It’s summer so it’s time for Antwerp Pride and Antwerp Queer Arts Festival (AQAF). From 4 to 27 August 2023, AQAF hosts queer artists being queer, in the alternative, quirky, more rebellious sense of the word. Antwerp Pride, from 9 to 13 August, is more mainstream, openly catering to everyone and thus attracting a general, more mainstream LGBTQIA+ and allied public. This year’s pride theme is ‘Braveolution‘.

During the 2023 Antwerp Pride season, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Antwerp or Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (KMSKA) launched a Queer Tour of the museum. A walk-in tour. Which means you don’t have to organise a group and book a guide, but you can just adhere to a pre-arranged tour. Perfect for individual visitors.

Thanh and did the first Queer Tour at KMSKA after the try-outs. Our guide was Silvia Terrenzio, who designed the ‘Maria tours‘ of Antwerp, built around the many Virgin Mary statues in Antwerp. 

I’m not going to (re-)tell you what she told us. But the premise of the Queer Tour is queerness in the collection of the KMSKA. 

Queer? 

Art can be queer because the artist is or was. Openly during their life or not. 

Sometimes the subject is queer. Playing with gender-related expectations, making a male figure feminine, using masculine code on a female subject. Sometimes the artist or the piece of art is queered afterwards. Sometimes an artist or artwork was queer but has been ‘heteronormatised’ afterwards. 

The choice of which paintings and sculptures are displayed is a result of the frame(s) wherein curators operate. Consciously and willingly or not. 

“How do we look at old art with a queer perspective? Which artists played with gender norms? Which paintings show us what was considered modest or immoral? How does the queer community appropriate certain representations of the past?”, as the museum puts it.

The tour

These questions form the backbone of the tour. In an hour or an hour and fifteen minutes, Silvia showed us some art in the old museum halls which are more or less queer or can be seen as queer, to delve into the question. 

There’s no definitive answer to this. But the Queer Tour makes you think. And if that doesn’t work for you, at least you will have contemplated paintings and sculptures you may have ignored without being pointed out by a guide. 

Future tours

For Antwerp Pride there are walk-in tours. According to Silvia, from September, groups will be able to book this tour. 

Art and museums in Antwerp

• ANTWERP | Baroque Influencers city festival of tradition and renewal.
• REVIEW | Illusion Antwerpen, an active and photogenic museum.
• Antwerp museums and sports facilities team up with European Disability Card for accessible leisure activities.
• FOMU 2023 | Reimagined collection, strippers – Nicaragua – Kurdistan and people touching each other.
• ANTWERP 2023 | MoMu fashion museum presents IO Van Oostveldt and Man Ray exhibitions.
• ANTWERP | Rubens House closed for renovation.
• Inside the KMSKA or Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp.
• VIDEO | Inside the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Antwerp.
• Museum Mayer van den Bergh.
• ANTWERP | ‘Stories of Refuge’ exhibition at Red Star Line Museum.
• 2023 at the museums of Antwerp.
• 2022 in the museums of Antwerp.
• ANTWERP | ‘Stories of refuge’ exhibition at Red Star Line Museum.
• ANTWERP | Inside Rubens House.
• ANTWERP | Garden of renovated Rubens House to be open air exhibition space.
• ModeMuseum MoMu – Fashion Museum Antwerp 2021.
• ModeMuseum MoMu – Fashion Museum Antwerp 2022.
• ‘Freight’ and ‘Listen’ exhibitions at MAS in Antwerp.
• ‘Masculinities: Liberation through Photography’ exhibition at FOMU, Antwerp’s photography museum.
• ANTWERP | Goshka Macuga’s ‘Figures of Absence’ honours underrepresented women in public domain art.
• Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp.
• ‘Eurasia – A Landscape of Mutability’ exhibition at Antwerp’s M HKA modern arts museum.
• ANTWERP | Geert De Weyer Gallery, a space for illustrators’ and comic strip authors’ art.
• Museum Plantin-Moretus will exhibit long-lost illustration by Rubens: ‘Opticorum Libri Sex’.
• ‘100 X Congo’ exhibition at Museum Aan de Stroom (MAS) in Antwerp.
• ANTWERP | Museum Vleeshuis up for restoration.
• REVIEW | ‘Cool Japan’ exhibition at Museum Aan de Stroom (MAS) in Antwerp from 18 October 2019 to 19 April 2020. 
• BOOK | ‘Antwerp. An Archaeological View on the Origin of the City’ by Tim Bellens.
• Red Star Line Museum.
• Paleis op de Meir. 
• DIVA, Antwerp Home of Diamonds.
• ANTWERP | Red Star Line Museum of (e)migration.
• ANTWERP | Museum Mayer van den Bergh is expanding into former District Hall.
• ANTWERP | Traveling exhibition #StolenMemory at Museum At the Stream (MAS).
• Museum At the Stream opens ‘City at war, Antwerp, 1940-1945’ exhibition on 8 September.
• ANTWERP | Middelheim Museum remains open during renovation and rearrangement works.

