Cost-saving plan to transfer Antwerp museum’s entire collection to another city described as ‘simply insane’
Prominent artists have spoken out against an “arbitrary reshaping” of Belgium’s museum landscape, as the Flanders region seeks to cut public spending by dismantling the country’s oldest contemporary art gallery and transplanting its entire collection to another city.
At a press conference in Antwerp on Tuesday, the directors of the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art (M HKA), which was founded in 1985, decried what they called the “flagrant illegalities” of the museum sector shake-up, which is due to be debated in Belgium’s parliament on Friday.
In October, the culture minister of the Flanders region cancelled the planned construction of a new, purpose-built €80m high-rise building to house the museum, and announced plans to move its collection of some 8,000 artworks to Ghent’s Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art (Smak), a surprise move that will in effect strip the Antwerp institution of its museum status.
“Antwerp is Flanders’ biggest city, with a legacy as a home of the avant-garde in Belgium,” said Luc Tuymans, an Antwerp-based painter widely seen as Belgium’s most influential living artist.
