In October 2013, Kerry James Marshall opened an exhibition at M HKA, the museum of latest artwork in Antwerp, Belgium. The present, which was the artist’s most substantial presentation in Europe to this point, went remarkably unnoticed within the Benelux area. Twelve years later, the identical artist was heralded by the main conservative artwork critic within the Netherlands because the “finest painter alive” for his present on the Royal Academy of Arts in London (till 18 January 2026).
Artists together with Emilia Kabakov are asking for the return of their works
That M HKA doesn’t get a point out on this overview is revealing. Till now, the museum has performed a job within the center floor, a “improvement laboratory”, within the phrases of Bart de Baere, its outgoing director. That place appears to have grow to be untenable as, in October, the Flemish ministry of tradition instructed the museum to be closed, and its assortment transferred to the S.M.A.Ok. in Ghent. The ministry additionally cancelled a €130m deliberate new constructing for M HKA that was prepared to interrupt floor.
What can be misplaced if M HKA disappears? Its programme shouldn’t be one in all spectacle nor hype that politicians and the media prefer to embrace. Fairly, it serves a vital function in linking rising and established types of artwork. Its collections are modest, usually archival, embracing concepts reminiscent of Eurasian internationalism whose time is but to return. It has organised seminal exhibitions on artists together with Jimmie Durham and on native (however non-Flemish) practitioners reminiscent of Otobong Nkanga, Laure Prouvost, Dora García and Nástio Mosquito. It’s a founding member of the L’internationale, a European confederation of museums, arts organisations and universities that has tried to form a up to date trans-European cultural imaginative and prescient.
Now a passionate rearguard motion has been launched by artists and cultural employees in Flanders beneath the banner “Museum at Threat”. Its members occupied the museum’s entrance for twenty-four hours and have pushed Antwerp metropolis councillors to face up towards the Flemish authorities and the Socialist Social gathering, which had been behind the transfer. In the meantime, worldwide artists together with Emilia Kabakov and the property of Christian Boltanski are asking for the return of their works or their deletion from the museum’s assortment web site—items they believed belonged to Antwerp and its residents. These are heartening steps that present a group and metropolis in want of a museum. But the hazard is that, if profitable, issues will solely return to the established order ante—a scenario that few had been content material with within the first place.
Ten years in the past, de Baere and his colleagues launched into a mission to construct a brand new constructing to deal with the shortcomings of the museum’s present area. The constructing is way from supreme, its storage depot is completely insufficient, its assortment administration in want of higher sources. On the whole, M HKA has at all times had the air of a brief dwelling in search of a everlasting resolution. Now, all of the protesters are in a position to demand is the preservation of this insufficient state of affairs and de Baere himself has stepped again from such a situation.
Wanting again over the previous three weeks of motion and response, it seems the political resolution largely revolved across the new M HKA constructing. By “liberating” the development finances, Caroline Gennez, the tradition minister, could have gotten her fingers on sufficient cash to fulfill numerous small-scale calls for and to assist her pet initiatives. The political dedication to a giant gesture and a brand new museum appears to be merely past her civic-political creativeness. Until that call is reversed, M HKA is unlikely to thrive.
That is the place Flemish particularities meet broader western European forces. M HKA’s place can solely be defended if the monetary enablers of the cultural sector view their assist as a part of a wider ecosystem of care and sustenance. On this approach, artwork shouldn’t be immediately translatable into social or financial benchmarks. On the political stage, this implies elected ministers and civil servants want a imaginative and prescient of supporting tradition with out demanding on the spot accountability. It additionally means permitting cultural establishments and collections to search out their resonance over time. These ideas had been current in western Europe from round 1960 till right this moment. Now, they’re dissolving into populist, neoliberal and politically clueless fragments. The case of the disappearing museum is subsequently unlikely to be confined to Antwerp.
• Charles Esche is a curator, author and professor of latest artwork and curating at Central Saint Martins in London. He’s the previous director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands
