Belgium plans to revoke museum status of Antwerp’s M HKA, transferring its 8,000-work collection to Ghent’s Smak.
Artists Luc Tuymans and Anish Kapoor lead backlash, calling the move unlawful and a threat to cultural independence.
Flemish parliament set to debate the future of M HKA amid resignations, legal scrutiny, and global art world concern.

 

Belgium is on the brink of dismantling its oldest contemporary art museum, as a controversial proposal to strip Antwerp’s Museum of Contemporary Art (M HKA) of its collection and museum status heads to the Flemish parliament. The plan’s announcement has triggered resignations, legal challenges, and a public backlash from some of the art world’s most influential figures such as Luc Tuymans and Anish Kapoor.

At the center of the dispute is a plan by Flemish culture minister Caroline Gennez to cancel a long-promised $93 million new building for M HKA and transfer its permanent collection to the Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art (Smak) in Ghent. The proposal, framed by the government as a structural reform of Flanders’s museum landscape amid budget pressures, has been condemned by artists, museum leaders, and legal experts as unlawful, opaque, and culturally damaging. With a parliamentary hearing expected later this month, the debate has become a flashpoint over public accountability, political interference, and the future role of contemporary art museums in Europe.

The museum boasts around 8,000 artworks by artists working from around 1960 onwards, including works by Dan Flavin, Barbara Kruger, Bruce Nauman, Gordon Matta-Clark, Alfredo Jaar, Kerry James Marshall, Marina Abramović and Ulay, Cady Noland, and Marlene Dumas. The move would strip the M HKA of its official museum status, effectively downgrading M HKA to an arts center.

Several significant cultural leaders have signed open letters in support of preserving M HKA as a museum, including Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of Serpentine Galleries in London, Maria Balshaw, outgoing director of the U.K.’s Tate, Laurent Le Bon, director of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and Taco Dibbets, director of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Protest banners pictured at the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen in Antwerp, on Thursday October 9, 2025. Photo: ZENO DRUYTS / Belga / AFP via Getty Images.

The fall-out from Gennez’s shocking decision, first announced in October, is now coming to a head. Earlier this week, the directors of the M HKA held a press conference, during which they decried Gennez’s draft proposal and presented new legal advice that claims her proposal is “unlawful,” and needs to be “open to consultation.”

Speaking to Flemish parliament on Thursday, Gennez stressed that, although the new M HKA has been canceled, other aspects of the proposal remain open to change. This includes the possibility that the institution could retain its status as a museum. Once the draft proposal is approved, a two-year “transition” period will commence, during which the future of Flanders’s museum landscape will be shaped by discussions within the sector.

A hearing in Flemish parliament will likely take place on January 16 or a subsequent Friday. In Belgium, regional cultural matters are decided by regional, not federal, government.

A Shock Announcement

The possibility of building a new M HKA dates back to 2018, when the plan was first announced along with a budget of €100 million ($116.5 million). Five architectural teams proposed designs for the museum, but the jury never reached a unanimous verdict and the project came to a halt in 2020.

Finally, in 2023, there was renewed hope for the M HKA’s future when the Flemish government announced that it would allocate €130 million ($151.5 million) towards restarting the project. The chosen design, a high-rise to replace Antwerp’s old Court of Appeals, would be double the size of the current M HKA. It was debuted last February with a estimated €80 million ($93.2 million) price tag.

Rendering of the new M HKA by Belgian firm Bovenbouw Architectuur and Swiss architectural firm Christ & Gantenbein, released in February 2025.

Just eight months later, in October, Gennez made the shock announcement that plans for the new M HKA building were to be scrapped. The backlash was swift. Herman De Bode resigned as chairman of the museum’s board just days after the announcement, soon followed by M HKA’s director of 23 years, Bart De Baere, in early November.

Speaking to the public Flemish broadcaster VRT, De Baere said that Gennez’s announcement had been “unexpected.” He added that he was stepping back in order to “create some space” for a debate about the proposal.

The museum’s remaining directors, meanwhile, have teamed up with Museum at Risk, a campaign collective of arts workers and artists who support the museum, including Tuymans, Kapoor, and artist-curator Emilia Kabakov, to seek legal advice. During the press conference on January 6, the M HKA’s acting director Dieter Vankeirsbilck claimed that Gennez’s proposal “should actually be open to consultation” rather than “being presented as definitive policy.”

“The legal position, autonomy, and museum mission of the M HKA, as the first museum for contemporary art in Flanders, are being thoughtlessly undermined,” said the museum’s lawyer Leo Neels.

