Thank you for mentioning the reopening of the Fine Arts Museum in Antwerp on Art History News. You asked for comments, so I’m happy to send you mine. I live 5 minutes from the museum and have visited it three times since the reopening. 

Apologies if this message is a bit long, these are just my personal observations and appreciations, especially on the old masters’ section. The museum building was always very imposing and is even more so now, beautifully restored and cleaned. From the outside the expansion is not visible, inside there is now a 20th century section, built on top and in between the old masters, but completely separate. Architecturally very cleverly done. Entrance fee is 20 euro, taking pictures is allowed everywhere, and the entire collection is also available for research and downloadable on the website. The old master rooms are beautifully restored, nice colors, perfect hanging of paintings, etc. Impeccable. The most important fact is probably that many, many paintings have been cleaned and restored. A long closure has its advantages as well. Many masterpieces look fresh and alive again. Except for some really large Rubens altarpieces, but these will be restored next year, in the rooms were they are now displayed, so that the public can view the ongoing restoration.

Instead of ordering the paintings by school and chronologically, in many rooms there is now a thematic display. ‘Power’, ‘Abundance’, ‘Suffering’, but also just landscapes and portraits. This also enables paintings from different schools and times (a Basquiat next to a Jean Clouet, for example) to be confronted. Sometimes this works, but not always. In several rooms, the choice was to show not too many paintings, so that people are not overwhelmed and spend more time watching a particular painting. In the end, the total display capacity of the museum was expanded by 40% and the number of artworks displayed has actually diminished (to about 600)! Something about the average visitor only being able to absorb so many paintings during a visit … I think this is a missed opportunity.

In the great Rubens room, there used to hang 16 original Rubens paintings before the closure. Now 5. All the others are spread out over the other rooms. Van Dyck fares even worse. The Van Dyck room needs a new name, since there is only one Van Dyck left hanging there (there used to be 6, the Van Dyck collection was never very strong, with no examples from his Italian or English period). The other Van Dycks are spread out, but two are even put in storage. Personally, my greatest regret is that the world of Bruegel has completely disappeared. With Rubens and Van Dyck, undoubtedly the greatest artist ever having worked in Antwerp, he is completely ignored. While there has never been an original Pieter Bruegel the elder in the collection, there is a great collection of works of both his sons and followers, which gives a wonderful and valuable overview of the world of Bruegel. Only 1 or 2 paintings are left of that. Of course, that might not matter much to most visitors, but it is a great regret to people like me who know what is put in storage … I don’t even want to think of the masterpieces of Dutch painting, which even many Dutch museums envy us, that are not on show.

On the other hand, three entire rooms have been given over to modern technology. In one of them you can put on a virtual reality visor, and imagine yourself walking in Rubens’ studio. Another large room is now an ‘immersive experience’ like those travelling shows you have everywhere these days, and which Waldemar Janucsczak (rightly so), despises. Further there is, inevitably these days it seems, contemporary art in a number of rooms, like the camel in the picture on your website. These are enlargements of details of paintings, intended for children. Sometimes they are playful and not very obtrusive (like the camel, a detail from Rubens’ adoration of the kings) but in other rooms they are terribly disturbing, ugly and annoying. The picture I include shows a room called ‘horizon’, with the monstrous thing in the middle (it’s supposed to represent a cave) destroying exactly that, the view of the room with landscapes. 

I realize that by now I might have given my personal concerns too much attention, since the overall impression is still quite positive. There are a lot of very interesting and well-displayed interventions (the integration of sculpture, the tasteful lighting, a room where you can sit in front of some small 15th century jewel-like panels and study them in detail, the 19th century salon, etc.) and just many, many stunning works of art.

PS do you like the joke in one of the pictures I include, where the peasants in an Adriaen van Ostade painting seem to be tumbling out of their frame … ? most people don’t even get the joke and think that someone has pushed the picture from its normal position …