Drafts. From Rubens to Khnopff 11.10.2024 > 16.02.2025
How is a work of art created ? This is the question that the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium seek to answer with an exhibition devoted to sketching. At its heart is the creative gesture, presented here in all its forms. Discover a fascinating journey through a hundred artworks, immersing visitors in the intimacy of artistic creation. Step into the studio and try to grasp the very essence of the artwork, from the first idea sketched on a blank sheet, a wooden panel, or a piece of cardboard. This immersive experience promises enriching discoveries, offering a new perspective on the behind-the-scenes of creations by iconic artists such as Rogier van der Weyden, Rembrandt, Rubens, Magritte, and many others.
Emily Mae Smith 26.09 2024 > 02.03 2025
After the dialogues with Nicolas Party and Jean-Michel Folon, the Musée Magritte is presenting thirty works by Emily Mae Smith, a painter born in 1979 in the United States (Austin, Texas). She lives and works in New York. The exhibition is the fruit of a collaboration between the Petzel Gallery in New York and the Rodolphe Janssen Gallery in Brussels, with the support of the Galerie Perrotin in Paris. The works on show come from private collections in Belgium, England, the United States and Brazil. In her work, young artist Emily Mae Smith features an anthropomorphic brush character derived from the one in Disney’s Fantasia (1940). It becomes her avatar, referring simultaneously to the painter’s brush, the household help’s work object and the phallus, lending a sexual dimension to her paintings. Beyond reference or allusion, the link between Emily Mae Smith’s paintings and those of René Magritte is also based on a keen sense of image construction and a taste for visual trickery.
Point of view(s) 11.10 2024 > 20.04 2025 (Prolongation)
Icons from our collection of modern and contemporary art will be presented to you, in pairs or threes, in different partsof the Museum. They invite you to take part in sometimes surprising dialogues and to (re)discover them from another point of view. Meet Josef Albers, Francis Bacon, Robert Barry, Anna Boch, Isisore Verheyden, Marcel Broodthaers, On Kawara, Christo, Joseph Stevens, Louis Van Lint, Frits van den Berghe, Alberto Burri, Constant Permeke, Roger Raveel, Chéri Samba, Lucio Fontana, Bram Bogart, Andres Serrano, Vincent van Gogh, Rik Wouters, David Hockney,…
Old drawings “From Bruegel to Rubens”11.10 2024 > 16.02 2025
Two centuries of the art of drawing come to life in this surprising selection of nearly a hundred works. It features a formidable range of drawing styles: from the meticulously finished work of Pieter Bruegel to the swirling style of Rubens. Inventive scenes from mythology and the Bible, skilfully constructed landscapes and spontaneous studies of life in the 16th and 17th centuries complete this astonishingly varied collection.
Flemish festivals and celebrations, Brueghel, Rubens, Jordaens…26. 04 2025 > 31.08 2025 (In partnership with the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille)
The Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille is organising this exhibition in exceptional partnership with the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium and the Musée du Louvre-Paris.
The exhibition explores Flemish festivities in the 16th and 17th centuries through the prism of collective entertainment in the public space, in an exceptionally rich journey that illustrates the festivity as a social ritual and an outlet in times of epidemic or war, as well as a moral and political vehicle.
Curators: Juliette Singer, Director of the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille and the Musée de l’Hospice Comtesse, Blaise Ducos, Chief Curator, responsible for Flemish and Dutch paintings at the Musée du Louvre, Sabine van Sprang, Curator of Flemish painting, 1550-1650 at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.
To take advantage of a guided tour of this exhibition, sign up for the excursion organised by Become a Friend on Thursday 8 May 2025 in Lille and at Louvre-Lens to discover the new Galerie du Temps! More information : Exhibition in Lille
In 2025, the RMCA teams will be rethinking the museum itinerary in the Balat building. This redeployment of the route will begin in spring 2025 and run until early 2026. The aim will be to revisit the visitor experience in line with a vision of the museum that is rooted in our times through its inclusion and diversity. This new route will reintegrate key works from the 19th to the 21st century. The vision developed in this route will be enriched by the opening of the extensions in 2030. This will lead to progressive changes in 2025-2026, room by room. So we won’t be short of new things to announce and experience!