"Prominent artists have spoken out against an arbitrary reshaping of Belgium's museum landscape, as the Flanders region seeks to cut public spending by dismantling the country's oldest contemporary art gallery and transplanting its entire collection to another city. At a press conference in Antwerp on Tuesday, the directors of the city's Museum of Contemporary Art (M HKA), which was founded in 1985, decried what they called the flagrant illegalities of the museum sector shake-up, which is due to be debated in Belgium's parliament on Friday."
"The Antwerp museum's collection also includes works by international artists such as Kerry James Marshall, Anish Kapoor and Marina Abramovic. British artist Kapoor has protested against plans to move his works to Ghent, telling the culture ministry in an email seen by the Guardian: I cannot accept that they might be removed from M HKA or otherwise put at risk as part of any institutional reorganisation."
Flanders regional authorities cancelled a planned purpose-built 80m museum tower for Antwerp's Museum of Contemporary Art (M HKA) and announced plans to transfer the museum's collection of about 8,000 artworks to Ghent's Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art (SMAK). The transfer would remove M HKA's museum status and consolidate contemporary holdings in Ghent. M HKA directors and prominent artists including Luc Tuymans and Anish Kapoor condemned the move, citing legal irregularities and the impossibility of transplanting a collection into a different cultural ecosystem. The shift follows austerity measures amid a Belgian budget deficit of about 5.4% of GDP and furthers deep arts-sector cuts.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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