.Préfète Dufaut – The Magician, mid-1960s, oil on masonite, Albert Albrecht collection, Tampa Museum of Art (photo: Veerle Poupeye) I recently had the opportunity to visit the Tampa Museum of Art for the Reframing Haitian Art symposium, held there on June 9. The symposium, who brought together some of the key promotors, conservators and researchers... Continue Reading →
Travel Report – Revisiting Belgium’s Art Museums – Part 3
Jean Fouquet – Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels (c1452), Collection: Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp In this final post on my recent visits to several Belgian museums, I turn my attention to some of the larger art museums in Oostende, Brussels, and Antwerp (although I already discussed the Ensor Year exhibitions at the... Continue Reading →
Travel Report: Revisiting Belgium’s Art Museums – Part 2
Jan van Eyck - Portrait of Margareta van Eyck, 1439, Collection: Groeninge Museum, Musea Brugge (Photo: Veerle Poupeye) In a previous post, I introduced my recent museum tour in Belgium, in February, and commented on the initial exhibitions for the James Ensor Year. In this post, I take a closer look at the museums I... Continue Reading →
Travel Report: Revisiting Ensor and Belgium’s Art Museums – Part 1
James Ensor – The Intrigue (1890), Collection: Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp On a recent visit to Belgium, I visited several art museums: the Groeninge, Old St Jan, Folklore and Lace Centrum museums in Bruges; the Mu.ZEE in Oostende; the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp; and the Magritte Museum and the Royal... Continue Reading →
The Elephant in the Museum
Late last month, on December 28 to be precise, I visited what is now branded as the AfricaMuseum in Tervuren, a suburb of Brussels. My visit, during a family vacation to Belgium, came just a few weeks after the museum had reopened, after being closed for about five years for extensive renovations. The 86 million... Continue Reading →
Art Museums and Social Hierarchy – Part I
This is the first of a two-part post. The second part, which takes the issues to the Caribbean and Jamaica, can be found here. Museums are managers of consciousness. They give us an interpretation of history, of how to view the world and locate ourselves in it. They are, if you want to put it... Continue Reading →