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Brussels Is the New Berlin; Brussels Is the New Paris

July 17, 2015 by Marion Maneker

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)

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