The 25 Defining Art Events of 2025

20 - Flemish Government Votes to Eliminate Famed Antwerp Museum It’s not every day that a museum will close for seemingly no reason at all. But that’s exactly what apparently happened this year when the Flemish government decided it would gut Antwerp’s M HKA, Belgium’s oldest contemporary art museum. The government did not cite financial troubles as the cause for the closure, though it had recently denied the institution’s plans to build a new €130 million building. Instead, the decision came as part of a restructuring of Flemish cultural institutions that would create three “clusters” of museums and more evenly spread out the region’s cultural offerings. As part of the change, which is expected to take two years and be completed by 2028, M HKA’s collection of some 8,000 objects, many of which trace the importance of Antwerp in the development of 20th-century art, will be transferred to S.M.A.K. in Ghent, with the M HKA’s building essentially being transformed into a Kunsthalle-style organization. Two museum groups as well as artists like Luc Tuymans spoke out against the decision and called for the government to reverse it. —Maximilíano Durón