Art nouveau versus Art Déco? 1850–1950: a century in 31 seats

You start with two armchairs side by side: one by Victor Horta, in the Art Nouveau that built this house, and one in Art Deco, designed for Brussels' Palais des Beaux-Arts. The curators' bet is that two styles usually sold as opposites have more in common than their labels suggest.

From there, 31 seats from 1850 to 1950 stand in pairs and small groups beside archive documents. The first half runs by date, from Paul Hankar and Mackintosh to Le Corbusier and Marcel Breuer. The second sorts by idea: visible structure, carved flowers, borrowings from Japan, bentwood and tubular steel, rural craft. Lenders include the Musée d'Orsay and the Vitra Design Museum.

That is 31 chairs you can't sit on, so La Cambre's industrial design students were asked for the opposite: seats for visitors to rest on inside Horta's house. The show is free, but the house visit is paid and booked online. It opens at 14:00 Tuesday to Friday and 11:00 at weekends, last entry 17:00.