By Artnose museum correspondents
Bob Bouvard and Pete Pecuchet

The 2 million square-foot complex is one of a rash of new encyclopedic museums appearing across the developing world, each one to be filled with a comprehensive collection of art and cultural objects spanning every century from deepest antiquity to the present day and covering all known cultures.  

“We were told that every nation on earth should have its own encyclopedic museum,” said the Kinshasa project’s director-designate Mr Hansolo Ashmoleabongo. “So we decide to go ahead and build one.”

Asked how he was going to source sufficient objects to fill his museum when most of the world’s art was stored in basements in Western capital cities such as Paris, London, Berlin and New York, Mr Ashmoleabongo said, “We’re still working on that bit. We’ll probably do what the great Western imperial nations did to fill their own encyclopedic museums – send punitive expeditions to weaker nations, kill their people and nick their treasures. Then we’ll encourage illicit trafficking in unprovenanced cultural goods to fill in the gaps.”

Apart from the Congolese project, other encyclopedic museums are being created in Djibouti, Herat, Addis Ababa, Dhaka, Rapa Nui, Tashkent and Kibera, a suburb of Nairobi.

“At one time these great world institutions could only be found in lovely elegant cities like London, Paris, Berlin, New York and Chicago,” said Professor James Cuneiform, an expert in the protection of universal museums from interfering outsiders, “but now they’re all over us like a cheap suit.”

Western ‘encyclopedic’ museums – occasionally referred to as ‘universal’ museums because of their roots in a European Enlightenment aspiration to collect “the whole world beneath one roof” – have come under heavy fire in recent years as smaller nations seek the return of their looted heritage.

As repatriation requests became more persistent, some leading Western museum directors began arguing for encyclopedic museums to be established “everywhere, wherever people are curious about the world.”

“Oh, we’re curious all right,” said Mr Ashmoleabongo, brandishing an AK47 assault rifle. “Bizot here we come!”

BB & PP