Across five locations in Antwerp, the ModeMuseum shows how the delicate, weblike fabric became a staple of art, craft, fashion, and commerce.
Belgium
Posted inFilm
When Stranger Fictions Reveal More Prescient Truths
In eschewing claims to an unmediated reality, Synonyms reveals truths about French society often masked by reality itself, while Young Ahmed obscures crucial systemic injustices in Belgium under the guise of realism.
Posted inArt
A Visit to Belgium’s Wondrous Art Nouveau Museum
Victor Horta, like many architects at the turn of the century, wanted to eliminate the distinction between major and minor arts by creating immersive environments.
Posted inIn Brief
Patrons Wore Blackface and Colonial-Era Costumes to Party at AfricaMuseum
Images emerging on social media showed partygoers dressed in pith helmets and blackface at the museum. The colonial-era museum apologized for the event, admitting a “lapse in judgment.”
Posted inIn Brief
As Belgium Reopens Africa Museum, DR Congo Demands Restitution of Artifacts
Belgium’s occupation of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the most brutal chapters of colonial history. Now, the African country is asking for its artifacts and artworks back from Europe.
Posted inArt
The Belgian Town Where the Mentally Ill Are Part of the Community
The treatment of mental illness has often involved removing patients from society and placing them in their own institutions.
Posted inArt
Explore a Surreal Performance Parody of Google Street View
Over the course of six weeks and with a cast of hundreds, a Belgian theater company seized control of over six miles of streets in the city of Mons to stage surreal spectacles including flying kayakers, crowds of angels, and a taxidermy deer transforming into a donkey.
Posted inNews
World Press Photo Strips First Prize Winner for “Misleading Information”
Last Wednesday, World Press Photo (WPP) officially stripped photojournalist Giovanni Troilo of the First Prize in Contemporary Issues awarded to him in February for the 10-photo series The Dark Heart of Europe.
Posted inIn Brief
Timber! Towering Wooden Sculpture Breaks in “European Cultural Capital”
Mons, a city in Belgium that’s been designated the “European Capital of Culture” for 2015, saw its year in the spotlight get off to a rocky start after one of its marquee commissions collapsed.
Posted inArt
Letter from Antwerp II: Rubens, More Diamonds, and Dogs
ANTWERP — The Jewish Diaspora and the diamond trade are not synonymous. Their stories don’t merely intertwine either. Together they have given rise to two cultural and literary archetypes, the Wandering Jew and the Court Jew.
Posted inArt
Letter from Antwerp I: Trains and Diamonds
ANTWERP — The Rubenshuis is not a long walk from the Station Antwerpen-Centraal (the Gare Anvers Centrale, if you like). Antwerp’s central train station rises above a wide promenade that can get you there. This marvelously sculpted stone terminal is defined by its gilded domes and clock that keeps accurate time.
Posted inArt
Art for the Goth in You
Anyone who attended high school in the Western world during the last few decades knows what Goth culture is. The one-room contemporary Flemish show in Andrea Rosen’s Gallery2 space, Flemish Masters, That’s Life, instantly transported me back to high school and my run-ins with the weirdly morose tribe of Siouxsie and the Banshees fans, who loved all things black, medieval and Renaissance — I wasn’t yet sophisticated enough to realize that they weren’t the same thing.