‘Utterly Irrational’: Creatives Condemn Dismantlement of Antwerp City’s Most Historic Contemporary Art Museum.
Prominent creators have raised their voices in protest against what they label as an “capricious restructuring” of the nation’s museum landscape, as the Flanders government aim to cut public spending by dismantling the operations of the nation’s most historic modern art institution and relocating its complete holdings to a different urban center.
Leaders Condemn ‘Flagrant Illegalities’ in Sector Shake-up
At a recent press conference in Antwerp, the leadership of the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art (M HKA), founded in 1985, decried what they termed the “flagrant illegalities” of the cultural institution reorganization, a plan scheduled for discussed in the national legislature on Friday.
“Antwerp is the largest city in Flanders, with a legacy as a hub of the avant-garde in Belgium,” stated renowned painter Luc Tuymans, an Antwerp resident painter widely seen as Belgium’s foremost contemporary creator.
“To demote a cultural institution to an exhibition space is utterly irrational. You cannot simply take a collection of pieces and transplant it into a different environment, because that specific context is not present,” Tuymans continued.
Surprise Move Scraps New Building, Moves Collection
In last autumn, the culture minister of the Flanders region scrapped the planned construction of a specially designed €80m high-rise building to house the institution, and announced plans to relocate its collection of approximately 8,000 pieces to Ghent’s Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art (Smak). This surprise move will effectively strip the Antwerp institution of its official museum designation.
The Antwerp museum’s holdings also includes pieces by globally renowned creators such as Kerry James Marshall, Anish Kapoor and Marina Abramović.
“I do not accept that they might be removed from M HKA or otherwise put at risk as part of any institutional reorganisation,” said artist Anish Kapoor in a communication to the culture ministry.
Budget Pressures Drive Cost-Cutting in Cultural Field
The country is confronting a fiscal shortfall of 5.4 percent of its economic output, one of the largest in the eurozone. The cultural domain specifically is confronting significant reductions, with austerity measures also implying an unclear fate for Brussels’ new Kanal museum.
According to the plans of Minister Caroline Gennez, the museum landscape would be consolidated so that art collections in the region are housed within three flagship institutions for historical, modern and contemporary art.
The region boasts 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.
Auditors Questions Savings Logic
If the proposed shake-up would actually reduce expenses has been challenged by Belgium’s financial inspectorate. In a report sent to Gennez in October, it issued a negative assessment on the plans, indicating their impact on the budget would be “partial and incomplete”.
Although moving the museum’s permanent collection could cut operating costs from around €8m to €5m, it is believed 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 Antwerp museum, is also thought to presently lack sufficient room to adequately store M HKA’s collection, and would need investment to increase its storage capacity.
