DESIGN MUSEUM GHENT REOPENS WITH A BANG

NEW WING, NEW BEGINNING

For four years, the doors of Design Museum Gent stayed closed. On 3 and 4 October, the renovated city palace opens again: not just as an exhibition space, but as a meeting place for makers, tourists and Ghent residents alike.

Don't expect a classic museum opening with bubbles and canapés, but a city festival in which design pops up in unexpected places. From brunch and concerts to bouncy castles, yoga, flash tattoos and experimental installations: Design Museum Gent invites people not only to look at design, but to experience it.

Outside the museum walls, on Sunday you can browse the Design Makers Market, where 60 creatives show and sell their work. And under the banner of Design Fest Gent, you'll find a design trail across various locations in Ghent all week long.

The kick-off of this big opening week? On Friday 2 October, there is a party for all Ghent residents in the inner garden and in the streets around the museum, including a big surprise.

“It's going to be a real party for everyone,” says Kaj Zwerver enthusiastically. He was part of the citizens' panel DE40, which helps think about the future of the museum. And he will soon become a guide there. According to Kaj, the programme reflects exactly what the forty Ghent residents insisted on: a museum that doesn't just appeal to tourists, but also to the city's inhabitants. “We wanted a place that steps outside its own walls.”

His route is already set. On Sunday he has breakfast in the museum's inner garden, where Studio CoPain and several Ghent bakers serve a brunch together. Then he heads to Bar Edward on the Vrijdagmarkt, where designers such as Victor Rooms give furniture a second life. Allez, Vaches Allez! by Lodie Kardouss is also high on his list. There, visitors receive earrings with their own national register number, a reference to the identification of animals in the bio-industry. “A work like that chafes,” he says. “But precisely because of that, it makes you think.”

BOUNCY CASTLES

Artist Shirley Villavicencio Pizango has also planned her programme. She sends music lovers to the museum, where the Ghent duo Lander & Adriaan make jazz and electronics collide. Prefer something more subdued? Then she recommends the acoustic set by Natasha Pirard.

She herself presents an artistic bouncy castle with fish and vases on the Korenlei. “I see vases as holders of culture, tradition and festive moments,” she says. “So perfect for the opening weekend.”

Anyone who would rather escape the crowds for a moment can head to another bouncy castle, Puffy Portal by Loulou João. “It's a low-stimulus place where visitors can withdraw completely for a while,” says the artist, who is herself interested in the willow weaving workshop by Jaron Van de Velde and Ida Bomm.

The varied opening programme shows what a design museum can be today.

TATTOOS

In a way, the museum is returning to its origins. When it was founded in 1903, it was already not a classic museum but a model museum: a place where craftspeople went to be inspired by leading furniture and textiles, at a time when industrialisation was shaking up the crafts.

More than a hundred years later, craftsmanship is under pressure again. This time because of rapid digitalisation. And the museum wants to take on a guiding role once more. The permanent exhibition holds a lot that is new, but old objects are also being reappraised. “We have brought forgotten historical objects back to light,” says collection researcher Sam Meirlaen. “For example, we are showing a neo-Flemish Renaissance oak cabinet, once one of the museum's showpieces.”

Archive material also gets a prominent role for the first time. Letters, drawings and design plans show how ideas took shape.

During the opening weekend, Meirlaen is therefore most looking forward to the unveiling of the new collection presentation. And to the flash tattoos by Doe ta ni tattoe, with which visitors can literally carry objects from the collection presentation on their skin.

A LIVING IDENTITY

It wasn't just the presentation that was rethought. Even the new visual identity refuses to stand still. Where heritage institutions usually have their visual identity designed by a single studio, the museum chose, together with art collective 019, to set up its own Graphic Design Studio, where young designers from KASK and LUCA School of Arts build on the museum's visual identity every year.

“So no sterile visual identity,” says Valentijn Goethals of art collective 019. “But a living identity that is constantly changing. It's not the easiest way to shape a visual identity, but it is the most interesting.”

Perhaps that's why he is most looking forward to Public Matter(s): Design and Democracy, the opening exhibition on democracy, action and participation. “I think it's brave of the museum to open with an exhibition that isn't always easy,” he says. “It asks for time and invites you to reflect on how we live together.”

DESIGN CITY

That open attitude doesn't stop at the museum door. After the opening weekend, too, the museum remains part of a broader design city. Artist Victor Verhelst, who recommends the yoga session with Giel Vandecaveye and the live broadcast of Radio Ruit, sees the reopening as a celebration of everything that makes Ghent and its surroundings creative today. “It's amazing to see how much input and international flair there is in such a small place,” he says.

Verhelst made a monumental textile work inspired by the new exhibition. An ode to the rich textile industry that is still present in Belgium, but threatens to disappear because of production abroad.

“Burger King, Zara, McDonald's... The same chains pop up everywhere,” he says. “Whereas traditional craftsmanship gives a city its own face. I want to inspire people to buy local.”

In his classes at LUCA School of Arts, he notices that students are turning back to physical materials. “They experiment with different kinds of paper and textile,” he says. “After years of digitalisation, the tactile is becoming important again.”

According to Shirley Villavicencio Pizango, you can see that evolution even outside art institutions. “You see it everywhere in Ghent,” she says. “Hospitality entrepreneurs think about their interior, their chairs, even the typeface of their menu. People pay much more attention to design than they used to.”

BORDERLESS

Perhaps that is ultimately the core of the renewed Design Museum Gent. Not that it got a new wing. Not that it got bigger. But that it no longer keeps design inside the museum rooms.

During the opening weekend, design shows up just as easily in a centuries-old cabinet, an experimental installation or a debate. As if the museum wants to say that design doesn't begin behind plexiglass, but in everyday life. Or as Loulou João puts it so well: “For me, design doesn't need fixed boundaries. Working with illustration, ceramics, furniture, film, textiles. For me it all flows into one another.”