Kongo across the Waters

The catalogue Kongo across the Waters accompanied an exhibition at the Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida in 2013, which traveled to three other museums in the US. The Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, joined with the Harn to realize these projects. Complementing the Viva Florida 500 program, celebrating 500 years of European presence in Florida in 2013, the catalogue and the travelling exhibition claim to mark a milestone in the history of African presence in North America, for with the first Europeans, the first Africans also arrived. The book sets off discussing the biographies of two African crew members of the Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon who came ashore on La Florida in 1513. It is emphasized that these Africans were free men, as opposed to many of the people following in their footsteps, and may well have been Kongo. Of course,...