Antwerp’s MAS museum: making waves

Photograph by Jeroen Verrecht

Nothing quite prepared me for the ‘wow’ factor of the new MAS – Museum aan de Stroom (Musuem on the River) – in Antwerp. I’d seen plenty of photos and thought the stacked-tower design with its contrasting blocks of red sandstone and glass looked great, but the pictures didn’t convey any sense of what it would be like to be inside the 10-storey building.

As you go up the escalator from floor to floor, you feel how every level is twisted 90 degrees to form a giant spiral. Each time you go up a storey, you’re treated to one stunning view after another through the ultra-modern, wavy glass. When you get to the top, there’s a real treat in store: an open-air rooftop with a 360-degree panorama of the surrounding port and the city itself (an experience that can, incidentally, be enjoyed for free without an entrance ticket to the museum). There are even portholes in the glass safety barriers so that you can take the perfect photograph.

The museum has been built in Antwerp’s old harbour area and is supposed to herald a new era of development in this part of the city. I have to admit that before I visited the idea of ‘an area under development’ had made me think I’d be heading to a desolate part of town, probably in the middle of nowhere, where one stunning building would stand all on its own. In fact, the area is just a 10-minute walk from the city’s historic centre and the proximity to the water not only ties in with the maritime theme but also looks and feels good.

But what about the actual exhibits in the museum? All the publicity before the opening in May this year had gone on and on about how the museum would tell the story of Antwerp and its place in the world, but I couldn’t quite grasp what that really meant and what would actually be in the museum. My expectations dropped further when I learned that it would bring together former collections of the Ethnographic Museum, National Shipping Museum and Folklore Museum. I had images of a mish-mash of dull pieces that no longer had homes.

Far from it, it turned out. The sculptures from different religions, the scale models of old sailing ships and the oil paintings of Antwerp have instead all been given a new lease of life in this new environment. The curators have grouped the objects by theme (four themes over five floors) and included audio and video to help bring the exhibits to life and put them in context.  Next to old musical instruments there are buttons to press that make the sound of the bells or the flute you’re looking at; old paintings of Antwerp’s port hang from walls made of wooden crate strips to evoke the port atmosphere; the floor dedicated to the ‘World Port’ theme has the history of the maritime world running on a screen the length of the room; and as you leave the port-themed storey, you are encouraged to write a message and pop it in a bottle.

With a total of 460,000 items on display – and that’s not even taking into account the temporary exhibitions – you’re unlikely to get round the whole museum in one visit, but you can certainly pop your head into each floor and then focus on a couple of the themes in more detail. One downside for non-Dutch speakers is that a lot of the information is only in Dutch, but the introductory boards to each floor are in English as well as the national languages of Belgium. To get a taster, you can take an online tour at http://livetour.mas.be/uk/ . But don’t forget that photos and videos just don’t convey the wow factor. For that, you have to pay a visit in person.

Museums open until 1am - if you can get in

More than 10,000 people spent last Saturday night visiting a Brussels museum as part of “Museum Night Fever”. The sheer popularity, however, meant that my experience was more traipsing around town from one queue to another rather than actual museum visiting.

Still, I did make it into the Cinquantenaire museum (part of the Royal Museums of Art and History) and discovered its Roman mosaic collection from Apamea in Syria. That in itself made the evening worthwhile. The centrepiece of this wing is a beautiful 5th century floor mosaic depicting hunting scenes. Along one side of the room is an impressive reconstruction of part of Apamea’s colonnaded street, which ran almost 2 kilometres on a north-south axis through the city. The museum’s collection also included mosaics dated from the year 392 from Apamea’s synagogue.

If you were looking for dance classes rather than Roman mosaics, then the place to be was the quirky “Continental Superstar” space, which I visited earlier in the year (click here to read the post). The disco lights were spinning and the bar was open. It still didn’t quite work for me though.

In total, 14 museums opened their doors on Saturday between 7pm and 1am. The Museum of Musical Instruments’ party sounded good and was certainly popular but the organisers told us that we probably wouldn’t get to the front of the queue before it finished.

Next tip: the Robert Capa photography exhibition at the Jewish Museum. Unfortunately the museum decided there were too many visitors that evening and so they were closing the doors early. Luckily though it’s just around the corner from the Sablon area and so we rounded off the evening with a nightcap in a local bar. Not quite the museum extravaganza I had anticipated but it had its highlights all the same.

How much is this artwork worth to you?

A week’s stay in the south of France, an exhibition space in Berlin, a kiss, a smile, a therapy session – these were just some of the offers scribbled on post-it notes and stuck on the wall around the artworks on show at the Bozar in Brussels this weekend.

The idea behind Truc Troc, as the event is known (in French “truc” means “thing” and “troc” means “exchange, barter”), is that contemporary artists get the opportunity to exhibit their art and the public is invited to offer something in exchange for the work. It really makes you think about how much you’d give to be the owner of a particular piece.

The paintings, installations and photographs were on display Saturday and Sunday. The artists will now be looking at the bids and deciding which, if any, appeals and is a good deal for them.

There were four works that I would love to have in my apartment and for which I made an offer. I’ll let you know if I hear back!

St. Petersburg's wintry allure

I got back this week from my first trip to St. Petersburg and I certainly hope it won’t be my last one. What a city!

