ACQUISITION POLICY
By means of its historical collections, the Design Museum Brussels aims to preserve and promote 20th and 21st-century design, all the while interpreting and sharing the past, questioning the present, and reflecting on future perspectives.
The Plastic Design Collection, comprising 2,300 pieces, is a unique collection that explores the relationship between design and plastic materials, from the economic boom of the Golden Sixties to our new relationship with mass production, consumerism, and sustainability. Meanwhile, belgisch design belge looks at the formal experiments, innovations, and changes that have influenced the Belgian design landscape, in Belgium’s capital and at the heart of Europe.
Since the Design Museum Brussels’ opening, the collections have been developed both in line with the museum’s aspirations as well as its financial and logistical capacities. The Plastic Design Collection’s specificity and the unique panorama it offers of Belgian design history define how the collections are constantly being added to.
Our acquisition policy reflects the museum’s mission to preserve, document, and promote the historical, technological, and socio-cultural movements that are interrelated with each object in the museum’s collections. This archive of material culture documents the changing lifestyles and ways of interacting in our industrialised society, as well as the latter’s impact on production systems and housing.
The collections are expanded by acquiring pieces designed with synthetic materials. These demonstrate a diversity of formats and properties that exist in response to today’s technological and socio-environmental challenges. Particular attention is paid to acquiring pieces that reflect the current material landscape of design in Belgium, focusing on local creators, producers, and the figures who have contributed to the domain’s development, both nationally and internationally.
All suggestions for donations are welcome and will be examined by the museum’s teams based on the criteria set out in our acquisition policy.