‘Utterly Irrational’: Artists Decry Dismantlement of Antwerp’s Most Historic Contemporary Art Museum.

Prominent artists have raised their voices in protest against what they call an “capricious restructuring” of Belgium’s museum landscape, as the Flanders government seek to reduce expenditures by dismantling the operations of the country’s most historic modern art institution and transplanting its complete holdings to another city.

Leaders Condemn ‘Flagrant Illegalities’ in Sector Shake-up

At a Tuesday briefing in Antwerp, the leadership of the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art (M HKA), established in 1985, decried what they termed the “blatant violations” of the museum sector shake-up, a plan scheduled for debated in the national legislature this Friday.

“Antwerp is Flanders’ biggest city, with a legacy as a hub of the avant-garde in Belgium,” said Luc Tuymans, an Antwerp-based painter broadly regarded as Belgium’s foremost living artist.

“To demote a museum to an arts centre is utterly irrational. You cannot just move a collection of pieces and transfer it into another ecosystem, because such an ecosystem does not exist,” Tuymans continued.

Surprise Move Scraps New Building, Moves Holdings

In last autumn, the culture minister of the Flanders region scrapped the proposed development of a specially designed €80m high-rise building to accommodate the museum, and announced plans to relocate its collection of some 8,000 artworks to Ghent’s Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art (Smak). This unexpected decision will in effect strip the Antwerp institution of its museum status.

The Antwerp museum’s collection also includes works by globally renowned creators such as Kerry James Marshall, Anish Kapoor and Marina Abramović.

“I cannot accept that my works might be removed from M HKA or potentially endangered as part of any institutional reorganisation,” stated artist Anish Kapoor in a communication to the ministry.

Budget Pressures Motivate Cost-Cutting in Cultural Field

Belgium faces a budget deficit of 5.4% of GDP, one of the largest in the European monetary union. The arts sector in particular is facing dramatic cuts, with austerity measures also implying an unclear fate for the new Brussels Kanal museum.

Under the proposals of Flanders’ socialist culture minister, the museum landscape would be consolidated so that cultural holdings in the region are concentrated at three beacon museums for historical, modern and contemporary art.

The region boasts a plethora of modern art institutions: in addition to M HKA in Antwerp and Smak in Ghent, there is the Bruges museums in Bruges and Museum M in Leuven.

Auditors Questions Cost-Saving Logic

Whether the proposed shake-up would truly lower costs has been questioned by the national audit office. In a report sent to the minister in October, it gave an unfavourable opinion on the proposals, suggesting their effect on the budget would be “fragmentary”.

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 allocate funds to borrow works or buy in exhibitions to attract visitors.

Ghent’s Smak, located about an hour’s train ride from the M HKA, is also thought to presently lack enough space to properly house M HKA’s holdings, and would need investment to increase its storage capacity.