The Antwerp Museums are looking forward to a fascinating 2019.
The Antwerp Museums are looking forward to a fascinating 2019. The Dulle Griet (“Mad Meg”) returns to the Museum Mayer van den Bergh, and the Rubens House finally reveals its fully restored portico and garden pavilion. The Plantin-Moretus Museum shows grotesque art, and the Museum aan de Stroom (MAS) goes in search of the intentions of the architect, Le Corbusier. The Middelheim Museum receives Ria Pacquée in the summer, and in the autumn, the MAS is going on an Oriental tour with Cool Japan. In addition, thanks to an active loan policy, we will once again be seeing many masterpieces coming and going in our museums throughout 2019.
Overview in chronological order
Frans Dille Prize 2018
Plantin-Moretus Museum
26 January 2019 - 10 March 2019
The versatile Antwerp artist, Frans Dille (1909-1999) was a celebrated graphic artist, draughtsman and watercolourist, while also being an inspiring teacher. Every three years, promising talent from the fields of drawing and/or graphic art compete for the Frans Dille Prize. This prize is awarded to students and recent graduates from higher arts education. From Saturday 26 January to Sunday 10 March 2019, the works of the laureates, as well as a selection of the work of the other participants, will be included in an exhibition at the Plantin-Moretus Museum.
Poetry Day, House of Literature festival and Stukken van Schrijvers [Jewels of Writers]
House of Literature
31 January 2019, 28 March 2019 and 11 May 2019
Once again in 2019, the House of Literature will be the place to meet and experience literature that is still alive and kicking, where the literary past and present are interconnected. A stimulating offer allowing the public to taste the beauty and power of literature and poetry. Poets and students will meet in the House of Literature on Poetry Day, which will be held on Thursday 31 January.
From 28 March, the House of Literature will be the location for the brand new literary talk show “Stukken van Schrijvers” [Jewels of Writers], which promises plenty of bite while remaining acid-free, with Cathérine Vandoorne as hostess.
On 11 May 2019, the House of Literature will publish lively literature at the House of Literature festival throughout ten locations, a celebration of words and stories that, in 2019, will focus on the art of preservation.
Dulle Griet (“Mad Meg”)
Museum Mayer van den Bergh
From 19 January 2019
Dulle Griet (“Mad Meg”) by Pieter I Bruegel returns to the Museum Mayer van den Bergh after two years. At the end of January, the painting will once again become one of the most eye-catching exhibits of the house of Fritz Mayer van den Bergh. Writer in residence, Jeroen Olyslaegers, welcomes the scene of “Mad Meg pillaging Hell” and invites the audience to view the restored painting from a new perspective.
https://pers.museummayervandenbergh.be/en/
The Grotesques
Plantin-Moretus Museum
5 April 2019 - 15 September 2019
The underground ruins of Nero's famous imperial palace, the Domus Aurea, were rediscovered in Rome at the end of the fifteenth century. On the walls there are curious unseen, colourful murals with lavish, symmetrical decorations. In between, bizarre animals and fabulous creatures can be seen. These decorations would go down in history as 'grotesques' (or grottoesque) due to the finds being discovered in 'grotto-like' ruins.
From 5 April 2019 to 15 September 2019, the Prints Room of the Plantin-Moretus Museum will be presenting the “The Grotesques” exhibition. With exceptional prints and drawings from its own collection, combined with several unique pieces on loan, the exhibition highlights various forms of grotesque art. The exhibition has on display an exceptional series of sixteenth-century design drawings by Paul Vredeman de Vries, as well as prints by big names such as Bosch, Bruegel, Ensor, Bervoets, De Coninck and Cneut.
Le Corbusier. Left Bank – Chandigarh
MAS
6 April 2019 - 18 June 2019
How do residents use a city after the architect has left? And what does the Antwerp Left Bank have to do with the Indian city of Chandigarh?
As an urban planner, Le Corbusier (1887-1965) believed that a city could improve peoples’ lives through good design. He drew up the plans for the Antwerp-Left Bank, but they were never executed; so he built a completely new city in India: Chandigarh. This exhibition takes the visitor into the ideas and underlying vision of the well-known modernist architect, Le Corbusier, and gives them a chance to stroll through the Chandigarh streets and look behind the façades of the Left Bank.
A journey through time
MAS Walking Boulevard
From 7 May 2019
The MAS collection consists of some 500,000 objects that, altogether, tell the story of Antwerp and the world. From 7 May 2019, the escalators in the MAS will not only take visitors up to the roof, they will also allow these transients to travel through time with impressive photographs of the collection. From the oldest museum piece and the bones of the Flemish folkloric character, Druon Antigoon (a mythical giant who lived in Antwerp guarding a bridge on the river Scheldt), that are more than 5 million years old, visitors will visit Egypt, the Mayas and the Scheldt before the year 0. They will then travel along the history of Antwerp and Europe, Africa, Asia, America and Oceania to arrive at the top of the escalator and the most recent collection pieces of the MAS.
