Boijmans Van Beuningen Depot

Again we find ourselves in a different part of the city. The area around the Museumpark is a concentration district for art lovers. Kunsthal, Nieuwe Instituut, Chabot, Sonneveld. You can easily spend a day admiring buildings here. We stroll around the Depot. It was built to provide a new home for the art collection of Boijmans Van Beuningen and to show a larger part of that collection to the public. Even before the opening in 2021, the building received both praise and criticism. It has certainly become an icon, but one that claims its place in the park with elbow grease.

Meanwhile, Boijmans Van Beuningen itself, on the other side of the square, is still far from open. The characteristic brick building from the 1930s has been undergoing transformation since 2019. Mecanoo designed the plan. The stakes are high. The budget was adjusted this summer to 359 million euros, and the opening has now been postponed to 2030. Back on our bikes, we pay a final tribute to the extension of the Ghent firm Robbrecht and Daem, a long museum wing (cost: 17 million euros), which will soon be demolished after barely seventeen years.

De Standaard