‘Utterly Irrational’: Artists Condemn Dismantlement of Antwerp City’s Most Historic Art Gallery.

Eminent artists have raised their voices in protest against what they label as an “capricious restructuring” of the nation’s museum landscape, as the Flanders government seek to cut public spending by dismantling the country’s oldest contemporary art gallery and transplanting its entire collection to a different urban center.

Directors Decry ‘Flagrant Illegalities’ in Sector Shake-up

At a recent press conference in Antwerp, the directors of the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art (M HKA), founded in 1985, decried what they termed the “blatant violations” of the museum sector shake-up, a move scheduled for debated in the national legislature on Friday.

“Antwerp represents the largest city in Flanders, with a heritage as a home of the cutting-edge in Belgium,” said renowned painter Luc Tuymans, an Antwerp resident painter broadly regarded as Belgium’s most influential living artist.

“To degrade a cultural institution to an arts centre is utterly irrational. You cannot just take a collection of artworks and transfer it into another ecosystem, because that specific context is not present,” Tuymans continued.

Surprise Move Scraps New Building, Moves Holdings

In October, the cultural affairs minister of the Flanders region cancelled the proposed development of a new, purpose-built €80m tower to house the museum, and revealed intentions to move its holdings of some 8,000 artworks to Ghent’s Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art (Smak). This surprise move will effectively deprive the Antwerp institution of its museum status.

The Antwerp museum’s holdings features pieces by globally renowned creators such as Kerry James Marshall, Anish Kapoor and Marina Abramović.

“I cannot accept that my works could be removed from M HKA or potentially endangered as part of any structural reshuffling,” said British artist Kapoor in a communication to the culture ministry.

Budget Pressures Motivate Austerity in Cultural Field

Belgium faces a fiscal shortfall of 5.4 percent of its economic output, among the highest in the eurozone. The cultural domain in particular is confronting dramatic cuts, with budget-tightening policies also implying an uncertain future for the new Brussels Kanal museum.

Under the proposals of Minister Caroline Gennez, the museum sector would be streamlined so that art collections in the Flanders region are housed within three beacon museums for historical, modern and contemporary art.

Flanders has a multitude of modern art institutions: in addition to M HKA in Antwerp and Smak in Ghent, there is Musea Brugge in Bruges and Museum M in Leuven.

Financial Inspectorate Raises Doubts Savings Logic

If the proposed shake-up would actually lower costs has been questioned by Belgium’s financial inspectorate. In a report sent to the minister in October, it gave an unfavourable opinion on the plans, suggesting their effect on the budget would be “partial and incomplete”.

While transplanting the institution’s core holdings could reduce running expenses from approximately €8m to €5m, it is understood that in future the Antwerp institution would have to allocate funds to loan artworks or purchase touring shows to draw audiences.

The Smak museum in Ghent, situated roughly an hour’s train ride from the Antwerp museum, is also believed to currently not have enough space to properly house M HKA’s collection, and would require funding to increase its storage capacity.