Reflections by Johannes Muselaers, PhD researcher
7 November 2025 - 3:42 pm – Statement of SupportBy email: Returning to our conversation about the museum today. I am not a specialist—and must admit that I have followed the museum from a distance in recent years—but when I visited the institution and received its communications, I experienced a divided museum.
Dear Anne-Mie (Van Kerckhoven),
Just to follow up on our conversation about the museum today. I am no specialist—and must admit that I have only followed the museum from a distance in recent years—but when I visited the institution and received its communications, I experienced a divided museum.
One face of the museum is that of an arts centre. The heart of the programme consists of monographic exhibitions of living artists and thematic group exhibitions. As I understand it, the predominantly international artists featured in these projects are not always part of the collection, or are only incorporated subsequently.
The other face of the museum is that of a traditional “museum of contemporary art”. Often on the margins of the exhibition programme and in peripheral spaces of the building, there are focused exhibitions on newly acquired artworks, archival exhibitions on the Antwerp scene, and collection presentations. The former, more focused presentations, usually feature works by an Eastern European or Asian artist, reflecting the museum’s emphasis on Eurasia: “the territory of Europe and Asia, as a multipolar space with a plurality of cultures.” Actual collection presentations rarely focus on this region, instead prioritizing Antwerp or Flanders as the principal framework for understanding reality.
Regardless of the qualities of the ‘museum as a museum’ and the ‘museum as an arts centre,’ the relationship between the two remains unclear. In my perception as an outsider, they operate in parallel, with the arts centre becoming increasingly prominent (significantly, the ‘U’ for Museum disappeared from the name of the M HKA) at the expense of the museum.
It is too simplistic to attribute this situation solely to poor policy—just as it is too simplistic to blame the museum building or the museum's funding. The division within the institution and the diminishing visibility of the collection appear to stem from repeated efforts to respond to broader social expectations placed on the art institution, without the political openness required for a thorough redefinition of the collection’s role. When I consult the vision and programme surrounding the collection and archive, a regionalist vision shines through: the idea that the artworks in the collection primarily say something about the social, political and cultural context of Antwerp and Flanders, or that “the post-war avant-garde in Antwerp and Flanders” forms a central starting point for understanding “the multipolar world of today and tomorrow.” Failing to recognize that these regions are not reference points but points of transition inevitably leads to a sedentary vision of the visual arts: today, the collection is primarily presented and researched from a regional perspective, despite its transnational ambitions.
For me, the division within the institution and the growing invisibility of the artworks in its care therefore point to the failure of the regionalist and sedentary perspective on the collection. The call for the deterritorialisation of the individual, society, and the economy, which finds resonance in the museum as an arts centre, is fundamentally at odds with the museum’s immobile model, whereas the collection’s relevance remains constrained without intellectual and physical mobility.
Based on this analysis, the discussion surrounding the collection should not get bogged down in regionalist sentiments. It is precisely these sentiments that have undermined the relevance of the collection to date and were probably the reason for the minister's disproportionate measure. Perhaps the call should not be: “Keep the M HKA collection in Antwerp”, but rather: 'How do we ensure that our collection, based on our own premises, remains mobile and future-oriented?
These are just a few reflections. Perhaps they will contribute to the conversation between artists, art workers, ministers and policy makers that should be at the centre of attention today.
Best regards,
Johannes Muselaers
Johannes is a doctoral researcher at the Higher Institute of Philosophy and a member of the interdisciplinary research group Palettes at KU Leuven.
380