Opinion Piece by Bart De Baere, Director of M HKA: "There Was Good News"

There was good news this week. The S.M.A.K. in Ghent is to become a Flemish institution. Perhaps even a heritage institution with international ambitions. I’ve long argued for that. Flanders deserves at least two museums of contemporary art, because contemporary art thrives on multiple perspectives.

But the good news was followed, almost immediately, by bad news. Within two days, we learned through the press that the new M HKA building in Antwerp would no longer go ahead, and that our museum status would be withdrawn. Antwerp, a city that nurtured artists such as Panamarenko, Luc Tuymans, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Guillaume Bijl and Otobong Nkanga, now risks losing its visible place in the story of contemporary art.

M HKA’s story began in 1970, when its predecessor, the ICC, became the first cultural institution of the young Flemish Community. It was granted the royal palace on the Meir – a gift from the King at the request of a new generation of artists in the wake of May ’68. Almost by chance, Flanders found itself at the heart of the avant-garde flourishing in Antwerp at the time. That art, provocative and experimental, helped shape the language of contemporary art as we know it today.

M HKA took that legacy seriously. We began with an unregistered collection, part of it stored in shipping containers in the port. Twenty years later, our museum team had grown from two people to twenty, without additional funding. We built a collection connecting Antwerp’s avant-garde with the international scene: Panamarenko alongside Joseph Beuys, Jef Geys next to James Lee Byars, Luc Deleu beside Gordon Matta-Clark. We acquired works by women artists linked to Antwerp, such as Chantal Akerman, Nicola L, Orlan and Chris Reineke.

We did the same for the art of the 1980s and 1990s, when our scene was internationally influential – and for today’s art world, in which Flanders embraces diversity and looks towards Eurasia. We brought the world inside our walls, quite literally. Yet, despite all this, we could display only a fraction of our work as we are also expected to stage exhibitions that are both internationally innovative and that are attentive to artists from our locality.

A decade ago, when it seemed Flanders would finally assume responsibility, we began charting our path towards becoming a fully-fledged museum. We began experimenting with new forms of presentations, worked with partners such as De Studio, where we moved our film operation, and tested a new reception area and a semi-permanent collection space thanks to the generosity of Axel Vervoordt. Most of our work though, focused on the invisible foundations: collection research, archives, digitisation – the true future of museums.

Together with the administration, we prepared an institutional transition alongside the construction project promised in the 2019 coalition agreement. There was energy; there was hope. Until this spring, when we were told to submit a standard policy plan – as if we were an ordinary city museum. No international review panel, no tailored approach. Yet the previous evaluation had already stated clearly that M HKA’s type of institution required a different framework. This previous evaluation explicitly said: “The procedure for assessing the existing cultural heritage institution [M HKA] was insufficiently adapted to its specific nature. The procedure should ideally be completely rethought”. That, however, never happened.

The current evaluation committee – composed of good, knowledgeable people from the wider heritage field – read our forty-page plan, visited the museum, asked questions, and decided it wasn’t concrete enough. They were right, in a certain sense: we have been in the middle of a transition, and without clarity on that trajectory the future building and the resources available, it was factually impossible to finalise our plans at this stage. Also, I retire at the end of 2026, and my successor would continue that work. But to abolish an institution on that basis? That is not good governance. A city councillor for culture might have visited. A minister might have done the same. We had even requested an international peer review – as is standard for opera houses and orchestras. At this stage in our transition, that would have made perfect sense.

I reproach myself now for going along with the bureaucratic ritual. I should have stated more forcefully that it was wrong, and that it wasn’t a good plan to spend five months on paperwork while the museum’s future was busy being planned in parrallel at stake. Perhaps I was too polite.

For seven years, I’ve had little time to meet artists or visit exhibitions. Everything went into planning, meetings, committees and architectural juries. All to give Flanders a major museum of contemporary art. A financially modest one, costing €80 million, ten per cent less than Antwerp’s MAS.

And now it comes to this: the new building cancelled, and the museum status withdrawn. In its place, is to be an ‘arts centre’. That sounds harmless, but it means something profound. Flanders has chosen not to have a true museum of contemporary art, a project that would finally have begun to make up for decades of underinvestment in the visual arts. And Antwerp, the city that once brought the world into its home, now loses its place in that world.

I remain ready to help find a way forward. But let’s be honest: what’s needed is respect, realism and trust in the expertise of those who’ve devoted their lives to this institution. Contemporary art does not deserve bureaucratic punishment, but policy that listens and understands.

Antwerp was once a cradle of innovation. Let us not forget that courage. Let us make it possible again.