Brussels buys Citroën building for new modern art museum

The agreement itself does not solve the impasse between the Brussels-Capital Region and the federal government. The latter is insistent on returning the country’s modern art collection to the original museum, part of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts complex. That would leave Vervoort with very little to populate the new museum he wants to establish in the canal area as part of a canal area redevelopment.

Opinions also differ on the use of the Citroën building (pictured). Last month a debate organised by Groen-Ecolo saw proposals to turn the Art Deco site into an urban factory, an artists’ village of workshops and studios, a cultural centre with public space and a business centre incorporating an architecture school.

Vervoort’s museum would occupy the ground floor space currently used as a car showroom, the most public part of the building. Question marks also hang over the suitability of the building as a museum. The five-storey glass façade, for example, is made of single glazing, which is not sufficient for a museum interior but which would require the permission of the federal monuments authority to renovate.

“With an enormous investment in sun blinds and climate control, that problem could be solved,” heritage consultant Leon Smets told Brussel Deze Week. “But that would be contrary to the whole gigantic display window concept of this glass and steel architecture. It would require so much money one has to wonder if it would not be better to just build a whole new building altogether.”

Photo courtesy De Standaard