The City of Antwerp‘s museums are preparing to welcome visitors again in 2024 with numerous new exhibitions and projects. The Middelheim Museum, together with De Singel, organizes ‘Come Closer‘: an exciting exchange between sculpture and performance. The Rubens House will open the new reception building in the summer and the autumn will be dedicated to James Ensor with exhibitions at four locations in the city. Albert Einstein visits the Red Star Line Museum, and the Museum Aan de Stroom (Museum At the Stream, MAS) goes to Antarctica in the summer. 

‘Come Closer’, Middelheim Museum and De Singel, 07.06.24 – 29.09.24

With ‘Come Closer’, Middelheim Museum and art centre De Singel jointly explore the space between sculpture and performance art. This collaboration brings together multifaceted works by about 25 artists from home and abroad: sculptures, interactive installations and performances. What they share is this: they change the traditional relationships between the artist, the work of art and the audience. In ‘Come Closer’ the distance between the three is replaced by an exciting exchange.

This project not only says something about today’s art, but also about our everyday lives. Because even in the countless interactions we engage in every day, we always take on different roles. At the same time we are always ourselves, we are also always a little different: online or not, among colleagues, with our parents, with friends. It is ‘performing’ in constant exchange with our environment, and subject to all kinds of factors.

Opening of reception building & Rubens House garden, summer 2024

The Rubens House will open its brand new reception building in the summer of 2024. The building was designed by Robbrecht en Daem architects and is the entrance to Rubens’ universe.

The facade is a dazzling spectacle of hundreds of columns. The building is packed with references to the art of Peter Paul Rubens, such as the large spiral staircases with their upward movement, and is conceived as two giant bookcases facing each other. You will visit the immersive experience, where you will come face to face with Rubens. 

At the back you enter the new garden of the Rubens House. This Baroque garden shows color 365 days a year and shines in every season. With more than 17,000 plants, this becomes a museum room without a ceiling. Rubens’ gardeners Willem and Jasper tell us in scents and colors what happened here.

Would you like to delve even further into the 17th century? Then you are welcome in the library to browse through the books and manuscripts. Moreover, you have a beautiful view of Rubens’ house and garden.

The reception building and garden will open festively in the summer of 2024. The house where Rubens lived and worked is still closed for renovation. ​

Ensor Year at four museums in Antwerp, from 28.09.2024

In 2024 it will be 75 years since artist James Ensor died in Ostend, the city where he lived and worked almost all his life. We know James Ensor as a pioneer of modern art. A complex personality. And still a source of inspiration today. Together with his native city of Ostend, Antwerp, home to the largest Ensor collection in the world, also commemorates this versatile artist. ​​

From December 2023 to August 2024, Ostend will present a museum program highlighting very diverse aspects of Ensor. 

Antwerp will take over the torch from September 2024 with four diverse exhibitions of international allure, spread across the city. In it we highlight his groundbreaking oeuvre in the international context of Ensor’s time. And how Ensor’s visual language is still a source of inspiration for photography, fashion and make-up.

‘States of imagination. Ensor and the graphic experiment’, Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp, ​from 28.09.24 to 05.01.25

In the autumn of 2024, the Plantin-Moretus Museum will present ‘States of Imagination‘ about Ensor’s remarkable graphic adventure. The young Ensor experimented extensively with etching techniques for several years. He himself said: “I don’t know the profession of etcher at all. I draw and engrave neatly, but otherwise I leave everything to chance. I don’t know all the tricks and tricks of biting, which has caused me to damage a lot of records and unnecessarily spoil my eyes.”

Ensor was not a born printmaker, but he quickly developed a unique approach to the medium. With predecessors such as Rembrandt in mind, Ensor takes his own path. His studio becomes a testing laboratory for experiments in which chance sometimes plays a role.

‘States of Imagination’ brings together for the first time the most remarkable results of these experiments: preparatory drawings, copper plates and various states of prints. We show unique prints on old paper, parchment and colored silk. Ensor transforms unfinished prints into unique works of art by coloring them manually with pencil, gouache or watercolor. In this way, unexpected details emerge, depth is created in large crowds and new shapes take shape.

Masquerade, make-up & Ensor, MoMu – Fashion Museum, 28.09.24 – 19.01.25

In Antwerp’s fashion museum MoMu, Ensor’s ideas around masquerade, (false) coquetry, the playful, grotesque and ephemeral are extended to today.

Throughout history, make-up has often been compared with some suspicion to wearing a mask: a mask behind which women in particular would hide. Today, make-up has grown into a multi-million industry that confronts people with their physical transience, imagined imperfections and existential fears. But makeup is also a means of personal expression, artistic experimentation and freedom.

