Marc Sleen museum and foundation to close

After 15 years, the Marc Sleen museum in Brussels shutting its doors. The ground floor and basement of the Maxime and Fernand Brunfaut building on Rue des Sables are to be sold. This will also mark the end of the Marc Sleen Foundation.

The charming museum’s prime position opposite Brussels’ iconic Comic Strip Museum and minimal entry fee – for years just a symbolic €1 – was sadly not enough to keep it going.

Sleen’s main creation. Sleen’s main creation, Nero, and other characters – Adhemar, Madame Pheip, Petoetje and Petatje, and detective Van Zwam featured at the museum. At the start, there were barely 3,000 visitors a year and later numbers were far short of the 25,000 target figure.

The Marc Sleen museum’s buyer, the Comic Strip Museum, will have to call the building Huis Marc Sleen for the next eight years, said Noël Slangen, chair of the foundation.

“During this time, comic-related activities will take place and Marc Sleen’s drawing studio in the basement should be accessible by appointment and at events.”

After this period, the Comic Strip Museum will be free to use the space however it wishes.

“It’s an ideal solution for them, because they’ve been struggling with a lack of space for a long time,” said Slangen.

This sale completes the 15-year history of the Marc Sleen Museum – built at the request of Sleen himself.

In the early 2000s, the author of the famous Nero albums, then in his eighties, was very concerned about the fate of cartoon characters after his death. He had no children and his artistic legacy risked being fragmented.

He approached the then minister of culture Bert Anciaux and, when that was unsuccessful, Guy Vanhengel, the minister responsible for the image of Brussels. A big Nero fan, Vanhengel accepted to support the project: “Brussels saw it as a trophy,” Slangen said.

In the run-up to the 2009 Year of the Comic Strip, the Brussels government released €725,000 and the Marc Sleen Foundation was created.

Sleen donated his archives and 15,000 original drawing plates in exchange for an annuity.

After this, with money from the region, the foundation bought and renovated the beautiful first floor and cellar of the former socialist newspaper Le Peuple at Rue des Sables, the Brunfaut brothers’ project, with the building located close to where Sleen made his first sketches of Nero in 1947.

The museum opened its doors on 18 June 2009 in pomp and circumstance – King Albert II and Sleen walked arm in arm on the big day.

The museum gave an overview of Sleen’s life and work and showed his popular characters along with temporary exhibitions. In addition, in 2017, a year after Sleen’s death, his studio moved from his Hoeilaart villa to the museum’s basement.

At the beginning of this parliamentary term, the new minister responsible for the museum, Sven Gatz, said he wanted to support the museum until 2022, which would have been Sleen's 100th birthday and Nero's 75th anniversary.

After that, the subsidy tap would be turned off – with the foundation receiving a substantial €200,000 a year.

A transition plan also had to be drawn up. In 2020, the foundation launched The Bright Yellow Cube. Under this initiative, young graduate comic book artists were offered a place at the museum to work on an album. But in summer last year, this scheme came to an end.

The foundation received its last grants of some €100,000 earlier this year, “supporting, among other things, the [1986-born Hasselt artist and author of the Jellyfish King] Brecht Evens exhibition, scheduled for next year, and two editions of young authors,” said Slangen.

The proceeds from the sale of the property will also be used to support young comic artists, exhibitions and events.

The foundation will be dissolved. Early in 2025, the copyright and rights to the Sleen figures will be released.

“They were bringing in between €20,000 and €60,000 a year. The foundation will be transformed into a fund of the King Baudouin Foundation, which will manage the original plaques,” Slangen said.

Meanwhile, Sleen’s widow, Catharina Kochuyt, hopes a place for Sleen’s studio will be found at Hoeilaart town hall. The current mayor was a friend of Sleen.

But Slangen said this rescue plan may not come off: “We have to be realistic. There are many comic strip artists in Belgium and they all have studios. There is not even room for Edgar P. Jacobs’ [the Brussels-born creator of Blake and Mortimer] drawing studio.”

And for Slangen, the curtain falling on the Marc Sleen Museum is not a disaster: “We have celebrated Marc Sleen’s centenary in depth, with various exhibitions and new book publications. Today, he has a place in our heritage. At some point, you have to be able to stop. Things evolve.”