Opting for Art. Three contemporary visual art exhibitions during Antwerp 93.

The archive presentation at M HKA is dedicated to three exhibitions of contemporary art that made up the main Visual Arts programme of the project Antwerp 93, European Capital of Culture. Under the direction of Bart Cassiman (°1961), exhibitions were organised at the Middelheim (New Sculptures), the Royal Museum of Fine Arts (The Sublime Void. On the Memory of the Imagination) and the MUHKA (On Taking a Normal Situation and Retranslating it into Overlapping and Multiple Readings of Conditions Past and Present). Three decades later, Kiezen voor kunst – Opting for Art looks back at the role, place and significance of these three exhibitions within the Antwerp 93 project with documents from both public and private archives.
Kiezen voor kunst – Opting for Art is curated in collaboration with M HKA by Eléa De Winter, Wouter Davidts and the KB45 research group (Art in Belgium since 1945, Ghent University), with an exhibition design by Kris Coremans (ssa/xx) and graphic design by Pauline Scharmann. The exhibition will be on view from 6 October 2023 to 5 May 2024.
In parallel with the exhibition, the KB45 research group organised the study day Dossier Antwerp 93 at the end of October 2023, in collaboration with the Centre for Urban History of the University of Antwerp (Prof. Ilja Van Damme) and with the support of UGent (Faculty of Arts and Philosophy), M HKA, De Cinema and stadsarchief/FelixArchief.
The multidisciplinary research group KB45 (Art in Belgium since 1945, Ghent University), led by Prof. Wouter Davidts, aims to outline the current position of living art in Belgium and frame it within the broader artistic culture in Belgium in the post-war period, both from a local and international perspective.

The exhibition Kiezen voor kunst – Opting for Art was realised with a team of Master students from the Engineering-Architecture and Art Sciences programmes at Ghent University (Rik Claeys, Dennis Cool, Viktor De Deyn, Senne De Ridder, Lina Michels, Cas Neels, Luca-Ray Rogiers and Liza Van Ongeval).

Image: Maria Eichhorn, French Window, 1993, photo: M HKA, Kristien Daem. Realised for the exhibition On Taking a Normal Situation and Retranslating it into Overlapping and Multiple Readings of Conditions Past and Present on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, September-November 1993.

Click here to browse the digital scan of the exhibition.