New De Reede museum is Antwerp’s home of graphic arts
Works by Edvard Munch, Félicien Rops and Francisco Goya get top billing at Museum De Reede, founded by collector and Brussels-based expat Harry Rutten
Spotlight on the greats
Set beside the river Scheldt and Het Steen castle, the museum is the brainchild of Harry Rutten from the Netherlands, who made his fortune with Transpetrol, a ship-owning company that transports oil and gas.
Last year, the company established the De Reede Foundation to create a museum to house Rutten’s world-class art collection – mostly graphic works by Francisco Goya, Edvard Munch and Félicien Rops.
Rutten’s friend, interior design architect Jean-Claude Lerouge, led the conversion of the former commercial premises, alongside Antwerp’s Studio 22 Architects and Dendermonde engineering firm Artex.
The result is a sleek, minimal space with deft nods to Antwerp’s heritage – including a hefty wooden entrance door recalling the port’s old lock gates.
‘Here we are’
According to Rutten, the choice of Antwerp was somewhat haphazard. “If you have a vision of a home for your collection and then you stumble on a building like this, where you immediately see the potential, that’s the decisive moment,” he says.
The museum is in the historic centre of Antwerp. “It’s a prime area,” says Rutten. “If someone comes here and their partner doesn’t like it, in three minutes they can be on the Grote Markt, having a beer. It’s a real advantage. Plus you have a big population within a 150-kilometre radius.”
It was an incredible day when Harry Rutten called me. It was too good to be true – but here we are
Whatever the motive, the city has welcomed the gift. “For me it was an incredible day when Harry Rutten called me,” mayor Bart de Wever recalls. “He introduced himself as a Dutchman who had made money in oil and wanted to present his art to the public by buying a building and creating a museum all at his own expense. It was too good to be true – but here we are.”
While graphic art masters Rops, Goya and Munch have permanent displays on the second-floor mezzanine, a ground-floor exhibition space holds works by artists from the 17th to the 21st centuries. The Flemish contingent counts Rik Wouters and Eugeen Van Mieghem, whose namesake museum lies next door.
A bleak view of mankind
This street-level space will host three or four temporary exhibitions a year. First up is Norwegian artist Ole Jørgen Ness, who in autumn will create a monumental mural paying homage to 19th-century non-conformist Rops.
In total the 300m2 exhibition space holds roughly 200 works, spanning prints, woodcuts, lithographs, drawings and etchings. Only a few have gallery labels, and there are no information panels – letting the art do all the talking.
Rutten, who is now retired, amassed much of his collection while on business trips. In the 1980s, with Norway in the grips of a recession, he began snapping up relatively cut-price graphic works by Munch.
That same decade he was converted to Rops when he happened to catch a show of his works in Brussels. He moved to Brussels soon after. By 2006, he had enough pieces by both artists for the travelling show Rops-Munch Man-Woman, which drew 100,000 visitors in Brussels, Seoul and Tonsberg, Norway.
Goya within reach
Museum De Reede showcases 25 works by Munch – mostly lithographs, but also two etchings with his recurring Madonna motif. Each is more intense than the next, echoing the despair of his celebrated painting “The Scream”.
Thirty works apiece by Rops and Goya, seen as the father of modern art, take an equally bleak view of the human condition.
Whatever type of art you’re into, Antwerp is the place to be
While Rops’ erotic etchings explore sex and death, Goya’s formative 80-strong print series Los Caprichos (1797-1798), of which Rutten holds a complete set, mercilessly catalogues the follies of Spanish society.
Despite the fame of Munch and Goya, many won’t know their graphic works – or even the genre as a whole. Rutten, who sees Munch’s lithographs as superior to his painting, has never collected anything else.
“It’s much more available and of course much more affordable than, for instance, oil paintings,” he says. “You can find a Goya graphic for less than €1,000.”
The place to be
While Museum De Reede doesn’t benefit from government subsidies, in its first year it has received financial support from around 20 sponsors – mainly Belgian companies and art lovers – which Rutten values for the moral as much as the material support. In place of the usual professional staff, 50 or so local volunteers will oversee the running of the space.
“The foundation that runs the museum definitely has funds to establish it and get it going, but from an economic point of view it has to be sustainable,” says Rutten. “Ideally it has to be supported by revenue from entrance fees and we aim to build this up over the next five years.”
In the meantime, it’s already a major asset for Antwerp, says De Wever. “It perfectly fits in with a very strong cluster that we already have with our open-air Middelheim sculpture museum, our classical art museums with Rubens, and our contemporary art museums.”
When you combine it all, he adds, “whatever type of art you’re into, Antwerp is the place to be.”
Ernest Van Dijckkaai 7, Antwerp
Photo: "Vampire II" by Edvard Munch (1895/1902)
