Kmsk Museum

[Maribeth Seagers]

TheRoyal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (Dutch: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen; KMSKA) is a museum in Antwerp, Belgium, founded in 1810, that houses a collection of paintings, sculptures and drawings from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries. This collection is representative of the artistic production and the taste of art enthusiasts in Antwerp, Belgium and the Northern and Southern Netherlands since the 15th century.

The museum's collection began with the artworks owned by the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke, which was active from the late 14th century to 1773. When the guild disbanded, its gallery of paintings went to the Academy of Fine Arts, which had been founded in 1663 with the involvement of David Teniers. The gallery had works by Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, and Cornelis de Vos. During French occupations in 1794 and 1796, art was looted from churches and other buildings in Antwerp; the pieces that were later recovered became part of the museum's collection. By 1817 the museum listed 127 items in its catalogue, mostly dating to the mid-16th and 17th centuries, with Rubens at the heart of the collection.[1]

A significant bequest from a former mayor of Antwerp, Florent van Ertborn, added 141 works to the collection in 1840.[2] Van Ertborn had collected Early Netherlandish art at a time when it was out of favour, but in the long run this addition ensured the museum's reputation. These works included Jan van Eyck's Saint Barbara and Madonna at the Fountain and Rogier van der Weyden's Portrait of Philip de Croy (half of a diptych) and the Seven Sacraments Altarpiece. Also in the bequest were paintings by Hans Memling, Dieric Bouts, Joachim Patinir, Quinten Massys, Jean Fouquet, Simone Martini, Antonello da Messina, and Lucas Cranach.

Radio Bart is an informal conversation between visitors and Radio Bart hosts, who are all blind, about art. A mobile studio moves around the museum and is placed in front of certain paintings. Anyone can go and join one of the Radio Bart hosts in the booth for a chat about what they see in the artwork.

In this chat we talk about how Radio Bart started, and how it works. We talk about how people can take part and the effects it has on people. We also explore how the museum trains the mediators and equip them with the skills they need.

So let me introduce my guests this week. Ann and Bart are both members of the audience engagement team at the K M S K A in Antwerp. Anne is responsible for families and young people in the museum and is the project leader for radio bart.

We talked about the colours, the shapes, and the lines. He asked me to describe how it made me feel and to choose where I would step inside the painting. We ended up having a great conversation and talked about my blind grandmother too.

We talk about how people can take part and the effects it has on people. We also explore how the museum trains the mediators and equips them with the skills they need. If you get the chance to experience Radio Bart, do. I hope you enjoy our chat.

I absolutely loved it. I came with my daughter. We had a wonderful time in the museum, but perhaps you could tell our listeners a little bit about the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, otherwise known as the K M S K A.

An van Hertum: Yes. So the museum reopened its doors in 2022 after 11 years of closure. So the building has undergone a comprehensive restoration, as well as an expansion within the museum walls. We manage a collection of visual art from the southern Netherlands, from the 14th to the 20th centuries supplemented also by international masterpiece.

Claire Bown: So you have a variety of different educational programs at the museum. Perhaps you could talk a little bit about your, your mission for the education, the learning team, and your ideas around audience engagement.

But then we have also two more innovative analog experiences. We have the 10, which is an adventurous journey through the museum for families. Visual artist Christophe Coppens created 10 intriguing installations, inspired by strange or alienating details from paintings. And in collaboration with the opera house La Monnaie / De Munt in Brussels, he created high quality interactive objects that invite a visitor to look at art differently.

An van Hertum: Yes. Bart already told us how it got started. So we got this question from our director, Carmen. She saw already the talents that Bart had, and she gave us this opportunity to put all of this together in a way to reach our strategic goals, to give every visitor a warm welcome and to look differently and see more.

So it was a very, and it still is a very experimental project, and we are searching and trying out, and also sometimes failing, but also succeeding. Luckily. Right now we, we even have three more hosts. So Bart is not alone anymore. We have three more people that take over this role as a host, as a mediator.

Claire Bown: So a huge thank you to Bart and Anne for being on the podcast today and for talking about Radio. Bart, I hope you enjoyed our chat. Go to the show notes to find out more about this really unique experience. And before you go, if you are interested in finding out more about what thinking routines are, do go and download my ultimate thinking routine list with over 100 thinking routines on it.

