ART ON CAMPUS – MUSEUM TO SCALE

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.

Museum to Scale 1/7 comprises over one hundred miniature rooms on scale 1/7 devoted to Belgian artists and Belgian artistic movements. After a tribute to Marcel Duchamp and his Boîte-en-valise the route starts with Grandville’s illustrations of “Gulliver’s Travels”, the famous book in which scale plays an important role.

This grand series was realised stimulated by Ronny Van de Velde. It offers a stunning survey of the plastic art scene since the 1960’s.

Thematic and historic compositions around symbolism, surrealism, photography, the Cobra movement, abstract and minimal art lead to Belgian contemporary artists who have all arranged their own rooms in an original manner.

Participating Belgian artists are Jan Fabre, Jan De Cock, Pierre Alechinsky, Koen Van Mechelen, Ann Veronica Janssens, Michel François, and also Angel Vergara, Johan Muyle, Luc Deleu, Luc Tuymans and many others.

After exhibitions in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels, in the Baker Museum in Naples (Florida), Kunsthal in Rotterdam and in the Fondazione Ghisla in Locarno, Museum to Scale 1/7 has now received a permanent place at Antwerp University.