The Brussels Times selects some of the best exhibitions currently on show in museums and galleries.
(UN)COMMON VALUES
Discover the National Bank of Belgium not as an institution, but as a hidden gem of modernist architecture that also plays home to a contemporary art collection of more than 2,000 pieces, now celebrating its 50th anniversary.
In a special collaboration in honour of the milestone, masterpieces from the contemporary art collection of Banco de España will be showcased on Belgian soil for the first time. The combined collection brings together works by 43 contemporary international artists to facilitate a dialogue about the intrinsic value of art.
Works from (UN)COMMON VALUES document changes in society, mirror the various perceptions of generations and together reflect the kaleidoscopic world in which we live. View works from famous Belgian and Spanish artists, along with such world-renowned ones as Wolfgang Tillmans, Helena Almeida, Candida Höfer and Jonathan Monk.
Until September 18, 2022
Monday to Saturday from 10:00 to 18:00
Bd de Berlaimont 3, 1000 Bruxelles
Free entry, guided tours available
PURE MORNING
Held in a new Brussels based gallery born of a collaboration between Galleria Anna Marra (Italy) and Gallery Nosco (UK, France), MARRA/NOSCO is presenting its third exhibition this summer.
Pure Morning features ten artists and their stories, exposing audiences to the most current practices of Latin American art through a variety of pieces designed to bring viewers closer to the geographical context of south and central America.
The show begins and ends with common places full of conversation and counters, documenting a friendship that has spanned decades and distances.
Attendees can feel the rhythm of these countless trips through the unique prism of each artists’ work, glimpsing into a faraway world beneath the eaves of a historic old clothing factory in Sainte-Catherine.
Until July 30, 2022
Wednesday to Friday, 14:00 to 18:30, Saturday 11:00 to 19:00
Rue Locquenghien, 1000 Bruxelles
Free admission
THIS IS WHAT YOU CAME FOR
Belgian Art Prize laureate Els Dietvorst has conceived her newest exhibition as both an encounter and an invitation.
After spending the last 12 years living in Ireland, she returns to her investigation of the human condition – touching on such themes as life, death, fear, alienation and desire – with a project borne of the almost ritualistic actions and creations that she began during the pandemic lockdown.
The visual artist and filmmaker uses dialogue, experiment and intuition as recurring strategies in her work, exploring social issues with a myriad of mediums including sculpture, installation, video and performance. Dietvorst beckons the audience to enter a universe in which the human connection is paramount.
Until September 18, 2022
Wednesday to Sunday, 10:30 to 18:00
Place Sainte-Catherine 44, 1000 Brussels
€8 admission; €4 senior
TOOTS TRIBUTE CONCERT
Legendary Belgian jazz figure Toots Thielemans would have realised his one-hundredth birthday this year, and Jazz Atomium is inviting enthusiasts to celebrate the life of one of the most important musicians of the genre in a special concert held in the Ilya Prigogine room, a lateral sphere with a breathtaking view of Brussels.
The Toots Tribute concert is the first of a series that will continue in the autumn with other great names of Belgian jazz.
The brainchild of Julie Almau Gonzalez, the Atomium's general director, the concert series aims to highlight this iconic institution of the capital through innovative artistic programming in collaboration with Brussels saxophonist Thomas Champagne.
Saturday June 11, 2022
Curtain opens at 19:00
Atomiumsquare, 1020 Laeken
€30 tickets
LA FINTA GIARDINIERA
Discover the work of an 18-year-old Mozart during a precocious dramma giocoso performed as part of Amadeus & Co’s Sixth Midsummer Mozartiade in Brussels.
A talented troupe of emerging singers puts on a rare performance of the often-overlooked Italian-language opera that a young Mozart first wrote and debuted in Munich.
The highly personal musical theatre piece combines burlesque and drama to attain the human as it follows the story of seven characters in pursuit of love.
Filled with both drama and laughs, the opera’s protagonists spiral into increasingly improbable situations experienced on one unusual day in the countryside.
Hidden identities, comic coincidences and mad lovers are all animated by the brilliant music of a beloved composer, brought to life on a Brussels stage.
Until July 2, 2022
Performances on June 26, 27 and 30; July 2, 2022
Place des Martyrs, 1000 Bruxelles
€50.00 admission; €45.00 senior
DEEPLY, MADLY
In her newest exhibition, director Helen Anna Flanagan uses film, an installation, watercolours and more to explore the musing of a woman burdened by an irrational fear of being pushed onto the metro tracks.
Guided by the important element of water throughout the exploration, Flanagan drives the audience to dwell upon what it means to fall – not simply onto the tracks but in love, into sleep or into the waters of a pool on a faraway Greek island in the middle of the night.
Winner of the first-ever IKOB ‘Feminist Art Prize’ in 2019, Flanagan depicts an obsession with moments of being mid-motion—bodies, emotions and time that “all succumb to gravitational forces—from the lovesick to the slapstick, to the macabre.”
Until September 18, 2022
Wednesday to Sunday, 10:30 to 18:00
Place Sainte-Catherine 16, 1000 Brussels
Free entrance
IMAGINE UKRAINE
An emergency exhibition on contemporary art from Ukraine takes place in three unique spaces: Bozar, the European Parliament and M HKA in Antwerp, which built the Ukrainian art collection of the Flemish Community that provides the basis for the entire project.
Open to the public, the works exhibited at the Brussels space explore the tangible tension held between big narratives and the anecdotal reality of mundane life.
Featuring both Small and Big stories held in contrast, the audience is invited to examine the clash between military, political and religious power against the individual minds and bodies of the artists, amid the backdrop of present-day war.
Fragility meets brute force, as Ukrainian artists protest, process, reclaim and resist invasion in a world still roiling with past trauma.
Until June 19, 2022
Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 to 18:00
Rue Ravenstein, 1000 Brussels
Free entry
