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Eminent creators have voiced strong opposition against what they label as an “arbitrary reshaping” of the nation’s museum landscape, as regional authorities aim to cut public spending by dismantling the nation’s most historic modern art institution and transplanting its complete holdings to a different urban center.

Directors Decry ‘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 called the “blatant violations” of the cultural institution reorganization, a plan scheduled for debated in the national legislature on Friday.

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

“To demote a museum to an arts centre is simply insane. You cannot just move a collection of artworks and transplant it into another ecosystem, because that specific context does not exist,” he added.

Surprise Move Scraps €80m Project, Moves Holdings

In October, the cultural affairs minister of the Flanders region cancelled the proposed development of a specially designed €80m high-rise building to accommodate the museum, and revealed intentions to move its collection of approximately 8,000 pieces to Ghent’s Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art (Smak). This unexpected decision will in effect strip the Antwerp museum of its museum status.

The Antwerp museum’s collection also includes pieces by international artists such as Kerry James Marshall, Anish Kapoor and Marina Abramović.

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

Financial Constraints Motivate Cost-Cutting in Arts Sector

The country is confronting a budget deficit of 5.4% of GDP, one of the largest in the European monetary union. The cultural domain in particular is facing significant reductions, with budget-tightening policies also suggesting an uncertain future for Brussels’ new Kanal museum.

According to the plans of Minister Caroline Gennez, the museum landscape would be consolidated so that cultural holdings in the region are housed within three flagship institutions for historical, modern and contemporary art.

Flanders has a multitude of contemporary art museums: besides M HKA in Antwerp and Smak in Ghent, there is the Bruges museums in Bruges and Museum M in Leuven.

Financial Inspectorate Questions Savings Rationale

Whether the proposed shake-up would truly lower costs has been challenged by the national audit office. In a memorandum addressed to Gennez in October, it issued a negative assessment on the plans, indicating their impact on the budget would be “fragmentary”.

While moving the institution’s core holdings could cut running expenses from approximately €8m to €5m, it is believed that going forward the Antwerp museum would have to spend money to loan artworks or purchase touring shows to attract visitors.

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