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10 exhibitions to stimulate your senses this spring 2023

Anujin Magnaijargal

Ready to stretch out of your wintery cocoon and welcome the warmth and joy of spring? Because we’ve got you 10 temporary exhibitions that will make you look forward to this spring and make you jump out of your home almost every weekend. So, let’s get warmed up and jump right into it!

1. Brussels City Museum: Back to the Nature 1900” 

14.02.2023 15.10.2023

Brussels City Museums Parenthesis Space’, a space where the museum curators offer a selection of pieces from their newly acquired collection, is ready to welcome you with you a new capsule exhibition.

This time, they’re turning the spotlight on the rich Art Nouveau heritage of our city and how the artists drew inspiration from nature at the beginning of 20th century. The subtle aesthetics, along with the powerful lines and shapes of plants and flowers attracted their attention. As did the sublime depiction of woman in countless variations.

Discover this enchanting selection of works, most of which have rarely if ever been exhibited before.

2. MIMA: Local Heroes”

03.02.2023 28.05.2023

Have you ever seen people practicing heavy sports in a museum space? Maybe yoga on special occasions and maybe stretching your legs and arms during your visit was the most you’ve ever done?

Because MIMA here is turning their entire museum into a temple of boxing, the so-called Noble Art. By doing so, the museum offers you not only exercise for the body but also exercise for the mind. Here, this discipline is elevated to the status of a secular cult simply by merging an artistic vision with the daily use of the training and fighting rooms by boxers.

Make sure to check their daily sports program, exceptional events and extended evening openings for the best experience.

3. Bibliotheca Wittockiana - Bookbindings and Book Arts Museum: Design-a-Book”

12.02.2023 — 30.04.2023

Driven by the same desire to study, transmit and showcase books, The Wittockiana and the Atelier du Livre de Mariemont, are joining forces to present an exhibition devoted to contemporary book design practices in Belgium. The creations exhibited focus on research and innovation: they question the medium of the book itself, its materiality, reading and writing practices, and the relationship between texts and images. See and learn more about this research through 50 selected works where bookbinding, book design, typography, photography, performance and installation are further explored.

4. House of European History: Throwaway. The History of a Modern Crisis”

18.02.2023 — 14.01.2024

Rubbish. Trash. Garbage. From ancient times until the present humanity has had a complex relationship with, and many names for, what it throws away. Throwaway – The history of a modern crisis” will unearth the hidden history of waste in Europe. If indeed we are what we throw away, what does Europe’s trash tell us about its past, present, and its future?

Before visiting the exhibition, we recommend you looking at the complete program of the museum as there is wide variety of activities on theme of the exhibition such as guided tours, concert/​demonstration of recycled musical instruments and special carte blanche tours by locals who participated on the project and people who worked in waste related fields.

5. Art et Marges Musée, Botanique, CENTRALE for Contemporary Art & Tiny Gallery: Photo | Brut BXL

24.11.2022 – 19.03.2023

PHOTO | BRUT BXL is a project of exhibitions and multidisciplinary events coordinated by the Centre d’Art Brut et Contemporain La « S » Grand Atelier1 (Vielsalm) in collaboration with Bruno Decharme, collector and founder of abcd-art brut in Paris, and 4 partner organisations based in Brussels: Botanique, CENTRALE for contemporary art, Art et Marges Museum and Tiny Gallery.

The complete exhibition at these 4 different locations include hundreds of photographs from the PHOTO | BRUT collection Bruno Decharme & compagnie exhibited in Arles, installations, workshops, performances, two study days and new publications. The programme is based on the theme of raw photography”. Through photographs, photomontages or photocollages, these creators, generally self-taught, reveal their personal universes through works produced outside conventional artistic circuits. This little-explored field of research on outsider art opens up a path towards innovative practices in the field of photography, thus contributing to renewing the way this medium is seen. This project thus questions the role of the collector, his or her power over the categorisation of creators, as well as photography.

6. Bozar: Swedish Ecstasy”

17.02.2023 – 21.05.2023

This spring, all eyes will be on the far north. We know Sweden mainly for its pragmatism, great engineers and entrepreneurs. But there is an important yet lesser known aspect of the nation’s spiritual life, visible in its art and literature. Bozar is therefore staging an exhibition that brings together a number of figureheads from the Swedish art scene. Mysticism and esoteric speculation runs like a thread through their work.

The exhibition will be showing work by some of the country’s most important literary figures, from the 18th-century Emanuel Swedenborg to the turn of the 20th century with August Strindberg, who is known as a writer but who also created wonderful drawings and paintings. In the same period, we find visual art by visionaries such as C.F. Hill, Ernst Josephson and Hilma af Klint.

7. The René Magritte Museum – Museum of Abstract Art: Renée Demeester. Abstract Landscapes”

26.11.2022 – 03.09.2023

The Museum of Abstract Art is devoting a solo exhibition to Renée Demeester, a Belgian artist who passed away in April 2022. The exhibition Abstract Landscapes’ gives the public the opportunity to get to know this talented and discreet artist. She was a remarkable figure of Belgian abstraction in the 1960s and 80s, and was able to develop her own style and make it evolve.

8. Fondation A Stichting: Graciela Iturbide – Shadow Lines”

21.01.2023 – 02.04.2023

Visit Shadow lines” at Fondation A to view the most complete exhibition in Belgium on the work of Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide, from the 1970s to the present. The exhibition gathers more than a hundred images, at the border of the everyday and the marvelous, and offers a new look at the work of the most renowned Latin American photographer, winner of the W. Eugene Smith (1987) and Hasselblad (2008) awards. 

From the portraits of women in Juchitán, which made her internationally known, to the Seri Indians of the Sonora desert, from the Naturata series, made in the botanical garden of Oaxaca, to the arid and depopulated feelings of the southern United States, Graciela Iturbide captures the magic in the ordinary.

9. Fondation Boghossian – Villa Empain: Ornamentum”

18.11.2022 – 14.05.2023

An artist’s jewel, like a painting or a sculpture, is a work of art. Born from the same creative approach, it has the same strength, the same poetry and capacity to evoke, and sometimes the same humour. Only their purpose differentiates them from each other.

Inspired by her own personal favourites, this exhibition reflects Diane Venet’s passion for creation: eclectic, playful and demanding. Throughout the exhibition, the great modern and contemporary movements are represented: the Surrealists, Abstract Art, POP Art, the New Realists, Kinetic Art, Minimal and Conceptual Art.

10. WIELS: Danai Anesiadou: D Possessions”

28.01.2023 – 23.04.2023

The exhibition D POSSESSIONS lures us into an allegorical scenography consisting of newly produced sculptures and collages related to the inflation of political and spiritual crises. Like a modern-day exorcist, Danai Anesiadou attempts to purge and transform not only her material possessions but also the energy flows vibrating around us.

For her WIELS exhibition, Anesiadou attempts to encase the entirety of her material possessions: household objects, shoes and clothes, prized belongings — everything is solidified in exuberant assemblages made from resin and large quantities of metal shards. At its core is a desire to rid herself of all personal belongings by converting them into orgonites.

Now, pick your favourites and make the most of this heart fluttering season that is yet to come. If you need more inspiration for other museums and activities, don’t hesitate to connect with us on all socials to stay up to date - @brusselsmuseums.