Art Antwerp

With Carrie Mae Weems

Curated by Sarah Hermanson Meister

20/03/2026 – 23/08/2026

The Heart of the Matter is the first retrospective of influential American artist Carrie Mae Weems (1953) in Belgium. Through her incisive photographic works and video installations she explores themes of race, gender, power and memory. 

The exhibition comprises more than 100 photographs and videos, including landmark works such as Museums (2006) and Kitchen Table Series (1990). Especially for this exhibition, Weems created the series Preach (2024), which points to the importance of faith both personally and societally. In this series, the art and architecture of spirituality emerge as powerful forms of resistance.

With Antony Gormley 

Curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

23/05/2026 – 20/09/2026

Antony Gormley (London, 1950) gained worldwide fame with his sculptures and monumental installations that focus on the human body in space. His work explores how a person relates to architecture and landscape through the body. With minimal and powerful forms, and materials such as lead and iron, he raises fundamental questions about the position of humanity in relation to nature and the world.

This KMSKA exhibition explores the depths of Gormley’s oeuvre, the museum’s collection, and the layered foundations of our shared visual and material culture. What emerges extends beyond mere sculpture. It concerns emotion, physical perception, and our presence in the world.

With Bert De Leeuw

11/06/2026 – 20/09/2026

Dive into the work of Bert De Leeuw (1926–2007) during the summer of 2026. An artist to the core, who was born a hundred years ago in Antwerp’s Zuid district. One major theme runs through his extensive oeuvre: a fascination with the origins and the transience of life within a cosmic totality.

Throughout his life, Bert De Leeuw continued to search for ways to translate ideas into visual form. As a self-taught artist, he drew on his experience as a painter of cinema posters and set designer at the BRT (Belgian Radio and Television Broadcasting). Throughout his career, he experimented with a wide range of materials: glass beads for a sparkling effect, or pieces of expanded polystyrene to try out large volumes.

With the scenography designed by his son Hendrik De Leeuw, the exhibition promises to be a compelling experience.

With James Ensor, Rik Wouters, Jules Schmalzigaug

11/04/2026 – 30/08/2026

James Ensor, Rik Wouters and Jules Schmalzigaug are known as Belgium’s Big Three modern colour artists for good reason. Theirs are illustrious names, each of whom sought to transcend the soft colour palette of the Impressionists in their own way. For them, the power of a renewed, post-Impressionist composition lay precisely in the play of rich pigments. In Singing Red, the KMSKA explores their vermilion reds, intense blues and bright yellows, and the role that this fresh visual language played within the greater artistic picture. 

Leopold de Waelplaats 1
2000 Antwerpen

With Paul van Ostaijen, Michel Seuphor, Paul Joostens, Jozef Peeters, René Guiette, Floris Jespers and ELT Mesens.

06/06/2026 – 13/09/2026

Old Guard? Avant-garde! shows how the rediscovery and reappraisal of experiment rekindled the avant-garde fire among a generation of pioneers. For some of them, it was a surprising reunion. Although they were by then between sixty and seventy years old, they also rediscovered themselves in the years 1955-1965.

The responses of the historical avant-gardists to the neo-avant-garde were very diverse. Michel Seuphor’s triumphant attitude towards the renewed attention for abstract art stood in stark contrast to the critical position adopted by Paul Joostens, for example. To do justice to this diversity, this archive exhibition does not present one overarching story, but eight parallel stories that lift the veil on how the old guard became avant-garde once again.

With Jean Katambayi Mukendi

Curated by Emma Enderby and Linda Franken and Anne-Claire Schmitz 

06/06/2026 – 27/09/2026

RATIO, Jean Katambayi Mukendi’s commission for IN SITU, spans newly produced drawings, paintings and large-scale sculptures. The exhibition addresses global structural inequities in resource extraction and the distribution of power. It questions the dualities that shape our world: between the natural and the artificial, growth and destruction.

Mukendi’s sculptural works respond to contemporary technological developments, from agriculture to robotics and military systems. Built as composite structures, they merge and reconfigure machine functions, testing what these technologies might become when approached through recycling and repurposing, and when imagined for their ecological potential.

The artist’s drawings extend these inquiries, offering observations and speculative reflections on human experience in relation to ecology, economy and language, among others.

RATIO is Mukendi’s first solo museum presentation and is part of Muhka’s IN SITU programme, dedicated to newly commissioned work.

