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A remarkable collection

Living Collection, Living Traditions

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.

A glimpse of the collection

FREE ENTRANCE | The MAS collection numbers almost 600,000 pieces. Part of it can be admired in the exhibitions, the rest is carefully stored in various depots. In the free accessible Visible Storage, you can take a peek behind the scenes. Varied and surprising partial presentations provide a constantly changing view of the collection. 

Actual loans

In the MAS, you can see the world. Or at least part of it, because the world also wants to see the MAS. After all, the extraordinary pieces in the MAS are often of great interest to other national and international museums. The MAS regularly receives requests for temporary loans of objects. And we are happy to do so. The pieces from the MAS collection can be found not only in Antwerp, but all over the world.

A Batak Pustaha looted from the last Singamangaraja

Two pustaha in the ‘Christoffel Collection’ have been identified in all likelihood as having been looted from Sisingamangaraja XII, a Batak ruler and national hero. What can palaeographic, linguistic and topographic analysis reveal about their provenance, history, and intended use?

Hans Christoffel: ‘The Little Captain Who Conquered the Jungle’

Concealed behind Dutch Ethical Policy there was the reality of resistance to colonial rule being violently suppressed through so-called ‘pacification’ campaigns. Christoffel became simultaneously one of the most notorious agents of these campaigns and one of the most highly decorated.

12,770 km from home and what was lost along the way

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?

MAS tour for non-Dutch-speakers

On this tour, you'll learn the story behind this exceptional building and its collections and exhibitions. Experience the encounters that the river and the port have brought about for centuries.

Book a guide via Experience Antwerp. 

World city | About here and elsewhere

17.05.2011 - 28.02.2016

CLOSED - In 'World city' you could be charmed by the numerous stories and anecdotes that Antwerp is rich in. A must for every Antwerp citizen so that he could become even prouder of his city, a must for every non-Antwerpian so that he finally understood the fuss around this world city.