Dagna Dembiecka
Interiors Building Cities
Post-museum: a story about multiple attitudes
The new museum of contemporary art in Antwerp
The project for the New Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp is a building dedicated to growing M HKA—the Belgian art institution embedded in the anti-institutional happenings of the 1960s and 1970s. To embody the institution’s avant-garde spirit, the new project takes over the building existing on the plot that was initially scheduled for demolition. The existing courthouse building is treated as a scenography and a tool to organise a museum rather than a relic. The massing of the museum wraps and ‘consumes’ the existing structure, creating ambiguous and versatile exhibition spaces for the museum collection. Occasionally, the exhibition part and the back-office blend together with other support spaces, so the visitor can experience a transparent museum where boundaries between functions are softened. What is more, art can be displayed in corridors or former office rooms as well as in the basement, which complements vast spaces in the new part of the project and allows for multiple exhibitions to happen simultaneously.