BELGISCH DESIGN BELGE

In September 2020, the Design Museum Brussels opened a new permanent exhibition space dedicated to Belgian design and its history. To question the history, role, variety, audiences and actors of modern and contemporary Belgian design, BELGISCH DESIGN BELGE is conceived as a laboratory in the form of pop-ups that will follow one another over time. Pieces from the museum's permanent collection of plastic objects are currently in dialogue with pieces from the King Baudouin Foundation's design collection. Proposing a dialogue that is as unexpected as it is challenging, the chronologies, typologies and function intertwine and invite us to reflect on the status of the object, the relationship we have with design and its everyday use. From Art Nouveau to today's creation, via post-war functionalism, this exhibition explores, among other things, the work of designers and the production of Belgian companies and publishing houses. Among these designers and producers are: Gustave Serrurier-Bovy, Huib Hoste, Jacques Dupuis, Willy Van Der Meeren, Jules Wabbes, Maarten Van Severen, Meurop, Alain Gilles, Christophe Gevers, ...

As announced at the opening, this space will regularly host new pieces to feed and enrich the subject. From next March, 5 new pieces will join this first edition of BELGISCH DESIGN BELGE: 

• A standing lamp made in the 1950s, a less known work by Marcel-Louis Baugniet,
• Renaat Braem's chair designed for a showroom in Antwerp in the early 1950s,
• The armchair in the lobby of the Brussels National Airport in 1958, an emblematic piece by Alfred Hendrickx and a nod to the museum at Expo 58 and the Atomium,
• Between Belgian know-how and contemporary creation, the Inner Light lamp by Nathalie Dewez, a 2017 collaboration with the Val-Saint-Lambert,
• The chair with its G-C ottoman. Van Rijk, which offers the opportunity to rediscover and enhance the work of the latter. It is one of his classics representative of the Belgian creation of the 1970s.

Also of note: the exhibition will operate in a participatory mode as soon as the context allows, inviting visitors to contribute to the reflection on the characteristics of "made in Belgium" design and the evolution of this space.

This exhibition has been made possible thanks to the support of the King Baudouin Foundation and the National Lottery.