Nick Cave's Ceramic Sympathy for the Devil
Salvo’s Radiant Ruins at Gladstone Gallery
Sterling Ruby’s Tug of War at Xavier Hufkens
Ocula Member Galleries are selected by a committee of respected gallerists to present only the best of contemporary art on Ocula.
Read MoreWhether you want to discover contemporary art created by established artists or by emerging talents, below you will find some of the best galleries across Brussels' vibrant art scene presenting a range of both.
With lower tax and rent compared to other European cities, Brussels is a favourable location for arts professionals, and is said to have the most collectors per capita in Europe. Across the city's 19 municipalities, each with its own distinct flare, numerous galleries are interwoven in streets lined with Art Nouveau buildings, quirky shops and cafés, museums, and other delights.
Among these is Ixelles, located south-east of the city centre, where Almine Rech is situated on Rue de l'Abbaye, around the corner from leafy Tenbosch Park. With bases in five other cities, including Shanghai, London, Paris, and New York, the gallery brings emerging and established international names to the city, with a particular focus in recent years on painters such as Chloe Wise and Huang Yuxing.
Around the corner from Almine Rech is the newest of Xavier Hufkens' three sites in the city, opened on rue St-Georges on the gallery's 35th anniversary in 2022, with exhibitions by Christopher Wool and Joe Bradley. Having opened his first gallery at the age of 22, Hufkens has long been invested in bringing cutting-edge shows to Brussels' audiences. In 2005, the gallery's roof was removed to airlift Erwin Wurm's Convertible Fat Car in to the space.
In the grand municipality of Sablon, neighbouring the Royal Palace of Brussels, cultural centre BOZAR, and Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Gladstone Gallery is situated near the gardens of the former palace, Egmont Park. The Belgian outpost of esteemed New York gallerist Barbara Gladstone, the gallery has recently featured exhibitions by Ugo Rondinone, Nick Mauss, and Keith Haring.
Across the Grand-Place, a UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Grand-Place home to Baroque guildhalls, Gothic town hall, and 17th-century buildings, native Brussels Galerie Greta Meert is situated on rue du Canal. Alongside Xavier Hufkens, Galerie Greta Meert was one of the first galleries to open in the city, currently occupying a five-story Art Nouveau building.
Brussels' trendy Saint-Gilles district is home to Paris-born gallery Templon. Initially establishing its identity through exhibiting conceptual and minimal artists such as Martin Barré, Christian Boltanski, and Donald Judd, the gallery has expanded its roster to include emerging and international names. Recent exhibitions featured in Brussels include Claude Viallat, Jean-Michel Alberola, and Franz Ackermann.
Explore current and upcoming exhibitions across Brussels' best galleries, institutions, and non-profit art spaces.
Read MoreAlongside a vast number of commercial galleries spread across the city, Brussels is also home to world-class museums and contemporary art centres.
Characteristic of the city's innovative flare is WIELS, which opened in 2007 in a former brewery designed by avant-garde architect Adrien Blomme in the 1930s. A stone's throw away from Gare du Midi, where trains pass from London to wider Europe, the institution features Belgian and international artists including Francis Alÿs, Phan Thao Nguyen, and Shezad Dawood.
Other contemporary art centres in the city include KANAL—Centre Pompidou, situated in a former Citroën garage. With its official opening scheduled for 2025, the multidisciplinary institution is delivering an eclectic range of cultural programmes in anticipation.
For an art history lesson in Flemish Masters, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium is home to over 20,000 artworks dating to the 15th-century. Nearby, Bozar is a vast cultural centre with theatre, music, art exhibitions, and a rooftop terrace designed by Brussels-based collective Every Island opening in 2023 that will feature outdoor cinema and musical events.
North of the city, Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte has his own dedicated museum, featuring 230 works and archives. Initially housed at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the Magritte Foundation opened the collection's own space in 2009.
Lovers of Art Deco can find an extraordinary example of the architecture style south of the city at the Villa Empain, a hub for arts and culture that was acquired by the Boghossian Foundation in 2006. Since 2010, it has featured exhibitions by artists including Chun Kwang Young, Jolien De Roo, a dual exhibition of Sarkis Zabunyan and Sergueï Paradjanov in commemoration of the Aermian Genocide in 2015, and a group exhibition of Korean Dansaekhwa artists in 2016.
Brussels' museums and institutions offer an exceptional arts and culture experience. Explore our selection of the best spaces to visit.
Ocula Magazine is an online platform dedicated to publishing the best in contemporary art internationally. Explore our in-depth conversations, insights, features, news stories, and photologs covering the Brussels arts scene here.
