MONOS. Artist Museums: Shrines and Reflections

This exhibition (Nov. 3, 2024- Feb. 9, 2025) was assembled by Maarten Liefooghe, upon invitation by the Roger Raveelmuseum who also produced the project. The project valorizes previous research (a.o. Maarten Liefooghe's doctoral research 'The Monographic Factor', 2013) and new research done in view of the exhibition.

The exhibition, and the companying book, allow to confront and interpret the architecture of the Roger Raveel Museum along with eleven other 19th, 20th and 21st-century museums from Belgium and the neighboring countries. They are evoked and discussed through artworks, historical documents (models, plans, photographs, etc.) and new photography by Caroline Vincart. The goal is not so much to write a history of artist museums and their architecture, but to project a thematic map, a conceptual topology, to compare and interpret (monographic) museum buildings (and institutions). The spaces of the Raveel Museum's presbytery wing, are used as 'as found' backbone for this mapping.

Curator, research: Maarten Liefooghe

Curatorial assistance, art direction, artistic commission: Caroline Vincart

Themes:

Space for the oeuvre / cult shrine / place / house(hold) / sources and imagination / artists and heirs / appropriation by collectors / reflections and critiques / architects' custom work / curator and program / visitors' desires

Cases:

Turner Bequest (book only) / Van Gogh Museum / Canova's church and gipsotheca / Thorvaldsens Museum / Kirchner Museum / Raveel Museum / Charleston / Rubenshuis / Musée Bourdelle / Paula Becker-Modersohn Haus / Lehmbruck Museum / Musée Soulages / Casa das Historias Paula Rego

(Exhibition photos by Hanne Van Assche, Roger Raveelmuseum)