Contemporary art

Belgium today has one of the densest art scenes in Europe, with museums, galleries and collectors in Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels. Artists such as Luc Tuymans, Jan Fabre, Wim Delvoye, Berlinde De Bruyckere and Francis Alÿs work with history, the body and the absurd.

In the 1980s Belgium gained new institutions for contemporary art. MuHKA in Antwerp opened in 1987, and in Ghent the museum director Jan Hoet staged the exhibition Chambres d’amis in 1986, in which artists from all over the world exhibited in private homes. Hoet later directed documenta in Kassel in 1992 and founded S.M.A.K. in Ghent, which opened in 1999. In Brussels the WIELS art centre opened in 2007 in a former brewery.

Painting gained a new standing with Luc Tuymans, who paints pale, muted images of historical moments such as the Holocaust and colonialism, and with Michaël Borremans, who paints enigmatic figures in a style reminiscent of the old masters. Jan Fabre worked with theatre, drawing and sculpture in beetle wing-cases, and Wim Delvoye built a machine that imitates digestion.

Colonial history has become one of the great questions for Belgian art and culture. The colonial museum in Tervuren was remodelled and reopened in 2018 as the AfricaMuseum, statues of Leopold II have been removed or challenged, and since 2022 a law has made it possible to return objects to the Congo. At the same time the old masters have gained new life through the restoration of the Ghent Altarpiece.

• The restoration of the Ghent Altarpiece
• The museum in Tervuren