Leading artists have raised their voices in protest against what they call an “arbitrary reshaping” of Belgium’s museum landscape, as regional authorities aim to reduce expenditures by dismantling the operations of the nation’s most historic contemporary art gallery and relocating its complete holdings to another city.
At a recent press conference in Antwerp, the leadership of the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art (M HKA), founded in 1985, denounced what they called the “flagrant illegalities” of the cultural institution reorganization, a move due to be debated in the national legislature this Friday.
“Antwerp represents Flanders’ biggest city, with a legacy as a home of the avant-garde in Belgium,” said renowned painter Luc Tuymans, an Antwerp-based painter broadly regarded as Belgium’s most influential contemporary creator.
“To demote a cultural institution to an arts centre is utterly irrational. You cannot just move a collection of pieces and transfer it into another ecosystem, because that specific context does not exist,” Tuymans continued.
In October, the cultural affairs minister of the Flemish government cancelled the proposed development of a specially designed €80m tower to house the institution, and revealed intentions to move its collection of some 8,000 pieces to Ghent’s Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art (Smak). This unexpected decision will effectively strip the Antwerp institution of its official museum designation.
The M HKA’s holdings features pieces by globally renowned creators such as Kerry James Marshall, Anish Kapoor and Marina Abramović.
“I cannot accept that they might be taken away from M HKA or otherwise put at risk as part of any institutional reorganisation,” said British artist Kapoor in a message to the culture ministry.
Belgium faces a budget deficit of 5.4 percent of its economic output, one of the largest in the eurozone. The cultural domain in particular is confronting dramatic cuts, with austerity measures also suggesting an uncertain future for the new Brussels Kanal museum.
Under the proposals of Flanders’ socialist culture minister, the museum sector would be consolidated so that cultural holdings in the Flanders region are concentrated at three beacon museums for historical, modern and contemporary art.
Flanders has a plethora of modern art institutions: besides M HKA in Antwerp and Smak in Ghent, there is the Bruges museums in Bruges and Museum M in Leuven.
If the planned reorganization would actually lower costs has been challenged by the national audit office. In a report sent to the minister in October, it issued a negative assessment on the plans, indicating their impact on the budget would be “partial and incomplete”.
While transplanting the institution’s core holdings could cut running expenses from approximately €8m to €5m, it is understood that going forward the Antwerp institution would have to spend money to borrow works or purchase touring shows to attract visitors.
Ghent’s Smak, located about an hour by train from the M HKA, is also believed to presently lack sufficient room to properly house M HKA’s collection, and would require funding to increase its storage facilities.
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