Co-curators of Laboratorium (Antwerp, 1999) react with shock to Bruno Verbergt (Mu.ZEE) supporting M HKA’s dismantling

27 October 2025 – Open letter

We publish an open letter from Hans Ulrich Obrist (Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries, London) and Barbara Vanderlinden to Bruno Verbergt (Director of Mu.ZEE, Permekemuseum, and Pierremuzee), with a copy to Minister Caroline Gennez.

Brussels–London, 27 October 2025

To:
Mr. Bruno Verbergt
General Director
Mu.ZEE, Permekemuseum, and Peiremuzee
Amsterdamstraat 41
8400 Oostende

Subject: Open Letter on the Future of the M HKA

Dear Bruno,

As co-curators of Laboratorium (Antwerp, 1999), a collaboration between Roomade and Antwerpen Open, we remember with great respect your leadership at that time and your steadfast commitment to the artistic and intellectual life of the city. Under your direction, Laboratorium embodied the spirit of curiosity, dialogue, and institutional imagination that characterised Antwerp’s cultural landscape at the turn of the century.

It is therefore with deep surprise and genuine shock that we read your recent statements in support of the proposed ‘synergy exercise’ that would dissolve the museum function of the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen (M HKA) as part of the reform of the Flemish museum landscape.

In the press release issued by Minister Caroline Gennez on 6 October 2025, it was stated that ‘the collection and museal activities of the M HKA will largely be transferred to the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.) in Ghent, which will become the new Flemish museum for contemporary and current art.’ You were quoted as saying:

‘This is finally the next level in the Flemish museum landscape where we have long been waiting for. This reform contains everything necessary to become the network organisation that manages the most important art collections in public ownership. It is the essential condition for a strong policy and sustainable funding of what has distinguished Flanders for centuries: the art made here, feeding our individual and collective imagination.’

We are compelled to respond that such a view is profoundly misguided. A museum of contemporary art and its collection cannot simply be merged into another institution—certainly not one located in a different city with a distinct cultural history and context. The idea that Antwerp’s Museum of Contemporary Art could be absorbed into the S.M.A.K. in Ghent is not only impractical but conceptually and ethically untenable.

The S.M.A.K., by its own record, is not equipped to accommodate another museum’s collection, archives, and institutional legacy. The logic of this merger is therefore incomprehensible—professionally, historically, and politically. No one from the field—neither museum directors, curators, nor artists—was consulted in this process. The policy that has now been announced seems to have been conceived behind closed doors, far removed from the public and professional responsibilities that a reform of this magnitude requires.

As Ann Demeester, Director of the Kunsthaus Zürich, rightly stated in De Standaard (15 October 2025):

‘The brutal manner in which the M HKA is being dismantled should be a cause for great concern.’

The CIMAM (International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art) reminds us that ‘a museum of modern and contemporary art is a permanent, non-profit institution in the service of society and its development, committed to the collection, preservation, research, and interpretation of the art of our time.’ To dissolve such an institution through bureaucratic decree is a violation of that very principle.

On a more personal note, our shared history with Antwerp and its institutions continues to shape our sense of responsibility toward the city’s artistic legacy. From the outset, we regarded the M HKA as the natural home for the Laboratorium archive—a place where this crucial moment in Antwerp’s intellectual and artistic life could eventually find its public and institutional context. Even though the museum was not ready to assume this responsibility at the time, we ensured the archive’s conservation at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, where the necessary infrastructure exists to preserve its extensive digital and video materials. From the outset, we ensured that the M HKA could receive a full and equal digital copy of this archive, in the conviction that the museum would one day be ready to host the history that rightfully belongs to it.

The experimental history of contemporary art in Antwerp—from Gordon Matta-Clark’s Office Baroque project, which laid the groundwork for what would become the M HKA, to Panamarenko’s House, to Laboratorium, and to the radical House A 37 89 90 (1969)—demonstrates precisely why a museum of contemporary art is indispensable and inseparable from its local context. Each of these projects was itself a profound reflection on the need for a museum in Antwerp, interrogating the role of institutional frameworks while expanding the possibilities of artistic practice. Their daring, exploratory, and unconventional approaches do not make them ‘less a museum’; on the contrary, theyexemplify the very qualities that demand a dedicated museum framework, not a Kunsthalle or ad hoc institution.

To suggest, as the policy of Minister Gennez implies, that a museum with such an experimental history should therefore become a Kunsthalle is a profound misunderstanding. It risks erasing the essential nature of a contemporary art museum: a place of both audacious interventions in the present and careful preservation of its history. Just as Jan Hoet’s Chambres d’Amis is inseparable from the city of Ghent and the history of its museum, the M HKA remains a unique site for contemporary art and for the city’s collective memory. Its history cannot be transferred, absorbed, or diluted without undermining the very conditions that made it vital, productive, and culturally singular.

We therefore write to you not only as colleagues but as participants in a shared vision of what a museum of contemporary art can and should be: a civic space of memory, imagination, and renewal. Contemporary art history is local history. Every museum of contemporary art is born from, and remains accountable to, the context that sustains it. To abolish that link is to break the continuity between art and its civic imagination. The proposed bureaucratic fusion is therefore not a ‘synergy’ but a rupture—one that risks erasing the very conditions that made Antwerp’s cultural life exemplary. We urge you, with the respect rooted in our shared history, to reconsider your public support for this reform and to stand in defence of the museum as a space of reflection, continuity, and civic responsibility.

With our sincere regards,

Hans Ulrich Obrist
Barbara Vanderlinden
Co-curators of Laboratorium (Antwerp, 1999)