Dear Minister of Culture,
As head of collection (I once harboured the ambition to become an artist myself, but lacked the courage to do so), I work every day with my colleagues on shaping, preserving, researching, disclosing, and presenting one of the most important collections of contemporary art established in Belgium after the Second World War.In my job, the words 'heritage' and 'contemporary art' go hand in hand every single day. In a museum like S.M.A.K., these two concepts are inextricably intertwined; one has no right to exist without the other. Without the art of today, we have no heritage tomorrow. In the museum, we work daily with living artists from all disciplines, who provide today's art through their passion and drive. Without these artists—who, with great inventiveness, patience, seriousness, and humour, incessantly question and interpret our increasingly complex society—relevant art would not exist at all. Thanks to them, our arts scene today is so broad, entrepreneurial, dynamic, and renowned worldwide, and as a museum, we are merely one part of this great machinery. Without room for experiment, there are no exhibitions; without exhibitions, there is no growth of our collection; without the growth of our collection, there is no growth of our heritage. Without heritage, there is no relevant cultural contribution or reflection.
My ears pricked up on Friday during De afspraak op vrijdag when your party colleague Peter De Roover invited us to reflect with him on what art, according to him, is or should be. With a weighty folding of hands followed an anachronistic argument, featuring sophistical reasoning at its peak. Contemporary artists were dismissed as junkies lazily clinging to a subsidy trunk, as artists who have supposedly "forgotten what beauty is" and who are only out to shock. Where does such ignorance and hostility towards the contemporary artist—who might just be a hard-working Fleming—come from? In the year 2019, the arts surely look completely different than they did in, say, the 19th century, don't they? Although, thanks to your party colleague, we now have a slightly clearer picture of your vision for art and culture, so that we can all better understand what these austerity measures are really about.
Finally, should you have the time, I would like to invite you to our museum, so that I can show you our multifaceted collection (which grows every day with subsidised and non-subsidised art, produced today and tomorrow and all over the world). I would be happy to show you how much brilliant beauty, but also brilliant ugliness, that collection contains. Because without ugliness, beauty could not exist, right?
Iris Paschalidis
responsable collection S.M.A.K.
Gent, 17 November 2019
25.Nov.19
