Brussels is known around the world for its strong gallery scene and culture of collecting. This year, the Brussels Gallery Weekend launched the art season in the Belgian capital with the participation of 45 galleries. There is a lot to see so if you find yourself in town for a day. Here’s what our editor Àngels Miralda thinks you shouldn’t miss.
Exploring AI Art: Unveiling Aesthetics & Innovations. Join us for an interview with Amelia Winger-Bearskin as we decode the world of AI-generated imagery.
At Collecteurs, one of our central missions is to demystify collecting and to highlight the cultural and creative agency of contemporary art patrons. Our interviews with collectors offer a deep-dive into the visions and themes that shape private collections. Often imagined as opaque and inaccessible, we turn this around to highlight the individuals behind this essential pillar of the art world.
In this new series of interviews we dive into the private collections of artists. Whether these collections are of bought or exchanged works, we get a glimpse into what inspires artists when they are not creating. The artists’ artist is a term that refers to an artist that may be overlooked by the market or art historical canon, but who is highly respected among peers. Join us as we discover the unique connection between collecting and the creative process.
At Collecteurs, one of our central missions is to demystify collecting and to highlight the cultural and creative agency of contemporary art patrons. Our interviews with collectors offer a deep-dive into the visions and themes that shape private collections. Often imagined as opaque and inaccessible, we turn this around to highlight the individuals behind this essential pillar of the art world.
We are looking for freelance contributors to bring new voices and perspectives to our magazine.
The Riga International Biennial of Contemporary (RIBOCA), founded by Agniya Mirgorodskaya, a Russian oligarch’s daughter, has brought significant investments into Latvia’s cultural scene since its inception in 2016. Her father, Gennady Mirgorodsky is a prominent Russian businessman, both a fisheries tycoon working in the arctic as well as developing extractive industries in Siberia. With the outbreak of the ongoing war in Ukraine, the biennial halted its activities but now plans to resume. In response, Latvian artists have withdrawn from the biennial and local curators and critics have published articles revealing the biennial’s deep involvement with Russia’s oligarch class.
The “Bilbao effect” refers to the city-wide economic uplift that cultural investment and starchitecture can catalyze. It is named after its successful implementation through the development of Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum in the Basque Country. This phenomenon appears to contrast with object repatriation, but it shares a delicate discussion on power dynamics. Whereas repatriated objects are looted and brought to the world’s financial centers, in this case the culture, values, and ideas of those centers are exported to the rest of the world. This phenomenon has put into question the complexity of museum diplomacy—the use of museums as a tool to achieve different political goals. Two recent examples are the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Centre Pompidou x West Bund Museum, which serve as cases seeking to replicate Bilbao’s outcomes.
Augmented Reality (AR) is a real-time, real-space application that uses handheld devices to implement a digital spatial layer over physical reality. It inserts digital objects using the camera function that responds to our GPS coordinates as we walk through space.
The ‘A Day in the Art Life’ series is meant to convey a sense of the life of art world figures; a taste of their routine or an ideal day in their life, sprinkled with some philosophical musings.
Olafur Eliasson opened his first solo exhibition in the Gulf region this March at the National Museum of Qatar. The curious desert runs from the 19th of March to 15th of August with the objective of spotlighting nature’s intrinsic value. The exhibition’s viewpoint centers on the environment, something paramount during a global climate crisis. However, Eliasson’s artwork comes only a few months after the World Cup’s sustainability scandal. Critics could allege that the exhibition is an example of performative sustainability or artwashing. Yet, Eliasson’s pieces within the Qatari context require a deeper examination.
Tasked with representing an institution, securing funding, and important organisational structures, the position of director is a demanding task. What happens when it all goes wrong? In this series, we uncover stories of crime, desperation, political defiance, or corruption in museum leadership.