A call to preserve M HKA as Antwerp’s museum of contemporary art, and to defend its future through dialogue.
The Friends of M HKA and the M HKA Art Circle call for the preservation of M HKA as a museum of contemporary art in Antwerp.
The future of M HKA is at stake. What began as a policy note has grown into a debate about the place of contemporary art in Flanders.
We, the Friends of M HKA and the M HKA Art Circle, cannot remain silent. For more than thirty years, we have supported a museum that gives artists opportunities, inspires a public and makes Flanders visible to the world.
“We are defending a valuable institution that strengthens Flanders culturally,” says Mathieu Pauwels, chair of the Friends of M HKA. “Not out of nostalgia, but out of concern for the future. For artists, the public and the city. We are not asking for privileges, only respect for what has been built with vision and perseverance.”
This is a call for dialogue – for shaping things together, with everyone involved in contemporary art: artists, the public, museums, policymakers and friends – about how Flanders wants to cherish its contemporary art.
A museum with a mission
M HKA is not just an Antwerp museum, but the museum of the Flemish Community for contemporary art. It emerged from successive initiatives by artists – from G58 to the ICC – and builds on that pioneering spirit, with a strong local anchoring and an international orientation. It was given the task by the Flemish government of excelling internationally while also reaching a broad public. It does so with courage, with an open view beyond the Flemish and European bubble, and with attention to artists from all over the world.
The cancelled new building on Waalse Kaai would finally have provided the necessary space to fulfil that mission: a building suited to the collection, the city and the artists. Ten years of preparation, a realistic budget, a project that was ready to begin.
What is at stake
According to the current concept note ‘Hertekening landschap eigen museale instellingen en van de beeldende kunsten‘ (October 2025), M HKA would lose its museum role and be transformed into a breeding ground for contemporary arts, with studios and temporary presentations. If the concept note is implemented, Flanders would lose not only its museum, but also its expertise, infrastructure and international recognition built up over decades.
M HKA has built a leading role in research and archival work, and is internationally recognised for its commitment and diversity. It is the museum that brings a chapter of the Kyiv Biennial to Antwerp, that gives artists from Ukraine and Palestine a platform.
M HKA is a place where art and society enter into dialogue with one another. Must precisely that museum disappear because it would be too international, too engaged or too successful?
A realistic alternative
Seventy per cent of the collection is currently owned by the non-profit association M HKA. If the Flemish government were to decide to largely abandon its museum mission, it would be logical for this heritage to remain anchored in Antwerp, where it belongs. Flanders could of course assume the management of these works and show them at home and abroad, but M HKA must remain the house where this collection has a living context.
Why and how we continue to advocate
We ask for respectful stewardship of what has grown over seven decades out of the movement that shaped M HKA. A museum that has worked for years on international recognition, that supports artists and builds a public, does not deserve to be dismantled.
The Friends and the Art Circle continue to actively support M HKA by organising a broad range of activities and contributing to the connection between the museum and the local art community. More than ever, you are welcome to become a Friend and thereby support M HKA.
We continue to advocate for M HKA, from M to A: because a metropolis that denies its contemporary art a museum weakens its cultural future.
— Friends of M HKA & M HKA Art Circle
