Statement from Anders Kreuger, director of Kunsthalle Kohta, author, senior curator M_HKA from 2011-2019
11 November 2025 - 8:05 pm – Statement of SupportTo remain a museum, M HKA needs to become better and stay better at all the five functions listed in ICOM’s new museum definition: research, collection, conservation, interpretation, exhibitions.
Let’s assume that the Government does the reasonable thing and lets M HKA remain a museum.
Then it needs to restart, to breathe new life into its old self. It will, most probably, stay in its old building, but it needs to reform (decide what to do and how) and regroup (decide who does what, who stays, who leaves, who joins).
To remain a museum, M HKA needs to become better and stay better at all the five functions listed in ICOM’s new museum definition: research, collection, conservation, interpretation, exhibitions.
To achieve this, it needs proper decision-making structures and proper resources (financial, intellectual, political). And it needs to use them properly.
M HKA can move forward by learning from, and refining, what’s already there in its programme and its collection: the local, the global, the experimental. That’s the tradition it has inherited from the ICC, the International Cultural Centre in Antwerp.
Self-evident? Probably. But it should be said. Easier said than done? Certainly. But it should be done.
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