112 ANTWERP & ROTTERDAM
century Europe was inextricably tied to the continent’s pursuit of global power. Te historian Richard J Evans’ sweeping history Te Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815–1914 lays bare a century of freedom and oppression, progress and misrule, when the Belgian exploitation of the Congo was particularly brutal, just as ‘violence lay at the heart of the British Empire’. Ideas about racial superiority were central to the imperial project of European nations. Te Congolese zoo is part of the KMSKA’s history and today the museum sincerely regrets its part in this painful and unedifying episode. It is currently working on a historical event planned for 2024, 130 years after the World Exhibition, with a view to commemorating the victims and enshrining their history in the future.
By 1925 the museum was yet again deemed too small and four internal courtyards were covered over to create additional gallery space. Te building was bombed during the war after
which it fell into disrepair. Large-scale renovations began in 1976 followed by the first blockbuster exhibition: a grandiose ‘Rubens Year’. Te Flemish government architect Bob van Reeth issued an open call to draw up a master plan for the KMSKA in 2003 and the Rotterdam architectural practice KAAN was first commissioned in 2006. Finally, in 2011 the museum was ready to put the master plan into practice. Closed for 11 years, it reopened again in 2022 having spent €105m. From the outside, apart from the cleaning, it is difficult to see what all the fuss is about. Yet the Museum has reinvented itself. Seven centuries of fine art are on show in a completely new setting. However, where there once was one museum, visitors now find two. Two completely different art worlds, each with a distinct identity, one inside the other. Classical art in a classical building, modern and contemporary work in a slick white cube. Dikkie Scipio was responsible for this legerdemain.
Left Collections are connected via circulation staircases in order to better showcase artworks
Scipio is one of the original partners of KAAN, a firm founded in 2014 by her together with Kees Kaan and Vincent Panhuysen. Tey have now expanded with offices in São Paulo (2015) and Paris (2019). A few years ago, Scipio gave a lecture about the shifting position of architecture within the scope of all arts, woven through the story of Notre-Dame de Paris. She began with Victor Hugo and Te Hunchback of Notre Dame, in which the author made a plea for restoration of the cathedral. Tis was in 1830. In the book, he demonstrated a thorough and detailed knowledge of architecture and had formed a passionate opinion about the damage done by the academies, professors and ‘certain individuals that have adopted the title of the architect’. (Te Palais de Justice in Brussels would only have confirmed Hugo’s position.) KMSKA is something rather different. Like something from a forgotten age, the 19th-century building had been conceived as a “daylight museum”. Not only that but a “temple to the arts” with nods to Greek and Roman architecture, its original interior had vaulted ceilings, oak mouldings and walls painted in lush, dark hues. However, the open courtyards, with their large skylights that were all too briefly made into galleries, over time became closed in and filled with administrative offices and studios manned by restorers conserving the artworks. During the 20th century, the building continued to undergo fundamental changes in layout, modifications to the original circulation routes and its connection with the city. KAAN aimed to reverse all the earlier changes by combining a thorough renovation of the historic museum with a contemporary extension completely concealed within the existing structure, turning the old courtyards into exhibition spaces and reinstating the skylights to let in natural light. Making a connection with the outside world by allowing daylight in is such a rare thing in a museum these days that this is a real delight.
Scipio has also added two exhibition halls on the roof. By completely overhauling the building, she has restored the intrinsic qualities of the space, reinstating original colours, materials and routing within the historic halls. Visitors walk through an enfilade of exhibition rooms painted dark pink, green and red; oak doors, tall columns and ceiling ornaments in plasterwork convey a feeling of ancient grandeur. Meanwhile, hidden in the heart of the old building, a new vertical museum arises as a completely autonomous entity built within the four original patios. With bright white exhibition halls, hidden rooms, long staircases, far- reaching sight lines and varying gradations of daylight, the new museum charts a route full of surprising vertical experiences. Wherever the new extension cuts the museum’s solid mass, subtle marble inlays have been added, echoing the elegant 19th-century museum’s materials. Tese contrasting entities coexist as two different worlds in one building, unveiling themselves little by little. Te experience is
OSSIP VAN DUIVENBODE
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