ART ON CAMPUS – DRIE EIKEN

IMPORTANT: before booking first contact uantwerpen@kgva.be.

Education, research and social service are traditionally part of a university’s mission. At the Antwerp University also art and culture have been added.

Since the 1970’s the Art on Campus Commission has been pursuing an active art policy, which has resulted in a collection of over 1,100 paintings, sculptures and other forms of plastic, mainly contemporary, art.

The works are not housed in a delimited museum, but, spread across four campuses, integrated into the environment of staff and students: on walls in the corridors, on ceilings, hidden in the greenery.

Art explores life and reality and, just as science, it opens new horizons. Art challenges intellectually and emotionally and can inspire students and scientists.

Antwerp University is willing to offer interested visitors the opportunity to enjoy its collection and the architecture of its buildings.

Campus Drie Eiken was designed and built in the 1970’s as a promenade campus in the middle of fields. Although gradually more buildings were added and in spite of renovations, the campus gives the feeling of being in nature. There is also an evolution of the works of art that decorate the campus: from torques of enamelled metal strips as the first integrated work of art, alongside wooden recycling material turned into images of Camille Huysmans (Antwerp politician an mayor) and Lenin, to ultrarealistic woodcuttings and even a gigantic photo of the entire university community. These works were made by respectively Walter Leblanc, Vic Gentils, Ludwig Vandevelde and Perry Roberts.