Statement in support of M HKA

L’Internationale is appalled by the Flemish government's recent announcement regarding M HKA, a founding member of our confederation. Following the decision to cancel the museum’s new building, on Monday the culture minister further outlined the intention to enact a radical restructuring of the Flemish museum landscape, dissolving M HKA’s status as a national museum and handing its collection and function to S.M.A.K in Ghent, then converting M HKA into a cultural centre to begin hosting exhibitions, residencies and programmes by 2028 – with no consultation with M HKA’s leadership or its stakeholders.

We call on the Flemish government to reverse their decision.

We stand with our fellow cultural workers at M HKA. This wholly unexpected announcement has thrown the job security of the institution’s 80 staff into doubt – colleagues who, until last Friday were working towards the 2031 opening of a new museum building commissioned by the Flemish government. We ask that same Flemish government to clarify how their new plans are commensurate with maintaining the museum’s current work force.

The proposed plans, if enacted, would have far-reaching consequences for the museum staff, artists, communities and publics of Antwerp, Flanders, Belgium and beyond. They also overlook M HKA’s significance as a situated heritage institution, one whose internationally renowned collection and archives represents, connects and situates the city’s rich artistic lineage within multiple historical, cultural and geopolitical contexts – work that has been central to M HKA’s institutional project since its founding in 1987.

To relinquish M HKA’s museum status and archives would irrevocably dismantle this project, permanently rupturing the relationship of the city and the region to their cultural past. The move to centralise collections and heritage by creating a singular repository is diametrically opposed to L’Internationale’s insistence on fostering plural histories and viewpoints through collections and archives. We fundamentally disagree with the proposition of a single, unified national collection. To uproot the M HKA holdings reveals a lack of understanding of museum collections, their role within communities and how they forge relations across time and place. At the same time, the move pits institutions against one another, creating division and mistrust within the cultural sphere.

We further object to the lack of transparency and detail so far. How, and on what basis was such a radical redrawing of the Flemish cultural map based – in consultation with whom – and when will this be made known? This plan and the manner of its announcement demonstrate neither openness and accountability, nor the commitment to good governance recently emphasised as central to Flemish cultural policy. On a practical level, the plan offers no detail on how the new centralised collection will be mandated, managed or funded, the complex legal and practical questions that arise from transferring ownership of works with joint or multiple owners (some of which are museums within our confederation), or issues of site specificity and local knowledge particular to a number of works in M HKA’s collection.

In short, this announcement is a destructive symbolic act that reverberates far beyond a single institution – the political impetus for which has failed to account for its cultural and practical ramifications. At a time when we are called to address widespread social and ecological breakdown, this decision signals that museums are no longer to be safeguarded as spaces of shared knowledge and public value, but rather are expendable assets in the service of political agendas.

Defending our institutions means defending the principles through which they operate, underpinned by respect for difference and a lasting commitment to their communities. We again urge the Flemish government to reverse this decision.

Sign the petition here.

The Board of L’Internationale Confederation comprising representatives of the following institutions:

HDK-Valand (Gothenburg, Sweden),
Institute of Radical Imagination (Naples, Italy)
L’Internationale Association (Belgium)
MACBA (Barcelona, Spain)
M HKA (Antwerp, Belgium)
MSN (Warsaw, Poland)
MSU (Zagreb, Croatia)
Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid, Spain)
NCAD (Dublin, Ireland)
Salt (Istanbul, Türkiye)
tranzit.ro (Bucharest, Cluj and Iaşi, Romania)
Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, the Netherlands)
VCRC (Kyiv, Ukraine)
ZRC SAZU (Ljubljana, Slovenia)
IMMA (Dublin, Ireland)
MG+MSUM (Ljubljana, Slovenia)
WIELS (Forest, Belgium)