Flemish Government’s Plan to Dissolve M HKA Sparks Outrage
76Oct. 14, 2025
The announcement last week by the Government of Flanders that it planned to “reform the landscape of its own museums and the visual arts sector” and strip Antwerp’s Museum of Modern Art (M HKA), Belgium’s oldest contemporary art museum, of its assets has generated criticism both locally and abroad. The scheme, which the government had not previously telegraphed, calls for the cancellation of a planned €130 million ($150 million) high-rise building that was to have housed M HKA and for the relocation of its roughly 8,000-piece collection to S.M.A.K in Ghent. That museum would then become the Flemish Museum of Contemporary and Current Art. The move would abolish M HKA’s status as a national museum and render it a kunsthalle, or noncollecting institution, by 2028. The museum is just one of two in Belgium, a federalized country, that has been declared a Cultural Heritage Institution by the government.
The Museum Watch Committee—an initiative established by the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (CIMAM), itself an affiliate of the International Council of Museums (ICOM)—on October 9 issued anopen letterdenouncing the plan, which it described as “potentially disastrous” for Antwerp’s economic and cultural fortunes and “a significant loss” for the city and all of Europe. Museum Watch also pointed out that the planned dissolution of M HKA would violate theICOM Museum Definitionand its code of ethics.
“This government plan is based upon a false administrative logic that sees collections as merely an assorted accumulation of items,” reads the missive. “The Museum Watch committee would respectfully like to point out that what the Flemish government doesn’t understand is that collections are coherent bodies that enhance the meaning of art works by the institutional commitment to their contextualization, the narratives around them and their relation to a particular place.”
The letter’s authors—which included Museum Watch committee members Zeina Arida, director of Doha’s Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art; Amanda de la Garza, deputy artistic director of Madrid’s Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía; and Yu Jin Seng, director for curatorial, research, and exhibitions at the National Gallery Singapore—demanded that Caroline Gennez, the Flemish minister of culture, reverse course and “find an alternative way to take political responsibility for M HKA, to find a new vision that sees and responds to the value in the museum and its location, a vision in which it is not emptied out and turned into a shell merely for the dynamics of the moment.”
“I am beyond flabbergasted by both the decision and its hollowness,” M HKA director Bart De Baere told Museum Watch. “I am trying to understand how to navigate between that and democratic logic. At this moment, my colleagues and the artists we serve are my primary concern.” De Baere said he had not been made aware of the plan before its announcement.
Also on October 9, L’Internationale, a confederation of thirteen European museums and art organizations that counts M HKA as a member, published anopen letter, calling for the Flemish culture minister to drop the asset stripping plan, which it noted was created “with no consultation with M HKA’s leadership or its stakeholders.” L’Internationale also pointed to “lack of transparency and detail” regarding the scheme. “How, and on what basis was such a radical redrawing of the Flemish cultural map based—in consultation with whom—and when will this be made known?” read the missive. “This plan and the manner of its announcement demonstrate neither openness and accountability, nor the commitment to good governance recently emphasized as central to Flemish cultural policy.”
Art Review on October 10 reported that Vasıf Kortun, research and curatorial adviser at Mathaf and the founder of Istanbul’s Salt, and Eugene Tan, director of National Gallery Singapore and the Singapore Art Museum, have resigned from M HKA’s governing board in protest over the dissolution plan.
“The recent decision to unilaterally halt the new M HKA building project and downgrade its mission is entirely unacceptable,” wrote Kortun and Tan in a letter to Art Review. “This unprecedented and reckless overhaul of a decades-old public institution was conducted without the necessary groundwork or proper consultation, demonstrating a fundamental disregard for the public good and the professionals involved. This action is a ‘world first’ in cultural misconduct and will undoubtedly cause irreparable damage to Antwerp and Flanders’ national and global reputation. The trauma inflicted upon the staff and the wider cultural world by the Ministry of Culture is inadmissible.”