Thank you for listening to the Art Engager podcast with me, Claire Bown. You can find more art engagement resources by visiting my website, thinking museum.com, and you can also find me on Instagram @thinkingmuseum, where I regularly share tips and tools on how to bring art to life. And engage your audience.

In February 2003, the Open Call for the choice of architects for the master plan and renovation of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp was published, in June 2004, the commission was awarded to the architects, and after almost 20 years, the renovation is complete and the building and collection are once again accessible to the public. For such an extensive project, the first Flemish Master Builder considered a master plan to be in order, partly because the budget for an entire renovation was initially largely lacking. The concept for an infill of the museum, submitted at the time by the Dutch design team Claus and Kaan, was realised through those more than 12 years of renovation and restoration works almost without deviations.

The intention was to fill the six patios, which characterised the 19th-century museum building, with new museum space that would complement the old museum with a new museum as a separate track. The works were lengthy, but then today everything including the exterior facades and the surrounding garden has been done to perfection. The master plan envisaged that the new roof and museum would be out of sight for those strolling the streets around the museum. This is an unusual attitude at a time when new additions to old architecture often demand contrasting attention.

The old museum building was conceived entirely on the preservation of art treasures, after the previous museum on the current academy site narrowly escaped a fire on the Stadswaag. A free-standing museum with a raised ground floor would withstand overflowing fire and flooding. The large paintings by the old master in the Rubens rooms could be quickly salvaged in case of calamities via hatches to the vaulted brick basement. The latter proved its usefulness. During the construction works, these works of art were preserved on site. The massive museum walls also still provide a good basis for climate control due to their thermal inertia. However, the 19th-century roof was inadequate by today's standards of energy efficiency and climate control. By renewing the roof and realising the infill within the patios, the museum building was updated very compactly and thermally. . This was possible without much impact because rooms had already been inserted on that raised ground floor during a previous renovation, and there were no windows on the floor in the original museum concept, such as these providing lateral light on the ground floor.

The old museum's trail had also been cut because the wing on the front faade had been put into use as a depot space. These halls and the track were restored. In some places, the old halls were reduced for the width of a corridor, allowing the newly inserted museum halls to also form a circuit. The old museum and the new are thus intertwined, but remain two worlds to be walked through separately. The restoration of the old rooms in their dark colours, warm parquet floors and velvet seats makes them indeed a different world from the entirely white rooms of the new section, or the intimate blue rooms in the mezzanine. For the presentation of the works of art, here and there they deviated from the modern arrangement in 'cimaise' or nicely side by side by also hanging the works in height with the nod to the full hung walls of an 'art room'. As a result, after that long wait, the art lover now gets to see delightfully many works of art.

What a mega cool KMSK family event! With big sparkling eyes, 82 young and old guests arrived at the Flieger Museum Dbendorf.After a lavish brunch, during which the 19 families had a lively chat, the party kicked off in front of the hangar to the rockabilly sound of The B-Shakers.During the subsequent tour of the museum, the museum guides told exciting stories about the various nostalgic aircraft.This exciting day was made possible thanks to the sponsors Angst+Pfister Sensors and Power and MEAN WELL .

You can contribute to the MSK in many ways. Financially, with your time and expertise, with your own works of art.... We've made a handy overview of the various ways to support the museum. And, of course, you will always get something in return.

The marked contrast between the two parts of the museum emphasizes the art-historical shift of modernism almost to a breaking point. The new galleries begin with this turn, placed precisely in 1880 and vanguarded by another local favorite, James Ensor, whose famous carnival paintings function as rich illustrations of modern alienation by allowing us to trace the mask-like faces of German expressionism, Picasso, and even the postwar CoBrA group back to his depictions of actual masks. Of course, Ensor may just as easily be read into the past as heir to the Rabelaisian pictures of the Northern Renaissance, thus tugging at the authority of this architectural manifestation of before-and-after. And so what starts as a pedagogical simplification becomes a challenge to the viewer to subvert it, a challenge aided by the occasional, exciting breaks with chronology in the collection display itself.

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