Green light for new Brussels art museum

In Brussels’ formerly industrial canal district lies the famous Citroën building. The building, it has just been announced, will be used to house a major museum of modern and contemporary art by the year 2017, report De Tijd and L' Echo.

Brussels Minister Rudi Vervoort is committed to making the museum’s planned 2017 opening a reality. French carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroën and the Brussels-Capital Region will work together to develop the site over the next three years. Once the museum is there, the Government will take over full management of the museum.

"Brussels gets its Guggenheim in 2017, its MoMa," says Vervoort. "The canal zone has enormous economic potential, and this museum will only serve to develop that potential.”

With 15,000 m2 to work with, the new museum will occupy about half of the building, initially filling it with the collection from the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (KMSK) which includes masterpieces by Picasso, Dalí, Matisse, Miró and Bacon, among others.