The Rubens House museum in Antwerp is being renovated. A (more or less) new feature will be the garden, which will act as an open air museum exhibition hall. 365 and 366 days a year. 

“The new garden will be a museum room without a ceiling. Thanks to the color advice of fashion designer Dries Van Noten, the future garden will sparkle in every season: you will discover 365 color shades per year”, the Rubens House website says. 

A much denser vegetation comes through a deciduous corridor and two arcades with vistas. 8835 plants are planted: 39 trees, 4170 perennials, 612 climbing plants, 3150 flower bulbs and stinzen plants, 346 shrubs, 438 hedge plants; 30 orangery plants and 50 aquatic plants.

In the middle of the city, this garden contributes to a better climate. The planting mitigates the higher temperatures, the flooding during heavy rainfall, the city noise and the large amounts of CO2 and particulate matter in the air. The garden will also be accessible to all visitors; also for less mobile people and prams.

Work on the new garden will start in the autumn and the current garden will no longer be accessible to visitors. The Rubens House itself will remain open until January 8, 2023.

The design was made by Ars Horti, in collaboration with the Agentschap Onroerend Erfgoed or Real Estate Heritage Agency.

New garden project

The yew hedges and the perennials from the ground floor will be moved to the Schoonselhof cemetery. The few lime trees that are cut are processed into furniture for the Rubens House. The majestic yew tree, which is 250 years old, remains standing.

More on Rubens

• ANTWERP | Inside Rubens House.
• ANTWERP | Rubens House to close on 9 January 2023 and reopen in 2027.
• Antwerp’s Rubens House to have new visitor centre by 2024.
• 75 years of Rubens House.
• VIDEO | Flanders Stay At Home Museum – Sir Peter Paul Rubens.
• Rubens’ self portrait back in Rubens House Antwerp.

Art and museums in Antwerp

• ANTWERP | ‘Stories of Refuge’ exhibition at Red Star Line Museum.
• 2022 in the museums of Antwerp.
• ANTWERP | ‘Stories of refuge’ exhibition at Red Star Line Museum.
• ANTWERP | Inside Rubens House.
• ModeMuseum MoMu – Fashion Museum Antwerp 2021.
• ‘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.
• ‘Congoville’: contemporary artists walk colonial paths at Middelheim Museum in Antwerp.
• Antwerp’s Letterenhuis ft. Paul van Ostaijen exhibition.
• ModeMuseum MoMu – Fashion Museum Antwerp reopens on 4 and 5 September 2021 with ‘Fashion 2.021 Antwerp – Fashion/Conscious’.
• Museum Plantin-Moretus will exhibit long-lost illustration by Rubens: ‘Opticorum Libri Sex’.
• Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Antwerp finally to reopen on 25 September 2022.
• ‘100 X Congo’ exhibition at Museum Aan de Stroom (MAS) in Antwerp.
• ‘Cool Japan’ exhibition, Museum Aan de Stroom (MAS), Antwerp, 18 October 2019 to 19 April 2020. 
• 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.
• ‘On the road’ at Museum Plantin-Moretus.
• Red Star Line Museum.
• Paleis op de Meir. 
• Museum Mayer van den Bergh.
• DIVA, Antwerp Home of Diamonds.
• ANTWERP | Red Star Line Museum of (e)migration.