Nocturama at the KMSKA
Not all rooms in the new museum are bright white or flooded with daylight. On an intermediate level of the museum, KAAN Architects created a kind of nocturama, similar to the enclosures in a zoo where nocturnal animals are displayed. We call these three small rooms “black boxes” because they are darkened. However, the walls are painted in the mysterious blue of twilight. This deep blue changes, just like dusk, depending on the light. Sometimes the walls appear ink-blue, other times a dark purple.
The rooms are not completely without light. In the center of each room is a glass light shaft. This shaft connects the upper floor to the lowest floor of the new volume through voids. In the “black boxes,” the voids almost slice through the rooms with glass walls. Depending on what is displayed in these rooms, more or less light is allowed in.
1. Print Room
The first nocturama room is dedicated to the world of works on paper. About a quarter of the KMSKA collection consists of works on paper. These more than 2,000 drawings, sketchbooks, watercolors, and prints are often light-sensitive and cannot be displayed permanently. Drawings and graphic works, in particular, tend to fade if exposed to light for too long. In the past, the museum occasionally organized small exhibitions featuring the best of this special collection, but there was no dedicated space for it. Thanks to the renovation, that has now changed.
In the Print Room, we can surprise visitors about three times a year with a new presentation. It is therefore the ideal place for both in-house and external curators to experiment. They can regularly test ideas, stories, and compositions on the walls. Alternatively, we may invite contemporary artists to work with the KMSKA collection based on their own interests, possibly combining it with their own work or that of other museums. In this way, the Print Room becomes an art laboratory. The first exhibition will focus on the great innovator Michel Seuphor. In 2021, the KMSKA received a generous donation from the artist’s family.
Because of the fading nature of the works that fill these walls, the glass shaft in the Print Room is almost completely covered.
Works by Seuphor featured in the first exhibition in the Print Room. - Carré allégé pour un cercle puissant, Michel Seuphor, KMSKA Collection – Flemish Community, © SABAM Belgium, 2022
2. Sculpture
As we continue through our darkened world, we enter a room dedicated to sculpture—or more precisely: small-scale sculpture. The KMSKA holds a significant collection of small sculptures, some of which are very fragile, or at least appear to be. Examples include the portrait head that Auguste Rodin made of his wife Rose Beuret, and two versions of Laughing Mask by Rik Wouters. For this reason, they are displayed together in vitrines in the Sculpture Room.
In the Sculpture Room, we do not cover the glass shaft in the center. By using focused lighting on the sculptures, we create an intimate atmosphere.
The delicate 'Laughing Mask' by Rik Wouters, in plaster.
A second series of sculptures offers a glimpse into modernism, with Edgar Degas, Oscar Jespers, and Ossip Zadkine taking the lead.
Other small sculptures were acquired by the KMSKA between 1950 and 1970 at the Biennales organized by the Middelheimmuseum. These small sculptures reflect the renewed creative and artistic freedom discovered by postwar artists.
Figurative or abstract, weighty or feather-light, responding to society or entirely independent of any reference: these small sculptures are a precursor to contemporary art.
Head of Orpheus, Ossip Zadkine, an exemplar of modernism.
Veerman. Design for the Esslingen bridge sculpture by Bernhard Heiliger from 1956, acquired by the KMSKA in 1957 at the Middelheim Biennale.
3. Sketches
The last nocturama room is called Sketches. The KMSKA preserves 122 terracotta figurines collected by the Antwerp art dealer Charles Van Herck (1884–1955). They were acquired in 1996–1997 by the Heritage Fund of the King Baudouin Foundation. The figurines that the museum has on loan are bozzetti, or clay sketches. Artists make them to work out their ideas before carving sculptures in marble, for example, or casting them in bronze. During a true conservation marathon in 2019, restorer Nina Deleu checked all the sculptures and carefully dusted them. Thanks to this effort, we can now display the finest examples. Among the sculptures, you will also find works that we usually associate with the word “sketch”: drawings or paintings. Together, these works bring you closer to the creative process of sculptors and painters.
Here as well, the wall color, lighting, and limited light create atmosphere and focus.
Battle between an Amazon and a Warrior, a clay sketch by Jacques Jean van der Neer.
