Experience

ANTWERP | Volunteers offer a new perspective on the MAS collection

Posted by Timothy on

In the Viewing Depot of Museum At the Stream (Museum Aan de Stroom, MAS) in Antwerp, visitors can enjoy three new presentations that offer a different perspective on the MAS’s collection. Sixteen volunteers delved into the museum’s depots and selected their favorite collection item. 

The unique photo collection of Raoul van den Boom and the stories of the winners of the Wondere Pluim writing competition also receive a place of honor in the Viewing Depot, which can be visited free of charge.

Volunteers choose the MAS

A small sea buoy, a Taoist flower goddess or a beak mask from the Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire): sixteen display cases in the Viewing Depot display items selected by the MAS volunteers. 

The collection is as diverse as the tasks they enthusiastically take on in the museum: welcoming the public warmly, maintaining the cranes and vessels, digitizing the collection or making the MAS a warm place for young people as well.​

Raoul Van Den Boom

Photographer Raoul Van Den Boom (°1937) donated his collection of 45,683 photos to the MAS in 2005. 

They are unique images of artistic and social life in Antwerp from the 1950s to the 1980s. Louis Armstrong in the former Antwerp Ancienne Belgique, the avant-garde galleries Ad Libitum, Wide White Space and VECU club, the artists Jef Verheyen and Panamarenko, and the musicians Ferre Grignard and Wannes Van de Velde: Raoul Van Den Boom captured it all. Just like the city and its port, which changed a lot in the second half of the 20th century.​

The Raoul Van Den Boom collection can now be consulted in its entirety. A small selection of his photos can now be admired free of charge in the Kijkdepot. This digitization project is also the work of one of the volunteers.

De Wondere Pluim

Since 2021, the arts organization De Veerman, together with parents and the MAS, has been organizing an annual writing competition for primary school pupils: De Wondere Pluim.

 Children are allowed to write a story, inspired by an object from the collection. A jury – consisting of parents, children, professional jury members and MAS employees – chooses who wins a prize and thus gets a place in the MAS.

This year, 35 collection items also traveled to primary schools as inspiration for new stories. Students chose (how many?) objects and wrote a story about them. The result is just as diverse as the collection itself: old telephones, a bird’s beak, masks, a wooden camel and a papier-mâché dog can be admired in the Viewing Depot.

A look at the collection

The MAS collection now contains almost 600,000 items. You can admire some of them in the exhibitions, the rest is carefully preserved in various depots. In the free Viewing Depot you can take a look behind the scenes. 

You can see quite a few items in storage and sometimes you can see colleagues at work. Varied and surprising partial presentations provide an ever-changing view of the collection.

Art and museums in Antwerp

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