Presentation of the project’s main actors
The Kanal Foundation
Created by the Brussels-Capital Region, the KANAL Foundation’s first mission is to successfully carry out the conversion of the Citroën garage located on Place de l’Yser into a major cultural hub of the capital of Europe. The site will host a museum of modern and contemporary art (in partnership with the Centre Pompidou), a museum of architecture (in partnership with the CIVA Foundation) as well as many public spaces devoted to the performing arts, screenings, debates and leisure.
By becoming the largest cultural institution of Brussels, the KANAL Foundation seeks to promote modern and contemporary art, as well as architecture, through the creation of exhibitions and the display of varied artistic practices. Throughout its mission, it will pay close attention to research and to projects intended to make contemporary art more accessible to the general public.
Brussels having become a major centre of artistic creation, the KANAL Foundation will also ensure the promotion of Brussels-based artists. For the constitution of the first part of its collection, it has called on artists from the Brussels scene and will develop this vision in the future.
The Centre Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou is a major multidisciplinary cultural institution. Housed in Paris in an iconic architectural design by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, the Centre Pompidou hosts one of the world’s most important museums, home to the leading collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe as well as to a research library on art from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Throughout the year, the Centre Pompidou presents a programme of films, shows and educational activities. It is also associated with a public reading library and a musical research institute (IRCAM). Currently consisting of more than 120,000 works, the collection of the Musée national d’art moderne constitutes, within the Centre Pompidou, a global reference for art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. From the great historic funds to the latest acquisitions, the collection of the Musée national d’art moderne covers visual arts, photography, experimental cinema, new media, architecture, design and industrial planning.
An exchange platform between society and contemporary art, the Centre Pompidou is a resolutely popular centre that welcomes more than 3 million visitors each year. Working in close collaboration with creators from all disciplines, its mission is to offer an ever-broader public the keys to understanding art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
BRUSSELS’ ARCHITECTURE CENTRE CIVA
CIVA is a museum, an archive centre, a library, a place to meet and debate, for all people that are passionate about contemporary and modern architecture, landscape architecture and urban ecosystems in Brussels. The centre organises exhibitions, lectures, debates, guided tours, book launches and activities for children, all throughout the year. All CIVA events take place in Ixelles, near Flagey, and at KANAL-Centre Pompidou.