Flemish government's plan to dissolve M HKA sparks outrage

The announcement last week by the Government of Flanders that it planned to “reform the landscape of its own museums and the visual arts sector” and strip Antwerp’s Museum of Modern Art (M HKA), Belgium’s oldest contemporary art museum, of its assets has generated criticism both locally and abroad. The scheme, which the government had not previously telegraphed, calls for the cancellation of a planned €130 million ($150 million) high-rise building that was to have housed M HKA and for the relocation of its roughly 8,000-piece collection to S.M.A.K in Ghent. That museum would then become the Flemish Museum of Contemporary and Current Art. The move would abolish M HKA’s status as a national museum and render it a kunsthalle, or noncollecting institution, by 2028. The museum is just one of two in Belgium, a federalized country, that has been declared a Cultural Heritage Institution by the government.