The exhibition presents work by make-up artists and artists who delve deeper into themes such as representation of women, physical and digital facial filters, distorted body images and the ritual of make-up.

Cindy Sherman Anti-fashion, FOMU, 28.09.24 – 02.02.25

Antwerp’s photography museum FOMU joins Ensor 2024 by translating the issues from James Ensor’s oeuvre into a contemporary artistic context. 

The American artist Cindy Sherman (1954), like Ensor, is known for her critical and ironic commentary on social conventions through masquerades. In her work she asks critical questions about gender, stereotypes and age. Sherman’s broad spectrum of characters shows the artificial and fluid nature of identity, which seems more than ever to be a matter of choice, (self-)constructed and fluid.

‘Ensor’s wildest dreams. Beyond impressionism’, KMSKA, 28.09.24 – 19.01.25

James Ensor knows how to connect the palette of the Impressionists with wild symbolist visions, expressionism and the world of satire and swans. With this major overview exhibition, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Antwerp or Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (KMSKA) shows how a Belgian avant-gardist finds his own experimental path through impressionism. In an illuminating contextual framework, the museum tests Ensor’s work against that of important sources of inspiration such as Raphaelli and Monet, and that of well-known and surprising

‘Six centuries of Vleeshuis: a musical journey’, Museum Vleeshuis, from 28.02.2024

The impressive history of the Vleeshuis dates back to 1504. And music has been playing there all these centuries. In the streets around the Vleeshuis, choirs sang the installation of Rubens’ ‘Raising of the Cross‘, opera was heard for the first time in Antwerp, and the city trumpeters celebrated the arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte, who wasn’t emperor yet. 

Dance organs sounded from the cafes and the carillon echoed over the roofs. 

Since 1967, Flemish and international talent has been queuing up to play the historic keyboards from the museum collection. The focus exhibition ‘Six centuries of Butcher’s House: a musical journey‘ is about the rich (musical) history of the building and the plans for the future. In the run-up to the restoration, the Wednesday Sounds concert series and a new ‘behind the scenes’ tour also pay tribute to six centuries of music in and around the Vleeshuis.

Dirk Braeckman – Echtzeit, FOMU, 29.03.24 – 02.02.25

Dirk Braeckman (Belgium, 1958) has been exploring the medium of photography with his subtle, dark images for more than forty years. For this exhibition he enters into dialogue with the FOMU collection. Braeckman selected work from the museum collection and is inspired by this to create new work.

Braeckman is interested in photos with imperfections, empty interiors, banal objects, suggestive places or objects that leave much to the imagination. He chooses functional photos from the FOMU collection, which were taken without artistic ambition but in which he does see visual qualities. These are atypical images and subjects in which he recognizes himself and which are close to his own work.

Braeckman appropriates these collection items to create new work: you experience them through his camera, eyes and hands. Intentionally changing existing objects to create new works of art is called appropriation art. Braeckman plays with concepts such as originality and authorship and challenges you to look with a new perspective

‘RE/SISTERS – A Lens on Gender and Ecology’, FOMU, 29.03.24 – 18.08.24

FOMU presents ‘RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology‘. This major group exhibition explores the relationship between gender and ecology, focusing on the systemic links between the oppression of women and the degradation of the planet.

Reflecting on a range of themes, from companies extracting raw materials to the politics of care, ‘RE/SISTERS’ examines environmental and gender justice as indivisible elements of a global struggle. The exhibition aims to highlight how existing power structures threaten our increasingly fragile ecosystem.

This exhibition will conveniently end after the end of Antwerp Pride 2024.

‘A wanted refugee. Einstein and the Red Star Line’, Red Star Line Museum, 18.04.24 – 01.09.2024

From April 18, the free exhibition ‘A wanted refugee. Einstein and the Red Star Line‘ (working title). This presentation focuses on the most famous person who ever traveled with the shipping company: Albert Einstein.

As a world-famous scientist, Einstein traveled first class on the Red Star Line ships several times. The most dramatic journey was perhaps the one on the steamship Belgenland in 1933, from New York back to Antwerp. 

He was still living in Germany, where the Nazis had come to power. He decided on the boat not to travel further to Germany when he heard that the security forces had invaded one of his residences. After a stay of several months in Belgium and then in the United Kingdom, he left for America on another ship of the Red Star Line, the Westernland.

This presentation shows the important interrelationship of Albert Einstein with Antwerp, Belgium and the Red Star Line. On which ships of the Red Star Line did he travel and what did his cabin look like? In which Antwerp hotels did he stay and how did he appear in the Antwerp press? The exhibition also discusses his stay in the Cantecroy Castle in Mortsel and his attitude towards the United States of America.

