Artists decry dismantling of Belgium’s oldest contemporary art museum

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 museum 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.