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‘Is this doable?’: why political paralysis threatens an ambitious Brussels arts complex | Belgium

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Construction work is underway on Canal, a new contemporary art museum in Brussels, a year ahead of its scheduled opening on 28 November 2026.

Located in a renovated former Citroën garage on the north-western edge of the city centre, the center is 95% completed. Curators are finalizing an opening show that will include works by Matisse, Picasso and Giacometti, on loan from the Center Pompidou in Paris. Trilingual wall texts in English, Dutch and French have already been signed.

12,500 square meters of exhibition space over five floors, with an architecture centre, restaurant and live performance venue, This museum will be bigger than London’s Tate Modern, Paris’s Palais de Tokyo and Guggenheim Bilbao. The investment reflects a desire to transform Europe’s administrative capital into a cultural destination in its own right.

But in recent weeks, the conversation surrounding the canal’s opening has moved from “when” to “if.” A year and a half after Belgium’s regional elections, a functioning government for the semi-autonomous Brussels-Capital Region is still nowhere in sight. The only certainty seems to be the predicted austerity measures and the proposed plan to reduce Canal’s budget by more than half.

“We never thought that there would be no government 12 months before the inauguration and 18 months after the elections,” the museum director said. Kasia Radzisz. “If there is no decision on the budget, we will risk stopping construction, which will jeopardize the future of the entire project.”

The plan to equip the Belgian capital with a museum that would not only exhibit but also collect contemporary art goes back at least a quarter of a century. Neither Brussels’ modern art gallery Vielles nor the more classical Bozar Center for Fine Arts have their own collections. In the absence of such an institution, collections of important Belgian artists such as Marcel Broodthaers have been purchased by MoMA in New York and shipped to the US.

In 2001, American curator Michael Tarantino was recruited to lead an art center, but the project was disrupted due to political infighting and was closed after Tarantino’s death in 2003.

Thirteen years later, under the supervision of the ruling socialist PS party, an agreement was reached to convert the former Citroën garage, built in 1934, on the Place de l’Isère into the Canal.

The sheer scale of the plans was criticized from the beginning.

A formal partnership with the Center Pompidou in Paris, limited to five years, will cost Brussels €2m a year. Photo: Canal

“This is a nation-state-sized project undertaken by a regional government, a technical decision that has been blown out of all proportion by consultants and advisors,” said Dirk Snauwart, director of Viels, which does not receive structural financial support from the Brussels region. “Who thinks that’s possible?”

A formal partnership with the Center Pompidou, limited to five years after the opening of the canal, will cost Brussels €2m (£1.75m) per year. The connection with the Paris arts complex has been greeted with skepticism by some Flemish speakers, who make up 60% of the Belgian population but who are a minority in the capital, raising suspicions of French colonial attitudes.

“The Canal is a really important project, but the relationship with the Pompidou was complicated and confusing from the beginning,” said Chris Dercon, the former Belgian director of Tate Modern and now runs the Fondation Cartier in Paris. “Why do we need the Pompidou collection in Brussels, when we have some of the best private collections in Europe right here in Belgium?”

Supporters of the canal say such controversies are inevitable for a project with global ambitions, and similar objections have been leveled at art centers such as the Tate Modern and Paris’s Center Pompidou, which are now seen as indispensable to the fabric of their cities.

Radzis said that Canal, under his leadership, will focus on championing contemporary artists who were either born in Belgium or who live in Belgium, and said the museum will create 780 direct and indirect jobs and invest €144.4m into the Brussels economy each year.

The art complex includes 20,000 square meters of public space and a playground designed by Turner Prize-winning collective Assemble. Kanal has also organized workshops for children from 27 nearby schools to prepare them for the inauguration.

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Proponents of the canal say controversies are inevitable for a project with global ambitions. Photo: Canal

“It is absolutely essential for Brussels to have this space,” said Belgian art historian Ann Demeester, director of the Kunsthaus Zurich in Switzerland. “It is the symbolic heart of Europe, a city full of artists that is as charming as Berlin used to be.”

The standoff in the Brussels-Capital area has been going on for 537 days and may surpass the previous record.

“We have to save €1 billion out of a total budget of €7 billion,” said a spokesman for the Francophone centrist party Les Anges, one of six parties at the negotiating table. “All departments and projects have to contribute to this collective effort and the canal project will not be exempted.”

A spokesperson for the Flemish Green Party said: “The current ambitions of the canal, a project that is outside the core competencies (of the Brussels regional government), will have to be severely scaled back. We have to see what is possible with a smaller budget.”

The liberal party MR has proposed reducing Canal’s €35m annual operating budget by 60%, newspaper L’Echo reports, although it has not made this proposal official.

Vielles’s Snauwart is urging officials to find savings in the costly alliance with Pompidou. “We all hope that our money will not be wasted,” he said. “But the wiser decision would be to cut ties with the Pompidou and invest the money in culture instead.”

Radzis said: “There is a new fiscal reality, which we understand, and we are prepared to make cuts like everyone else.

“I still believe that politicians will realize the huge potential of this project as a destination, as a landmark for Brussels. To abandon the canal now would be tantamount to cultural suicide.”



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