Read MoreSince its launch in 2010, Ocula Magazine has interviewed many leading Belgium artists, such as Luc Tuymans, Berlinde de Bruyckere, and Dirk Braeckman. Ocula also regularly publishes content on other leading artists, who show in the Belgium city.
In any given week, you can see the works of some of the world's most exciting artists in Brussels. Here you will find a selection of artists whose works are currently on show in the city.
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Brussels has propelled the careers of Belgian and international artists, with its renowned galleries and museums providing a global stage for seminal exhibitions. Artists who have recently held major exhibitions in the city include Francis Alÿs at WIELS (7 September 2023–7 January 2024), following his solo presentation at the Venice Biennale's Belgian Pavilion, as well as London-based artist Shezad Dawood, with a summer 2023 exhibition also on view at WIELS. Over at KANAL—Centre Pompidou, major presentations have included those by American artist Ericka Beckman (2019) and a site-specific work by Laure Prouvost covering the museum's exterior for a period of six months in 2023 as part of the institution's FAÇADE series. Tanya Goel, Omar Ba, Fabrice Samyn, Prune Nourry, Thomas Houseago, Bill Viola, and Chiharu Shiota are among the many top international artists who have had exhibitions at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts Belgium.
A number of art events throughout the year present opportunities to dive into the city's cultural offerings.
Read MoreAmong these, Brussels Gallery Weekend occurs each September, inviting galleries across the city to open their doors to the public. Recurring each year within the Weekend's OFF programme is Generation Brussels, which features young artists from the city who are not yet represented by galleries.
In the springtime, Art Brussels—the second-oldest art fair in Europe—brings together Belgian and international galleries, with the fair's presentation of SOLO booths platforming emerging artists. The city's second fair, BRAFA, was established in 1956 and features modern and contemporary art alongside antiques and fine art.
A 20-minute train ride from Brussels in Mechelen, the small city of Mechelen is host to the Contour Biennial of Moving Images, featuring film, video, and sound works.
At the heart of Europe, Brussels is a bustling, ever-changing city with a unique and highly active fine art scene. Over the centuries the Belgian capital has drawn European masters from Pieter Bruegel to Auguste Rodin, René Magritte, and Paul Delvaux. Heritage and UNESCO sites ranging from the medieval Grand-Place to 17th-century guild halls, a 19th-century stock exchange, iconic Art Nouveau and Art Deco town houses, and the futuristic Atomium building, amidst multiple green spaces define the urban landscape of this cosmopolitan cultural centre.
Read MoreFor a city at the heart of European politics and bureaucracy, Brussels' contemporary art scene is highly anarchistic and anti-authoritarian, defying categorisation and standardisation. Highly decentralised and diverse, there is no principal art district; instead, networks and groupings of various migrant and local contemporary artists and their collectors are scattered across the city's districts in all manner of spaces. Empty and abandoned spaces across the city have been transformed into places of art, with even major institutions such as Kanal—Centre Pompidou occupying former industrial spaces.
The city's contemporary art museums and institutions—the Musée Modern (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium), the Kanal, Wiels Contemporary Art Centre and Centrale for Contemporary Art—give just a small sample of the Brussels art world. An abundance of independent and alternative exhibition spaces and contemporary art galleries help Belgian and migrant artists find their own path. Galleries in Brussels like Templon, Xavier Hufkens, Galerie Greta Meert, Almine Rech, Office Baroque, and Rodolphe Janssen, as well as non-profits such as La Loge and Complot, and independent institutions such as the Millennium Iconoclast Museum of Art and the Boghossian Foundation (based in Villa Empain) act as the backbone to the city's contemporary art scene.
With one of the highest concentrations of collectors in Europe and a large number of galleries and independent art organisations that offer support and stability to newer artists, Brussels attracts a wealth of international artists, evident across the multi-cultural collaborations and exhibition spaces dotted across the city.
Major exhibitions are sometimes held at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, though rarely do all art circles converge in this manner. The principal exception is the Art Brussels contemporary art fair (established in 1968), when artists, galleries, and art lovers from all over Brussels and overseas converge in one place. Other smaller alternative art fairs have arisen in recent years, including Art Truc Troc, the Affordable Art Fair, Independent, and Poppositions. These independent efforts attempt to alter gallery hierarchies and provide further space for emerging talent.
Image: Grand Place 1-7 during civil twilight, Brussels. Photo: Trougnouf (Benoit Brummer) (CC BY-SA 4.0).