Antwerp Pride 2023 & Antwerp Queer Arts Festival 2023

• Antwerp Pride, a fight by celebration.
• ANTWERP PRIDE 2023 | Antwerp Pride activities and events especially for women.
• ANTWERP PRIDE 2023 | VULGAR joins Woodpop, A Hard Night, Oh Honey, SHE, H.I.M, Terrazza, Cutfest 2.0, The Boots and Belgian Puppy Social as Pride Saturday party.
• ANTWERP PRIDE 2023 | 20 years Het Roze Huis and Café Den Draak’s Midsummer Party on Thursday 6 August at Draakplaats.
• ANTWERP PRIDE 2023 | Introductory Queer Tour of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Antwerp (KMSKA).
• ANTWERP PRIDE 2023 | MAS Darling queer culture and film festival 9-10-11 August.
• ANTWERP PRIDE 2023 | Love United Festival, post-parade concert and party.
• ANTWERP PRIDE 2023 | Pride – WOMEN – In Town at Sint-Andriesplaats.
• Antwerp Pride Parade 2023 route & map.
• Antwerp Pride 2023 theme, programme and schedule highlights.
• BEYOND ANTWERP PRIDE | Discussing, educating, empowering and protesting for recognition of LGBTQIA+ people.
• ANTWERP PRIDE 2023 | WE Fashion and OUTtv provide safe change / fitting rooms for going to the pride parade.
• ANTWERP PRIDE 2023 | Holding hands for visibility on Sunday 13 August.
• ANTWERP PRIDE 2023 | Eurovision’s Gustaph to perform at Closing Festival on Sunday 13 August.
• ANTWERP PRIDE 2023 | Opening Night concert & party at OLT Rivierenhof.
• 4-27 AUGUST | Antwerp Queer Arts Festival 2023 programme and schedule.
• 2023 Antwerp Pride Parade route includes Kloosterstraat and a hello to czar Peter the Great.
• Antwerp Pride 2023 Festival at Cockerillkaai.
• ANTWERP PRIDE 9-13 AUGUST 2023 ‘BRAVEOLUTION’ | Make Antwerp a brave and safe.
• ANTWERP PRIDE 2023 | ‘Braveolution’ to Brave Space Antwerp.
• Antwerp Queer Arts Festival 2023 seeks contributors.
• ANTWERP PRIDE | Geert Van Praet succeeds retiring chairperson Bart Abeel.
• PHOTOS | Antwerp Pride 2023 from Wednesday 9 to Sunday 13 August.

Darklands 2023-2024

• Darklands 2024 from 27 February to 4 March.
• ANTWERP | Darklands 2024 going into ‘The Void’ under new, stricter city rules.
• “Darklands: The Hotel was an idea of A-Stay”.
• DARKLANDS 2023 | Programme and schedule.
• DARKLANDS 2023 | A-Stay to become official Darklands: The Hotel.
• Darklands 2023 from Tuesday 7 to Tuesday 14 March in Antwerp.
• Darklands 2023 to and from Deep Space.

Queer Antwerp

• Antwerp Pride, Jeffrey’s, Marie Antoinette, Armand Everaert win 2023 Touristico Gaylive Awards.
• ANTWERP | LGBTQIA+ bookshop Kartonnen Dozen stops.
• Rainbow zebra crossings of Antwerp.
• Rainbow zebra crossing in Borgerhout.
• Rainbow zebra crossing in Berchem.
• City chronicle ‘De kleur van de stad maakt mijn ziel amoureus’ recounts Queer Antwerp history.
• ‘Masculinities: Liberation through Photography’ exhibition at FOMU, Antwerp’s photography museum.
• Antwerp’s LGBTQI+ bookshop Kartonnen Dozen wins Çavaria Media Award.
• PHOTOS | Rainbows lit Antwerp.
• Flemish LGBTQI+ press support rainbow community in Ukraine.
• ALLEMAAL ANTWERPENAAR | Antwerp launches campaign to motivate citizens to stand up against discrimination and intimidation.
• Borgerhout flies intersex inclusive Rainbow Progress Pride Flag for IDAHOT.