The Mayor of Charleroi, Paul Magnette, inaugurated the new building of the Charleroi Museum of Fine Arts on Friday.
Located on the site of the former Defeld stables, the space will be used to showcase the city’s rich collections. Started in 1889, these collections now include more than 4,000 works that bear witness to a local artistic history linked to “the history of universal art” according to the museum’s managers.
Since 2007, the Charleroi Museum of Fine Arts has not had its own space, but only spaces within the Charleroi Palace of Fine Arts. The new museum has spaces specially dedicated to both permanent exhibitions and temporary exhibitions.
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In the former, the museum’s teams have decided to rely on a number of approaches, notably that of presenting the works in an airy way at eye level and of proceeding by themes as diverse as they are varied.
Some of the big names in the municipal collections are François-Joseph Navez, Constantin Meunier, Pierre Paulus, Anna Boch, James Ensor, Félicien Rops, Gustave Courbet, René Magritte, Jean Ransy and Johan Muyle.
“It is essential that a city of more than 200,000 inhabitants like Charleroi has its own museum, as culture is a means for it to appropriate its history and identity in order to be able to project itself into the future,” stressed Paul Magnette during his speech.
