Antwerp’s Museum of Contemporary Art Calls Government Plan to Dissolve It Illegal
56Jan. 9, 2026
The leaders of theMuseum of Contemporary Art Antwerp(M HKA) at a January 6 press conference publicly denounced the Flemish government’sscheme to dissolve it and move its collection to a museum in another city, contending that the plan is “flagrantly” illegal. As reported by Flemish news platformVRT, their pronouncement was based on a legal review conducted at the behest of M HKA and several artists, including Luc Tuymans and Rinus Van de Velde.
The institution ordered the review after Flemish culture minister Caroline Gennez in October shocked the art world with the sudden announcement of a plan to cancel the scheduled construction of a new €80 million ($93 million) high-rise building that was to have housed M HKA, the country’s oldest museum of contemporary art. Under the scheme outlined by Gennez, the institution’s roughly 8,000-piece collection would be relocated to Ghent’s S.M.A.K, which would be renamed 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. M HKA is just one of two museums in Belgium, a federalized country, that have been declared a Cultural Heritage Institution by the government.
“The concept paper with the plans for the Flemish museum landscape should actually be able to be discussed,” said M HKA acting director Dieter Vankiersbilck. “But that draft paper is proposed as a decided policy.”
Attorney Leo Neels asserted that “by treating the draft memorandum as a decided policy, existing decrees, management agreements and previous decisions of the Flemish government are ignored or unilaterally revised.”
The Guardian reports that Belgium’s financial inspectorate in October notified Gennez, the culture minister, that her that the proposed change would result in only “fragmentary” changes to Belgium’s overstretched budget. Though moving the museum’s permanent collection could reduce operating costs from about €8 million to €5 million, M HKA would then have pay to borrow works or buy in exhibitions to attract visitors. As well, there is some question as to whether S.M.A.K. has the room to house M HKA’s trove.
Noting that “the International Council of Museums has launched an investigation into the context of the concept paper,” Vankiersbilck called for a postponement of the plan’s submission to the Flemish government, set to take place January 9. “This way we have time to consult with everyone, with the whole sector. This way we can come to a good plan.”
“We are in discussions with the M HKA and the sector and we remain open to further dialogue,” Gennez told VRT, affirming that the two-year process of stripping M HKA of its status and shipping its collection to Ghent would start soon. “In that, everyone, all involved, will be able to contribute to the decision-making and implementation, as planned,” she said.
“To degrade a museum to an arts center is simply insane,” Tuymans, arguably Belgium’s most renowned living artist, told those assembled at the press conference. “You cannot simply take a collection of artworks and transplant it into another ecosystem, because such an ecosystem does not exist.”