An exhibition in the Arentshuis in Bruges might help to explain. Or might not. Van Geluwe has been given several rooms in this neoclassical building to set out The Museum of Museums. The main part of the show is an installation of hundreds of postcards illustrating museums across the world. These were sent to Van Geluwe in response to a crude typewritten request he sends out to museum curators, asking for a picture of their museum and an official stamp of the institution. His aim, he says, is to revive the art of communication through letter writing.

Van Geluwe was born in Waregem, West Flanders, in 1929 and lives there still. He studied as an architect but later turned to art, and so calls himself an ARTchitect. Over the years, he has gained considerable international standing because of his cabinet-of-curiosity installations and impressive artistic integrity (he sells nothing). They admire him in Germany, while Belgian critics began to take him more seriously following the Visionary Belgium exhibition put together in 2003 by the late Swiss curator Harald Szeemann, in which Van Geluwe was given an entire room.

The Arentshuis exhibition shows off his various obsessions: collecting silver trophies, corresponding with far-flung people, creating mock official documents, assembling fictitious museums. He’s a bit old-fashioned, perhaps, for today’s overheated art market, but he is a generous, curious, always probing artist. He leaves you smiling, even if you are not exactly sure at what.

Until 27 September, Arentshuis, Dijver 16, Bruges
online
www.museabrugge.be