Each year, on the first Saturday of August, Antwerp holds Museum Night or Museumnacht. It’s one week before Antwerp Pride and it often coincides with the start of Antwerp Queer Arts Festival. 

On Saturday 6 August 2022, 20 museums will open their doors for a special programme and a new audience. With performances, music, workshops, talks, exhibitions and more, they are sure to surprise, entertain, move and captivate.

You can find some highlights below, but make sure you take a look a the full programme. Don’t speak Dutch (very well)? Within the programme you can filter the activities based on their required understanding of the Dutch language.

Antwerp at it’s best

Antwerp’s history and cultural heritage can be felt throughout the city, but finds an even more prominent spot during Museumnacht. Try local beers at Maagdenhuis and Snijders & Rockox, or visit the brewery at De Koninck. Or try your hand at checking and authenticating diamonds at DIVA, with a chance of winning one for yourself. Maybe you’d like to get to know some of Antwerp’s icons? Fred Bervoets (in Museum De Reede) and the Antwerp Six (in MoMu) will lay bare all their secrets…

Music and dance

Museum Night also has plenty of music and dance. Play the piano at Museum Aan de Stroom (MAS). “Loosen those hips during Vintage Swing Jazz at Erfgoedbibliotheek Hendrik Conscience, and Vocal Jazz at Snijders & Rockox, or raise your hands for garage and rock selected by Radio Willy at Maagdenhuis”, the website says.

And for a true insight into Antwerp’s sound, make sure to visit Museum Vleeshuis and their broad selection of performances and mini-concerts.

“More variation? You name it. At M HKA, DJ Double Trouble will play a new genre every 15 minutes – the 90’s in a nutshell.”

During the night we’ll be listening to Cream Colored Ponies, Secret Sinners, Bach In De Stad, Rack au Vin, Mauro Pawlowski, DJ Double Trouble, and many more.

Guided tours

Do you prefer to be taken along for the ride? Have a look at the guided tours that are planned for Museumnacht. Museum Mayer van den Bergh is hosting a Speed Tour in English. 

No time to waste, full throttle ahead! Cyclant is organizing a guided bike tour that will take you all around the city. 

Check the full programme for more tours.

Afterparty

Between 11 PM and 3 AM, brewery De Koninck opens their doors for an afterparty! Make sure you buy a ticket in the online ticketshop, capacity is limited.

About Museum Night

Museumnacht wants to lower all barriers and allow the widest possible audience to taste art, heritage and culture. Expect quirky tours, exciting music performances, tastings, quests for children, storytelling and other impressive performances. Have you not yet finished the party after Museum Night? Let your dancing legs go during the Museum Night afterparty at Stadsbrouwerij De Koninck.

With one ticket you can visit all participating museums on Museum Night. In addition, you can request a free Velo day pass, the shared bicycle of the city of Antwerp, via your ticket. You can easily move between the various locations in Antwerp by bike. 

Would you like more time to discover what Antwerp’s museums have to offer? With your wristband you can visit your favorite museum for free throughout August.

Museum Night is an initiative of the City of Antwerp, made possible in part by Gazet van Antwerpen and Velo Antwerpen.

Practical

• Participating museums.
• Programme.
• Tickets.

Art and museums in Antwerp

• Museum Mayer van den Bergh.
• 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.
• ANTWERP | Garden of renovated Rubens House to be open air exhibition space.
• 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. 
• 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.