Room 54: Recent acquisitions

You get a theatre in miniature with an Antwerp street built inside it. Thomas Verstraeten restaged a scene from his hometown on a stage, with a commissioned score and live performers, and turned it into the video Urbi et Orbi (2024). This scale model came to the museum through the 2025 Art Brussels Discovery Acquisition Prize, a purchase budget of up to €10,000.

Room 54 is where the museum shows what it has bought or been given lately. Its stated aims are more women artists, more artists from outside Europe, and more video art, much of it thanks to donors and the artists themselves. Liliane Vertessen, Thomas Houseago and Chéri Samba hang alongside Verstraeten.

No critic has reviewed the display, so go for a look at where the collection is heading. It is in the Old Masters Museum on Rue de la Régence and included with the collections ticket (13 EUR adult, under-18s free).