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Protocols for opening the museum

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The opening of a new museum is a once-in-a-generation event, marked by ritual, ceremony and protocol. It celebrates what has been achieved while anticipating what lies ahead. Yet museum openings are also exercises in power, serving national pride and cultural, political and urban ambitions. What can be learned by examining them more closely? 

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This programme brings together documentaries, artist films, archival footage and television reports tracing the creation and opening of large-scale institutions, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 1977, S.M.A.K. in Ghent in 1999 and Tate Modern in London in 2000.
Across three thematic loops, the programme follows museums from conception and construction to public inauguration. Shown over the weeks surrounding Kanal’s opening, the films consider how art institutions introduce themselves through narratives of change, possibility and promise – and how artists have at times responded to them.
This programme forms part of How to open, the first year of Protocols for opening the museum, a three-year inquiry into what it means for a new museum in Brussels to be truly open, welcoming and public.