Celebration in the Rubens house
Rubens House
27 and 28 April 2019
On 27 and 28 April 2019, the Rubens House will hold a celebration. After the restoration of the Self-portrait, it is the turn of the house eye-catchers: the portico and the garden pavilion. They were designed by Rubens himself, and they are rare traces of Rubens’ work as an architect. After a year and a half, the restoration has been completed and the scaffold removed.
In April, some of our top pieces will be leaving their familiar spot for a while. For example, David Bowie's Tintoretto and The Portrait of Lady and a Child by Titian will be in Venice temporarily. Both crowd pullers will return in December 2019. The Art Room by Cornelis Van der Geest will be leaving the Rubens House for at least a year to undergo restoration. New loans have meanwhile enriched the permanent collection.
Roots seekers
Red Star Line Museum - Depot
End of April to the end of September 2019
The Red Star Line Museum inspires people with their universal stories about migration and hope to find their own family and migration history. This is how the museum will expand its collection after opening. With “Roots seekers”, some of the donations and stories will be exhibited with the results of the search that students from the Borgerhout Sint-Agnes secondary school will be undertaking themselves in the coming months. Moreover, anyone can search for his/her own family history via creative workshops. This is how “Roots seekers” continues to grow with new stories.
Ria Pacquée
Middelheim Museum
25 May 2019 – 22 September 2019
Ria Pacquée (B, 1954) has been researching the concept of “identity” since the 1970s. She does this using her own body as a tool: via performances and body art, as well as through installations and video works. According to the artist, our identity is renewed every time we come into contact with others.
The public space and its diverse users are therefore an inexhaustible source of inspiration, and Pacquée considers the Middelheim Museum to be a part of that. For this exhibition, the artist carried out observations over a long period of time in the museum park, resulting in new performances and installations, such as a 30-day isolated stay on an Eilandje in a Middelheim Museum pond. Moreover, she is inviting other artists to take part, as a mischievous game with the presence and absence of the artist. There will be performances every Saturday that involve Ria Pacquée and, among others, Suchan Kinoshita (JP, 1960) and Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen (PH, 1970).
From Fouquet to Bruegel
Museum Mayer van den Bergh
From 5 October 2019
From 5 October Dulle Griet (“Mad Meg”) is one of the highlights of the exhibition, From Fouquet to Bruegel. In this exhibition, leading Antwerp collectors Fritz Mayer van den Bergh and Florent van Ertborn take visitors into the world of the nineteenth-century passion for collecting. Both collectors are showing off a selection of their collection. Pieter I Bruegel, Jean Fouquet, Rogier Van der Weyden, Gerard David and numerous other pearls by unknown masters show off the expert eyes of Fritz and Florent. In collaboration with the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp.
www.museummayervandenbergh.be/en
Cool Japan
MAS
17 October 2019 – 19 April 2020
In the autumn of 2019, the MAS will unveil “Cool Japan”. This expo takes the visitor into the worldwide fascination for Japanese visual culture, with icons such as Hello Kitty, samurai, creepy yōkai (spirits and monsters) and robots. The MAS will also be exhibiting the long tradition from which contemporary Japanese pop culture has grown through unique historical pieces from its own collection and loans. In “Cool Japan”, visitors will not only be able to see and discover, but also do things like chat with the robot Pepper, or read manga comics for hours on end.
New pavilion collection
Middelheim Museum
Opening autumn 2019
The Middelheim collection is, for most people, the works of art that have been set up in the wonderful Middelheim Museum park. And even though the current focus is mainly on the open air collection, works have also been collected over the past six decades that are too vulnerable to be exhibited outdoors. This is why the Middelheim Museum converted a depot space into a collection pavilion to show its own collection in all its diversity. But also to allow it to be challenged, with and by contemporary artists.
For the first project, artists Jean Bernard Koeman (B, 1964) and Rudi J Luijters (NL, 1955) have developed a presentation that reflects their intensive research into the relationship between the collection and the protected landscape of the park.
Lectures
Rubenianum – House of Literature – Library Hendrik Conscience
The Rubenianum invokes an annual tradition with a number of art history lectures on Sunday morning. With the planned symposiums about the Van Herck archive, and the artistic relationship between Italy and Flanders, the Rubenianum will place Antwerp as the artistic catalyst of the 16th and 17th century in the spotlight for experts and international researchers.
Every month in the House of Literature, Piet Piryns asks guests who their favourite poets are and then invites them to read their own and other people's works during “Thursdays of poetry”. Antwerp Boekenstad organises a series of afternoon lectures “Books on Wednesdays” in the House of Literature.
The Library Hendrik Conscience continues the tradition of the Nottebohm lectures in the exceptional Nottebohm hall.
www.consciencebibliotheek.be/en
More information about this press release can be found via the websites of the museums.