Frère Joseph Cornet, director of the Institut des Musées Nationaux du Congo, Kinshasa, Congo (Democratic Republic)

The photograph depicts Frère Cornet and André Leka-Gala at work. In March 1970 Frère Cornet had been appointed the first director of the Institut des Musées nationaux du Congo (IMNC)--from 1971 to 1997 the Institut des Musées nationaux du Zaire (IMNZ)--in Kinshasa. The IMNC in Kinshasa began without a building or a single object remaining from previous institutions, but with a strong mandate and with powerful backers: the presidency and Museum of Tervueren. Priority was given to field collecting, and within a few years the museum amassed over 50,000 objects, acquired during ethnographical and archaeological missions. Cornet was as active in promoting and mentoring students sent from the Universite nationale du Zaire in Lubumbashi to research the collections as he was helpful to expatriate researchers seeking the museum's official governmental support for their own fieldwork. This photograph was taken when Eliot Elisofon was on assignment for National Geographic and traveled to Africa from January 19, 1972 to mid April 1972.