Colonial collectors brought many pustaha into European museum collections, thus separating these books from their communities of origin. What happens to the knowledge that manuscripts contain when they are displaced and access to them is lost?
FREE ENTRANCE | From October 25, 2025, dance is the starting point in the Visible Storage for delving into the MAS collection. Eight people from dance communities in Antwerp rummaged through the depots together with the curators.
As part of ‘Antwerp Baroque 2018: Rubens as an inspiration’, MAS welcomed the photographer and artist Athos Burez. With 30 images and installations, he shared his own unique and contemporary view on different genres from the style period: still lifes, portraits, landscapes and interiors.
In 1890, the painter Louis van Engelen depicted a crowd of Belgian emigrants moving across Antwerp’s Nassau Bridge to the district of Het Eilandje towards a ship. The resident population watches them pass by.
The MAS preserves culturally and historically sensitive Congolese heritage. In what circumstances did this collection of approximately 3,800 cultural objects come into being? A two-year research project will map this out more clearly.
FREE ENTRANCE | In a diverse city like Antwerp, you can find all kinds of traditions that people still actively practice today. In the Visible Storage, eight people invite you to discover the tradition they continue to live and experience. Each of them selected an object that is indispensable to their tradition and shares what that tradition means to them.
People have been fascinated by power for centuries. Why is power so seductive? What kind of prestige accompanies it? A highly topical theme in which – who knows? – you may find some personal relevance.
