The new KANAL museum in the old Citroën car assembly plant near the Brussels canal will open on 28 November with 10 remarkable exhibitions featuring works by Picasso, Mondrian, Matisse and many others. The museum that is being operated in cooperation with France’s Centre Pompidou in Paris, whose iconic home is currently closed for renovation, will also house a bakery, a 700 square metre playground as well as a printing workshop.
In ten months' time, it will be D-day for Kanal, when the doors of the former Citroën car assembly plant on the Brussels canal will reopen. Nine years after its inception, the museum aims to position itself as the flagship for modern and contemporary art in Brussels. This ambition is reflected in its scale: 40,000 square metres, an unconventional programme and its urban anchorage.
‘Brussels has never lacked artists, but it does lack a contemporary art museum to give them a place,’ explains director Yves Goldstein during the presentation of the opening programme. ‘KANAL is the answer to that.’
It is a statement that sets the museum's sights high – and at the same time sets the bar by which it will have to measure itself.
Open meeting space
The architecture of the building not only forms a backdrop for modern art but also becomes part of the museum project. Inside the structure of the former car assembly plant, there are three towers: the five-storey Kanal museum with an underground gallery, the renovated CIVA, which will now continue as Kanal Architecture, a museum, library and archive on Belgian architecture from the mid-19th to the 21st century and an auditorium.
In addition to the exhibition spaces, Kanal Architecture will also house archives, a quiet library, a study area and a bookshop.
Almost half the area will be 'unprogrammed public space'. An 18-metre street in the shape of a cross cuts through the building and connects the four entrances, in each façade, with each other.
This open space will serve as a meeting place and as an accessible gateway to the artistic programming in and around the halls. It is an ambitious idea, which focuses on presence without any obligation to consume, although the question remains as to how unprogrammed a space like this can remain within an institution of this scale.
The former showroom of the Citroën factory, a 24-metre-high structure of glass and steel, faces the city centre and is intended to serve as the public face of Kanal. Large sections of the façade can be opened to connect the exhibition and event hall inside with the redesigned Sainctelette Square outside. At the top, there is a restaurant and a freely accessible roof terrace with panoramic views over Brussels.
KANAL will also include a bakery, a playground measuring 700-square-metre as well as a printing shop.
10 exhibitions, just as many fields
The programme of events for the opening looks refreshing and with a wide range of works sets the tone for the museum that will encompass various fields of art. Visual arts, film, video and sound installations and performance art intermingle. Belgian and Brussels artists are given a prominent place alongside international names, while themes such as migration, colonial history and the role of the museum itself run like a thread through the programme.
A new collection
Since 2018, the Kanal Foundation has been building its own collection, which will be shown to the public for a first time in Brussels this autumn. It’s a growing collection that already includes historical figures from the Brussels art scene, like Jacqueline Mesmaeker and Walter Swennen, as well as internationally established artists including Francis Alÿs, Sammy Baloji, Ann Veronica Janssens, Otobong Nkanga, and prominent artists from the younger generation like Kasper Bosmans and Luna Mahoux.
The first presentation of the collection, A Truly Immense Journey, brings together some 350 works, mainly from the museum's own collection and that of its Parisian partner, the Centre Pompidou, but also from other Belgian public and private collections. Works by modern masters including Lygia Clark, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondriaan, Pablo Picasso and Alberto Giacometti will be displayed alongside contemporary international and Brussels or Belgian artists like Sammy Baloji, Edith Dekyndt and Luc Tuymans.
In the group exhibition An Infinite Woman, Kanal focuses on the colonial past. The exhibition combines historical research with visual art to analyse how the image of the Mangbetu women became a colonial symbol and how artists of African descent are reversing that image and reappropriating it today.
Belgian-Nigerian Otobong Nkanga, one of today's leading visual artists, has created a participatory installation in the museum's open spaces. With wooden looms in the central courtyard, she invites visitors literally to weave their personal stories into the artwork. In this way, not only are individual narratives made visible, but also the often-invisible labour and economic structures that support art institutions – and societies.
Joshua Serafin's work lies at the intersection of performance and film. Their solo presentation explores the search for roots and the impact of migration, with choreography and queerness at its heart.
Light and sound
Brussels-based visual artist Joëlle Tuerlinckx is given a solo exhibition for which she delves into the underground gallery. In La première fois, she presents two lighting systems inspired by the exhibition space itself, looking back and forward with humour. Themes such as atmosphere, time and space are a recurring thread in her work.
Brussels-based Manon De Boer presents a sound installation in which dialogues echo from vases scattered throughout the space, complemented by films that explore the experience of time and perception.
In Département des Pièges, a nod to surrealist Marcel Broodthaers, Kanal brings together objects from 11 different museums in the Brussels area, from the Design Museum and the AfricaMuseum to La Fonderie, the Brussels Museum of Industry and Labour, and the Museum of Medicine.
In NO SHOW, the museum questions its own role. Deborah Bowmann and Maoupa Mazzocchetti, together with twenty other artists, explore the role of museums in a light, sound and art performance. Can a museum entertain, and how does it survive when spectacle is more important than attention?
In the showroom that is freely accessible, Kanal presents work by Banu Cennetoğlu. Gold-coloured letter balloons form bouquets and spell out articles from the Declaration of Human Rights.
In the architecture exhibition Right to the City – Right to the Future, Kanal Architecture focuses explicitly on Brussels itself. Architects, landscape architects and urban planners engage in dialogue with activist and civic associations. The exhibition aims to be a critical tribute to Brussels as an urban laboratory and to commemorate the loaded concept of “Brusselsisation”.
Reaching 50,000 children
Kanal positions itself as an extension of the city, with space for ‘intercreation’ and participation. It’s an ambition that is reflected in the museum’s extensive public outreach and educational programmes. The museum aims to become a long-term partner for schools in Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia and hopes to reach 50,000 children and young people annually. Educational partnerships are already in place with Brussels institutions including the universities ULB and VUB, teaching and research centre ArBA-EsA and visual arts university La Cambre.
Whether this broad commitment will lead to lasting involvement will become clear after the opening on 28 November.
The original Dutch version of this article was written by journalists at Brussels media outlet BRUZZ.