The New York Times goes further with the Brussels gallery scene suggesting the country’s crazy quilt of cultures, collecting tradition, proximity to London & Paris and cheap living, working and retail space makes it all the ideal spot for an art capital of the future:
Unlike Berlin, where art is made but generally not bought, or Paris, where it’s often the opposite, Brussels is a city of both commerce and creation. Artists are drawn by rents still vastly cheaper than those in Paris or London, which are both easily reached by high-speed rail. Since 2006, nearly 50 galleries have opened in Brussels, according to a spokeswoman for Art Brussels, the city’s annual art fair. (Even with the gallery boom, the rents have stayed low, artists and gallerists say.)
Belgium has a strong collecting tradition — Flemish collectors in particular are seen as among the most daring in the world, with sophisticated taste and a disdain for art consultants — and a recent influx of rich French tax fugitives who have changed their residency to Belgium has helped business. (France has a “wealth tax” on assets worth more than $1.45 million, something that does not exist in Belgium.)
In April, Independent, the New York-based alternative art fair, will hold its first Brussels edition, in conjunction with Art Brussels. Elizabeth Dee, a founder of Independent, offered a theory about the city’s thriving art scene. “Brussels lacks a dominant culture,” she said, chatting in Independent’s Brussels office, a top-floor atelier with skylights in a compound near the imposing Palais de Justice filled with other art galleries. (In another sign of the times, Independent will be held next year in a former office of the failed Dexia bank.)
That Belgium is a complicated, tiny country, deeply divided between Flemish and French-speaking, Catholic and Protestant, sets Brussels apart from other continental European capitals, including Paris or Berlin, whose cultural life can be more insular and more dependent on the tone — and financing — of state-run institutions. “We’re completely parallel societies,” said Dirk Snauwaert, the artistic director of Wiels. “You have to have a Ph.D. to understand what’s going on here.”
Brussels Making a Strong Bid for Art (The New York Times)