Gennez’s spokesperson Rebecca Castermans said that only the “principle guidelines” of the reform had been decided. “Within that framework, there are still a lot of possibilities on the table,” she said in a phone call. One key factor in government’s decision will be whether or not M HKA can make certain improvements to its operations, the need for which was identified last year in a report by its advisory committee.

Despite this apparent flexibility, a spokesperson for Museums at Risk said they don’t see “any real change” in Gennez’s attitude. “She means to stick to her plans and if M HKA should stay a museum under these conditions, it is very unclear how it would be financed,” the spokesperson said. “It also does not solve the fact that her plan was initiated without any involvement of the arts field or any real research.”

Both Vankeirsbilck and the Museum at Risk collective are calling for Gennez’s proposal to be postponed. “This will give us time to consult with everyone, the entire sector,” the acting director said. “This way, we can arrive at a sound plan.”

Budget Problems 

At the time of Gennez’s announcement, Belgium’s government was in the middle of months-long, tense negotiations over the country’s 2026 budget, which was finally announced in November.

“In this difficult budgetary context, we must ensure that every cent the government invests in well-received,” the minister said. She further justified the dramatic change of plan by claiming that the museum’s policy and operations are “currently insufficiently sound.” She cited too “growing uncertainty surrounding construction costs.”

Some have raised doubts that Gennez’s new proposal would be effective in cutting costs. On October 9, the Flemish financial inspectorate issued an advisory opinion noting that, while the loss of a permanent collection would reduce the M HKA’s operation costs from around €8 million to €5 million, the arts center would take on the expense of borrowing works for future exhibitions.

Furthermore, the Smak in Ghent would likely need to expand its storage capacity in order to accommodate the M HKA’s 8,000 work-strong collection. The inspectorate did not believe that the cost of halting plans for the new M HKA had been adequately laid out by Gennez.

“The Flemish government is being asked to make a decision without properly assessing its consequences,” it concluded, according to De Morgen.

Flemish Minister for Welfare and Culture Caroline Gennez. Photo: DIRK WAEM / Belga/ AFP via Getty Images.

Castermans denied that proposal had ever been intended as a cost-cutting measure. Any freed-up budget will instead be reallocated to other cultural institutions in Antwerp, most notably the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) and the Antwerp Opera. Additionally, some money would be set aside to improve the M HKA’s current building in Zuidpark, south of the city.

The Flemish government’s decision to reform its museum landscape is intended to encourage more collaboration and knowledge exchange, said Castermans. While some institutions would safeguard collections, others, like M HKA, would have a different non-museum function more akin to the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

“Our aim is to make sure that museums can work together, that more artists can show their work, and that more people are able to enjoy art,” said Castermans. “That is the why of this plan and how this plan will take shape.”

The M HKA is one of four contemporary art museums in Flanders, which is also home to Ghent’s Smak, Musea Brugge in Bruges, and Museum M in Leuven.

What’s at Stake?

Impassioned pleas by M HKA’s defenders have indicated the high stakes of Gennez’s proposal.

Artist Tuymans, who was born near Antwerp and is central to the city’s arts scene, has been a particularly vocal defender of the M HKA. “If we do not act now, the independence of all cultural institutions will be at risk,” he said in a statement for Museum at Risk.

He is not the only artist who feels strongly about saving the M HKA. British artist Kapoor informed the Flemish culture ministry that he “cannot accept” that his work might be removed from the M HKA “or otherwise put at risk as part of any institutional reorganization,” according to the Guardian. He has threatened to withdrawn his work from M HKA’s collection.

Employees of M HKA organizing a protest action at the museum in October. Photo: TIJS VANDERSTAPPEN/ Belga/ AFP via Getty Images.

Before his resignation as director, De Baere wrote an open letter defending the museum’s important role in Antwerp’s cultural scene, including nurturing the careers of local stars of the international scene like Laure Provost, the late Guillaume Bijl, and Otobong Nkanga.

He argued that while the transition to an “arts center” may sound “harmless,” the implications are “profound.” “Flanders has chosen not to have a true museum of contemporary art, a project that would finally have begun to make up for decades of underinvestment in the visual arts,” he said.

This sentiment has been echoed by Charles Esche, director of Van Abbemuseum in the nearby Dutch city of Eindhoven, in an op-ed for the Art Newspaper. “What will be lost if M HKA disappears?,” he asked, conceding that the museum’s program “is not one of spectacle nor hype that politicians and the media like to embrace.” Rather, it has been something of a “development laboratory,” providing crucial opportunities by “linking emerging and established forms of art.”

According to Castermans, in its new role as an art center, the M HKA would “still be able to organize exhibitions and decide what it shows. But it will also support new artists with workshops and education.” She said it would become “a dynamic place where the leading artists of the future can take shape.”