Earlier this week, the Government of Flanders announced a plan to ‘reform the landscape of its own museums and the visual arts sector’, which involves dissolving Antwerp’s Museum of Modern Art (M HKA), Belgium’s oldest museum dedicated to contemporary art.
The unexpected proposal cancels M HKA’s planned €80 million high-rise building, and orders it to relocate its collection of around 8,000 objects to S.M.A.K in Ghent, in effect turning M HKA into a kunstalle-style art centre, by 2028.
The surprising move has spurred local and international criticism since it was publicised. In an open letter published on Thursday, Museum Watch – an initiative by CIMAM (the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art), affiliated to ICOM (The International Council of Museums) – called the decision ‘potentially disastrous’ to the economic and cultural well-being of the city, as well as ‘a significant loss’ for the city of Antwerp and Europe as a whole.
‘This government plan is based upon a false administrative logic that sees collections as merely an assorted accumulation of items,’ the open letter states. ‘The Museum Watch committee would respectfully like to point out that what the Flemish government doesn’t understand is that collections are coherent bodies that enhance the meaning of art works by the institutional commitment to their contextualization, the narratives around them and their relation to a particular place.
‘I am beyond flabbergasted by both the decision and its hollowness,’ Bart De Baere, director of M HKA tells Museum Watch. ‘I am trying to understand how to navigate between that and democratic logic. At this moment, my colleagues and the artists we serve are my primary concern.’
‘The Museum Watch Committee asks the Flemish minister of culture to find an alternative way to take political responsibility for M HKA, to find a new vision that sees and responds to the value in the museum and its location, a vision in which it is not emptied out and turned into a shell merely for the dynamics of the moment.’
Since then, two leading museum professionals, Vasıf Kortun, Founder of SALT in Istanbul and now Research & Curatorial Advisor of MATHAF in Doha, and Eugene Tan, Director of National Gallery Singapore and Singapore Art Museum, have resigned from M HKA’s Governing Board in protest at the minster’s decision. In a letter, shared withArtReview, they note that:
‘Throughout our tenure, we were often dismayed by the government’s dysfunctional, arbitrary interventions and lack of vision, which felt like a persistent, deliberate effort to undermine the museum’s professional practices across different administrations. We were surprised by the lack of sound policy and etiquette from a Western European country with a history of excellent cultural practices.
‘The recent decision to unilaterally halt the new M HKA building project and downgrade its mission is entirely unacceptable. This unprecedented and reckless overhaul of a decades-old public institution was conducted without the necessary groundwork or proper consultation, demonstrating a fundamental disregard for
the public good and the professionals involved. This action is a “world first” in cultural misconduct and will undoubtedly cause irreparable damage to Antwerp and Flanders’ national and global reputation. The trauma inflicted upon the staff and the wider cultural world by the Ministry of Culture is inadmissible.’
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