‘Art Talk: 100 years Centre for Fine Arts’

With: Sophie Lauwers (Director-General of Bozar), Daniel Birnbaum (Artistic Director at Acute Art, London), Thierry De Duve (professor of modern and contemporary art theory), Melat Gebeyaw Nigussie (General and Artistic Director at Beursschouwburg), Kasia Redzisz (Artistic Director at KANAL-Centre Pompidou) and Liam Gillick (artist). The conversation will be moderated by Chantal Pattyn.

Over the past 100 years, our view of art – and therefore of arts centres – has changed dramatically. Since Marcel Duchamp & Co, art has been what is displayed at an arts centre. Museums have become places where all sorts of things happen. The multidisciplinary and the debate gained in importance. In a world that is changing at lightning speed, social issues are high on the agenda: sustainability, ecology, welfare, care, diversity, inclusion, participation, new forms of living together, etc. Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality also show promise in shaking up our view of art. 
Arts centres with both feet in the artistic and social reality need to reinvent themselves. Sophie Lauwers, the new Director-General of the Centre for Fine Arts, is embarking upon ‘an expedition between the established and the unknown’ with Bozar. At the opening of Project Palace, a centenary, she is inviting colleagues from home and abroad to look the future straight in the eye. The starting point is the exhibition Look, 100 years of Contemporary Art that art theorist Thierry De Duve put together during Brussels 2000, European capital of culture. Will you get on board with us?