The collection goes on display online

With chrysalis, the BPS22 is launching a new series of exhibitions that will spotlight a selection of the 8,000 works encompassed by the Province of Hainaut’s collection every summer. The successive per­spec­tives brought to this artistic treasure by its curators promise to reveal surprising inter­pre­ta­tions, given the collection’s remarkable breadth across periods and styles.

Alongside renowned works by Anna Boch, Cécile Douard, Edith Dekyndt, Andy Warhol, René Magritte, Marcel Broodthaers and Wim Delvoye, which are regularly lent to museums, lie works by lesser-known and sometimes even forgotten artists whose work also deserves to be shown. This is now set to change: whenever summer returns, the BPS22 will bring a fresh crop of paintings, sculptures, collages, instal­la­tions, videos and other works out from the silence of its stores. These pieces have rarely been shown and, in some cases, have never previously been exhibited. Brought together, arranged throughout the museum’s galleries and con­tex­tu­alised, they will form the threads of narratives that raise a host of contemporary questions.

While the BPS22 hopes to showcase a collection through this series, it also intends to give greater visibility to the artists working today who are represented within it. Bringing artworks into the spotlight means checking their condition and assessing whether restoration is required, exploring the practices of the women and men who created them and meeting those artists to document their work. It also means producing a corpus of texts, taking photographs for the archive and updating the inventory, before ultimately publishing the fruits of all this research and sharing them with researchers and the general public alike.

To walk through chrysalis. Summer Collection #1 is to spend time in our light-filled galleries in the company of 43 artists, the majority of whom are women. For a few weeks longer, they come together here as a family, united by the connections between their works and the many meanings of meta­mor­pho­sis. Entries describing each artist’s practice and one or more of their works are now available online on the BPS22 website. These articles are accompanied by photographs, most of which show the works in situ. 

The online inventory will be continually expanded to make information about hundreds of works available to everyone, including works connected with the Hainaut region and its history. All these creations embody the outcome of sincere research by visual artists working either at the margins or at the heart of artistic movements. Our new summer chapter will therefore seek to give artists greater prominence amid the prevailing gloom. 

If you would like to see the works selected to illustrate this article more closely — all of which feature the work of recent winners of the Hainaut Visual Arts Prize, they will be on display at the BPS22 until 30 August. Our visitor engagement team will be offering free guided tours and other activities during the family-friendly closing event for chrysalis, but please note that places are limited! 

The collections of the Province of Hainaut and the BPS22 can be viewed at any time at bps22​.be/​f​r​/​c​o​l​l​e​ction.