‘Willy Vandeperre – Prints, films, a rave and more’, MoMu – Fashion Museum Antwerp, from 27.04.2024

MoMu explores the oeuvre of Belgian photographer Willy Vanderperre. His editorial work appears in magazines such as AnOther Magazine, Dust, i-D, Perfect, Vogue and W Magazine. He also photographed campaigns for fashion houses such as Dior and Prada.

The exhibition highlights how Vanderperre’s fascination with youth has driven him for almost three decades. In dialogue with his photos, he selected several works of art that inspire him in the continuous development of his universe. In addition to the evolution in visual language, the overview of his photographic work also considers his many years of collaboration with Olivier Rizzo and Raf Simons

‘To Antarctica. ​The polar pioneers of the Belgica’, MAS, 21.06.24 – 25.11.24 ​

​Next summer, the MAS will tell the incredible story of the Belgica. The three-master left Antwerp 125 years ago on an expedition to the South Pole. Captain Adrien de Gerlache and his crew did not yet know that they would be the first to winter in the Arctic ice for a year and thus go down in history as pioneers.

The MAS displays unique heritage pieces from the collection, such as the ship’s steering wheel and crow’s nest, sleds and clothing, the ice saws used to free the ship from the ice and the beautiful barrel organ on which the crew plays the ‘Brabanconne’ for hours during the dark days. in the cabin. Together with the many beautiful photos and the crew’s diaries, the exhibition brings the adventurous journey back to life 125 years later in the city from which the crossing departed. ​

At the same time, visitors to this exhibition also reflect on the beautiful area of Antarctica, where global warming is very noticeable today. By zooming in on scientific research, climate warming, territorial and economic claims and international collaborations, the MAS looks back on the legacy of the polar expeditions.

​Prestigious Nottebohm Hall opens during the summer, Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library, ummer 2024

The Nottebohm Hall is the hidden gem of the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library. As soon as they enter the hall, visitors smell the scent of the 120,000 old books and hear the city sounds fade away. 

Strolling over the creaking parquet, they discover Blaeu‘s iconic globes and all the other masterpieces that are kept there. During the summer, the curious can discover the Nottebohm Hall on their own.

The historic library space of the Antwerp Heritage Library Hendrik Conscience will open its doors this autumn for a new series of Nottebohm lectures and for individual visitors.

‘Sailor waiting for a ship. About labor migration of Greek sailors after WWII’ Red Star Line museum, from the beginning of October 2024 to February 2025

In the exhibition ‘Seaman waiting for a ship‘ (working title), the Red Star Line museum discusses labor migration and the changes this entails. The majority of Red Star Line passengers followed the American dream for labor reasons. 

Throughout history until today, work has been the main reason for leaving the homeland. The Red Star Line museum shows the relationship between labor and migration in a series of exhibitions, lectures and events.

The first section highlights the labor migration of Greek sailors to Antwerp after World War II. From the 1960s onwards, a real Greek district emerged where cafes, restaurants and dance venues with Greek musical entertainment sprang up like mushrooms. 

This microcosm experienced its golden years in the 1960s and early 1970s. Guest curators Poli Roumeliotis and Kris Kaerts bring that period back to life with a mix of poetry, music, film, stories and images.

Discover the collection of Fritz Mayer van den Bergh, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, second half 2024

The temporary exhibition ‘Conversations‘ runs in the museum until 3 March 2024. 

The 13 masterpieces that the museum temporarily loaned to the MAS for the exhibition ‘Rare & Indispensable‘ will then return to the museum and the collection can be admired in its full glory for a few more months. 

The museum will close at the beginning of 2025 for renovation and restoration work: the Hof van Arenberg (the former district hall) will be added to the current museum. 

The last months of 2024 are therefore a unique opportunity to admire the fantastically diverse collection of the 19th century art collector Fritz Mayer van den Bergh – the discoverer of Pieter Bruegel the Elder‘s ‘Dulle Griet‘ aka ‘Mad Meg‘ – in its current setting.

Art and museums in Antwerp

• A visit of the Flemish Tram and Bus Museum – Vlaams Tram- en Autobusmuseum (VlaTAM) in Antwerp.
• MUSEUM AAN DE STROOM | ‘City at war, Antwerp 1940-1945’.
• ANTWERP | Discovering queer(ed) art with the Queer Tour at the KMSKA fine arts museum.
• ‘Turning Heads: Bruegel, Rubens and Rembrandt’ exhibition at KMSKA Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp until 24 January 2024.
• 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.
• Inside the KMSKA or Royal Museum of Fine Arts 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.
• ModeMuseum MoMu – Fashion Museum Antwerp 2021.
• ModeMuseum MoMu – Fashion Museum Antwerp 2022.
• ‘Freight’ and ‘Listen’ exhibitions at MAS in Antwerp.
• 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 | Museum Vleeshuis up for restoration.
• 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.