Cultural Compass: Public artworks' new home, rage at the museum and haunting chamber opera

18 January 2026

Every Sunday, Belga English picks its favourite events from the cultural agenda. This week: A comprehensive online guide to Antwerp’s outdoor art, a space to release and repair anger in the museum and an intimate opera that explores belonging.

Art in the City Collection, Antwerp & online

The City of Antwerp has opened up its streetscape like never before, launching a comprehensive online database that brings together its entire collection of public artworks. Titled Art in the City, the platform offers digital access to more than 300 works, allowing residents and visitors to explore sculptures, monuments and installations that are often passed daily but rarely paused over.

Each artwork is presented with professional photographs, practical information and a concise explanatory text. These short biographies outline how a piece entered the city’s collection, the story or theme it represents, and the artist behind it. From well-known monuments to overlooked details in neighbourhood squares, the database reveals the layered histories embedded in Antwerp’s public space.

Navigation is designed to invite curiosity. Users can browse alphabetically, explore via an interactive city map, or search by theme and subset. Clusters such as Animal and Folklore Sculptures, Who’s Who?, dedicated to statues of historical figures, and War and Peace, focusing on remembrance and coexistence, offer new ways of reading the city. The platform also suggests walking routes that link artworks into themed strolls.

“Art in the City literally and figuratively makes people pause,” says councillor Lien Van de Kelder. “There are no barriers: it's free and accessible to everyone, and it brings people together. I'm thrilled that our impressive and unique public art collection is now also available digitally through the online database. After all, the more Antwerp residents know about the many art treasures in our city, the better.”

10 Years of S.M.A.K. Moves, until 1 February, Ghent

At the heart of 10 Years of S.M.A.K. Moves is an installation that tunes into one of the most human emotions: anger. B.O.O.S. S.M.A.K. H.O.O.P. invites visitors to engage directly with frustration and transformation through an art lens.

This project explores how hope can emerge because of a blow, not despite it. On designated afternoons, visitors are encouraged to bring along a breakable object such as a plate, mug, glass or vase and smash it inside the museum under supervision. These collective “throwing moments” are not about chaos, but about externalising aggression in a shared, constructive space.

Over the course of the exhibition, the resulting shards are carefully glued back together, allowing visitors to help create new sculptures from the fragments. These assemblages become symbolic objects of desire, expectation and even joy, reminding the public that something beautiful or hopeful can be born from rupture.

À l’extrême bord du monde, 23 January, La Monnaie, Brussels

À l’extrême bord du monde explores deep questions of belonging, creativity and the human spirit through powerful vocal writing and intimate chamber textures. Composed by Belgian Harold Noben with a libretto by Jacques De Decker, the piece revisits the final days of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig and his wife Lotte in exile in Petrópolis, Brazil during the Second World War. Far from their “spiritual homeland”, the couple wrestle with despair, love and the weight of history, ultimately choosing to end their lives together.

Premiered in 2020, this poignant work for mezzo, tenor and piano quartet returns in a concertante format performed by musicians from the La Monnaie Orchestra. Marie-Juliette Ghazarian, MM Laureate, sings the role of Lotte, with Valentin Thill as Stefan.

Ongoing events

Antwerp

Early Gaze: Unseen Photography from the 19th Century
Danial Shah: Becoming, Belonging and Vanishing
Magritte: La ligne de vie

Brussels

Brussels, la Congolaise
Loisirs-Plezier: Brussels 1920-1940
MAURICE: Tristesse et rigolade
Fire

Ghent

Fairground Wonders
Marc De Blieck: Point de voir
Monique Gies: Inside Views

Hasselt

Rococo Reboot
Michael Beutler