06/06/2026 – 03/01/2027

In a context in which positions, structures and expectations are constantly shifting, this presentation does not propose a new narrative. It starts from a simple question: what happens when artists continue to act without knowing what that action will bring?

The exhibition unfolds across two rooms.

In the round room, ongoing appears as searching. Works by Jacqueline Mesmaeker, Guy Van Bossche and Raoul De Keyser show practices that keep trying, resuming and feeling their way forward. The gesture is not completed, the image is not fixed. The circular space supports an open experience in which meaning remains in motion.

In the rectangular room, ongoing takes on a different intensity. Here it is no longer about searching, but about holding on. Works by Bernd Lohaus, Alan Charlton, Marthe Wéry and Charlotte Posenenske show a sustained reduction of form and material. Ann Veronica Janssens makes perception uncertain, Chris Reinecke sets a small but clear boundary. The action no longer changes substantially, but it does not stop either. It remains.

Between the two rooms lies a transitional space. In Olympia by David Claerbout, time unfolds without human intervention. Shilpa Gupta’s Threat, by contrast, activates time through collective action. In this tension between natural duration and social circulation, ongoing is temporarily detached from intention or result. Sound poetry, listened to through headphones, reduces language to voice and breath: listening, too, becomes a form of continuing.

Within the permanent presentation De toestand is vloeibaar, Ongoing functions as a temporary accent. Where the collection shows the mutability of the world, this presentation focuses on an attitude within that mutability.

Not because change is guaranteed.
But because stopping is not an option.

The collection presentation is thematic. The five themes (Motion, Human Nature, Urban Nature, Entanglement and Contact Planes) are interconnected with the landscape. This allows the artworks to engage in dialogue with each other and with the park itself.

Admire key works by artists such as Henry Moore, Rik Wouters, and Richard Deacon. Discover surprising works by artists like Panamarenko, Alberto Giacometti, and the younger generation of contemporary artists. The collection provides a unique overview of more than a hundred years of sculpture.

Curated by Geert Bruloot, Romy Cockx & Kaat Debo

28/03/2026 — 17/01/2027

MoMu celebrates 40 years of the Antwerp Six with a unique exhibition in 2026.

The exhibition highlights the unique trajectory that connects these six exceptional designers. It began with their study at the fashion department at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and resulted in six highly influential solo careers. In 1986, Dirk Bikkembergs, Ann Demeulemeester, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Van Saene and Marina Yee put Antwerp on the fashion map when they each presented their own collections at the British Designer Show in London. This led to their international breakthrough and established the City of Antwerp as a capital of fashion. Their unique designs continue to influence international fashion today.

03/04/2026 – 29/11/2026

Step into the ring and experience what kickboxing, karate, capoeira, kung fu, and Nguni stick fighting have in common. The exhibition draws you into the rich world of martial arts. Their beauty, their philosophy, as well as the traditions and stories behind the spectacle. Ready to take on some tough prejudices?

20/07/2025 – 12/09/2027 

Museum Mayer van den Bergh is undergoing renovations and is expanding. Fortunately, this doesn’t mean that the curtain has come down on the collection itself. A total of 43 museum enthusiasts from Antwerp have selected a work that will be on show for you to admire in the Maagdenhuis while the museum itself is closed. So why not look at the collection through their eyes and (re)discover a multitude of masterpieces?

23/06/2026 – 02/08/2026

In 2026, the Museum Plantin-Moretus is celebrating the 500th birthday of Carolus Clusius (1526-1609), a doctor and botanist from the Low Countries. With that in mind, the museum is inviting you to come and see the most attractive botanical images from the 16th to the 20th centuries from its own collections. Our focus is on topics such as wild plants, trees, fungi, decorative flowers and fruit and vegetables, as seen in illustrations in old books, and the woodblocks used to print them, but also on exquisite prints and drawings from the modern era.

It’s all about the stories in The Red Star Line Museum. The stories of the passengers who travelled to America with the Red Star Line, in search of happiness and a better future. All these stories tell the history behind the Red Star Line.

A voyage of discovery for the youngest visitors and their families. Touching, playing, and exploring are encouraged here and now. In this interactive exhibition, you embark on a journey with young children (aged 1 and up). Navigating between seven different stations, you discover together what traveling is all about and the emotions associated with departure.