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The MSK collection - Discover the 40 revised galleries

The MSK collection - Discover the 40 revised galleries
MSK Ghent © Martin Corlazzoli

This year the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent (MSK) is taking a deep dive into its own collection to offer fresh perspectives on 600 years of art. For the first time since 2017, the entire museum building is once again the backdrop to the collection, and the revised presentation fills no fewer than 40 galleries. Displaying the full diversity of the collection, exploring new themes and exhibiting dozens of works that have never been shown before.

Every kind of art

MSK is not just home to paintings from the 14th to 20th centuries, including international favourites such as Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Paul Rubens, James Ensor, Emile Claus, René Magritte, Paul Delvaux and many others, but plenty of other riches also emerge from behind the scenes.

The museum’s collection holds important examples of 19th and 20th-century sculpture, an impressive collection of works on paper, a library of precious publications, and unusual items ranging from medals to sketches and studio materials.

Religious objects supplement the collection of medieval art, and design sketches and material studies reveal the creative processes and the hand of the painter or sculptor at work. Some paintings are displayed in a free-standing arrangement that uniquely enables them to be examined from both sides. One of these, a beautiful work by Jacob de Backer, is on show for the first time in over 10 years.

New themes and stories

The chronological route is interrupted at regular intervals by new themed galleries that invite visitors to deeper reflection. For instance, the presentation looks at images of women through 250 years of art, at portrayals of poverty and wealth, the relationship between the city and the countryside, and how artists create portraits to record themselves and their loved ones for posterity.

MSK Ghent © Martin Corlazzoli

The lives of everyday people serve as the uniting element of the themed galleries. In this way the museum illustrates how every work of art contains many stories: those of the artist who conceived the work and the society in which it was created – but also the stories that appear to each individual who looks at it. The questions that people address through art are more or less the same today as they have always been. And as we consider what artists have created, we cannot help but layer our own stories upon theirs.

New combinations in the galleries

Countless new combinations reveal the Ghent collections in a fresh light. With the northern and southern Netherlands no longer separated, both their distinctness and their interaction are highlighted. Plenty of attention is also given to the process of creating art, the correlation between the artist and the studio and the close ties that have always existed between artists and the art market.

In the print and drawing galleries they investigate the interaction between drawings, prints and other media in the careers of artists such as James Ensor and Félicien Rops. The monograph galleries present important artists including Jean Brusselmans, Raoul De Keyser, Constant Permeke and Frans Masereel, alongside prominent names such as George Minne and Théo Van Rysselberghe.

Gallery E: a new space for visitor experimentation

Situated in the middle of the route, visitors are given their own space, ‘Gallery E’, which is a stage for expression, emotion, education and experimentation. Here you can unleash your creative impulses, taking part in open studio events, lectures and conversations. Gallery E is also the setting for a series of rotating presentations and innovative collaborations, an arena for voices originating from inside and outside the museum.

Currently the presentation Young at heart!’ is on show in Gallery E, a creative environment for children, families and everyone who is young at heart. Portraits of children and families introduce the visitor to art and creativity, here you are invited to be creative, to write your own texts to accompany the works, and to imagine the stories behind the paintings. The results of these creative efforts remain on show in the gallery, and each week, the museum staff will display some of them alongside the paintings. The gallery is also integral to the new, three-part family route that guides visitors through the permanent collection.


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