I just loved the facades of the buildings lining the city’s rivers and canals – blues, pinks, browns, greens and beiges. The coloured fronts, along with the white snow covering the ground, brightened up what otherwise could have been rather gloomy, grey January days.

It’s an easy city to explore on foot and so I made the most of that. And when it got too cold, there was always a cafe to hand for a pot of tea (I hadn’t realised what big tea-drinkers Russians are. I thought they generally just went for the harder stuff!) or a bowl of soup, a meat pie or a stuffed pancake. Of course, there was plenty of culture to enjoy too.

The Hermitage was amazing – I spent an entire day there and still barely touched the surface of what was to be seen. The Russian Museum was of a more manageable size and yet because there were so many new artists for me to discover, once again I felt that I didn’t really do it justice. That said, it more than piqued my interest to learn more about Russian art and I’ll be on the lookout for Russian exhibitions closer to home. I particularly liked the work of Natalya Goncharova (1881-1962), who painted both Winter (at the top of this blog post) and Four Envangelists (below).



On the musical front, I went to the Mariinskiy Theatre and saw Tchaikovsky’s Pikovaya Dama (Queen of Spades). I thought it was a brilliant production and the tenor playing the lead role of Herman, Vladimir Galuzin, was particularly impressive. Being in the Mariinskiy was a great experience in itself and then to be seeing a Russian opera set in St. Petersburg just topped it off perfectly.

An afternoon concert in the St. Petersburg Philharmonia was another highlight. The Philharmonia has an amazing history, with a seemingly endless list of famous 19th century musicians who performed here and great Russian composers who premiered their works here. The best-known example perhaps is Shostakovitch’s “Leningrad Symphony,” which was written during the Blockade of the city in World War II, and broadcast from the Philharmonia in August 1942.

Unfortunately there wasn’t any Russian music on while I was there. Instead I was treated to a programme of Mozart and Haydn, with a mesmerising performance of Haydn’s cello concerto in D major by Lithuania’s Vytautas Sondeckis.

I could say so much more about each of the above aspects of my trip and maybe I will in a future blog post. For now though, I think I’ll put on one of the CDs I bought and have another look at my photos!

Fairground Attraction

Belgium is renowned for its quirkiness and “Continental Superstar” is a perfect example. Situated in the Cinquantenaire museum (part of the Royal Museums of Art and History), Continental Superstar is a dance hall filled with fairground organs and other mechanical musical instruments.

The space is filled with bright and gaudily coloured instruments and statues, plenty of kitsch and mechanical music. In the far corner of the room there is a bar, but no staff, or potential customers for that matter, to be seen. I was left unsure as to whether I was in a dance hall, an exhibition room or just a temporary storage space.

According to the museum, around 1900 Antwerp developed alongside Paris as an important production centre for mechanical organs used in dance halls, cafes and at fairs. As the industry declined, replaced by jukeboxes, radios and gramophones, a Brussels man called Joseph Ghysels resolved to save and restore many of the organs.

It is his collection of street and fairground organs, barrel pianos and other instruments, bought in 2007 by Flemish minister for Culture Bert Anciaux, that are on show at the Cinquantenaire museum.

The name Continental Superstar was the title of a 1970s recording of what the museum calls the “world-famous star” of the Ghysels collection, a dance organ made by Theophiel Mortier in 1923. As far as the museum is concerned the title could also apply to Ghysels himself for preserving this quirky piece of Belgian patrimony.

Continental Superstar is on show until March 8, 2009.

Photo: Dansorgel Mortier 1905-1911 (Royal Museums of Art and History)

“London as a modern-day Babylon”

Commenting on a comment piece - and then in turn inviting your comments - is perhaps taking things too far, but Madeleine Bunting’s piece on the Babylon myth in Wednesday’s Guardian caught my attention on several levels.

She tells us that the Babylon myths came about on the one hand from the Old Testament, which led to western cultures’ pessimistic associations with the idea, and on the other hand from Greek historians, who lauded the Babylonians’ engineering achievements. I like this opposition of ideas.

Similarly, she highlights a contrast between the Tower of Babel in the Bible representing a multiplicity of languages as a curse and the Qur’an where a verse says God gave many languages in order for human beings to enrich, not confuse, their understanding of each other.

And the thread running through the commentary is the British Museum’s exhibition, Babylon: Myth and Reality (runs until March 15, 2009) and the political debate about London as a modern-day Babylon, “a place of violence and social fragmentation.”

History, languages, ideas, cultures – and all captured in less than 1,000 words. Here’s the link to the article.

(Credit for image: Cornelisz Anthonisz. (Theunissen), The collapse of the Tower of Babel, 1547, Etching © SMB, Kupferstichkabinett, Photo: Volker-H. Schneider)

Museums by night

Lots of Brussels museums are taking part in Nocturnes 08 and staying open late on Thursday evenings until the end of the year.

There's a choice of well-known museums such as the Museum of Musical Instruments, lesser-known ones including the Toy Museum (children and adults are allowed to play!) and the Schaerbeek Museum of Beer, and places you’ve heard of but weren’t sure if they were open to the public e.g. the Royal Library of Belgium.

If you want to visit a popular one, reserve early. I just tried to join the guided tour at the René Magritte museum in Jette this evening only to be told it was already sold out.

Information and schedules are on: http://nocturnes.brusselsmuseums.be