NY Times charmed by Brussels arts scene

With cheap spaces, a friendly scene and a thoughtful audience, Brussels’ arts scene is making some noise, writes the New York Times’ Jim Lewis. “The Belgian system is more flexible than the French,” says Almine Rech-Picasso, who moved from Paris in 2006, bringing with her a branch of her deluxe and well-established gallery. “It’s a more easygoing city than many cities in Europe.” However, she added: “If you had asked me fifteen years ago if I would move to Brussels, I would have said you were crazy.” Brussels is home to fantastic collections in private hands, many drawn from Belgium’s traditions of intellectual, contrary and difficult art: Ensor and Magritte, along with lesser-known movements like Les XX and Cobra and prominent conceptualists like Marcel Broodthaers. Yet there’s no permanent collection in town to take them, no way for the city to inherit its own riches. Everyone in the Brussels art world mentions it almost immediately: the city, alone among similarly cultured European capitals, has no museum of contemporary or even 20th-century art. Brussels’ Museum of Modern Art closed in early 2011 to make way for a new museum focused on the turn of the century.