Research

Under the banner of Ghent, playing field of the visual arts (1957–1987), a group of researchers put their heads together to create an overview of Ghent’s (institutional) art history from 1957 to 1987, and, where necessary, to flesh out or rewrite it.

WHY THIS PERIOD?

1957: the year Ghent’s Association for the Museum of Contemporary Art was founded, one year prior to the World’s Fair in Brussels.

1987: a year after Ghent’s ‘summer of art’, which included Chambres d’amis, Initiatief ’86, Initiative d’Amis and Antichambre.

The group’s research has spawned exhibitions, publications, a symposium and a film.

Ghent, playing field of the visual arts (1957–1987) was a research project at KASK & Conservatorium (HOGENT – Howest) by Godart Bakkers, Koen Brams, Wouter De Vleeschouwer, Sofie Frederix and Naninga Lens, funded by HOGENT’s Onderzoeksfonds Kunsten (Arts Research Fund).

 

Researchers

GODART BAKKERS (b. 1988) is a curator, film programmer and researcher with a focus on art and film and their intersections. Since 2023, he and Laura Herman have shared the role of artistic director at Netwerk Aalst. He teaches on the subject of artist’s texts at KASK & Conservatorium in Ghent and also organises the school’s KASKlezingen lecture series. In 2018 he co-founded Monokino, a collective that presents films, performances and art with a link to the sea, in the seaside location of Ostend. Bakkers has an extensive background in both art and film. As a film programmer, he has worked for several organisations, including the European Media Art Festival in Osnabrück. Since 2018, he has coordinated projects for art in the public space in Geraardsbergen.

KOEN BRAMS (1964) is an independent researcher, curator and publicist. He is former director of the Jan van Eyck Academy (2000–2011) and former editor-in-chief of the bimonthly magazine De Witte Raaf (1991–2000). He is the compiler of the Encyclopedie van fictieve kunstenaars (‘Encyclopedia of Fictional Artists’, Nijgh & Van Ditmar, 2000; Eichborn Verlag, 2003; JRP/Ringier, 2011). He is a member of the research group KB 45 (Art in Belgium after 1945, UGent) and editor-in-chief of Documenten & Argumenten, a magazine on the history of the S.M.A.K. in Ghent.

SOFIE FREDERIX (b. 1998) is an art historian and researcher. She has followed courses in Art Sciences at UGent, Curatorial Studies at KASK & Conservatorium Ghent and Archival Science at the VUB in Brussels. She is currently working on a doctoral project at Ghent University on the art scene in Ghent during the period 1976–1992. She is also part of the KB45 research group at the same university. In the past, she conducted research at M HKA as part of a project on the description of complex contemporary artworks. She has published in documenta and De Witte Raaf, and has participated in exhibitions at S.M.A.K. and KANAL – Centre Pompidou, among other places.

NANINGA LENS (b. 1992) is a researcher, writer and graphic artist. She has conducted research on the author and lawyer Jean Jacques Abrahams and the Dutch artist collective Instituut Houtappel. Her texts, translations and graphic contributions have been published in nY, Terras and DWB.

WOUTER DE VLEESCHOUWER (b. 1991) is an art historian, writer and curator. Among the places he has worked recent years is the S.M.A.K. in Ghent, where, as assistant curator, he contributed to projects such as oeuvre, the retrospective exhibition of painter Raoul De Keyser (2018–2019). He is currently working as a freelance researcher for S.M.A.K. on a monograph that spans the last decade of visual artist Philippe Van Snick’s life and work. De Vleeschouwer is also the founder of Convent, a non-profit space for contemporary art in Ghent, where he has organised around four projects a year since 2016.

External contributors

SIMON DELOBEL (b. 1981) is an art historian and curator. In 2020 he became the director of KIOSK, the space for contemporary art housed in, and associated with, KASK & Conservatorium. Delobel holds a master’s degree in art history and another in museology from the École du Louvre in Paris.

TOM VAN IMSCHOOT (b. 1978) is a lecturer, head of the Image research unit at LUCA School of Arts and honorary guest lecturer in the arts at KU Leuven. He attained his PhD at UGent as an FWO aspirant, conducting research on literary reading theory and bodily imagination. He subsequently spent a period at the Jan Van Eyck Academy and was a founding editor of the journal rekto:verso. In the arena of Ghent’s contemporary art world, he chairs the boards of Kunsthal Gent and 019, and also sits on the board of the arts centre CAMPO.

STEVEN JACOBS (b. 1967) is an art historian specialising in the relationships between film and visual art. He also studies various aspects of Belgian modern art, such as the oeuvre of Raoul De Keyser. His published works include The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock (2007), Framing Pictures: Film and the Visual Arts (2011), The Dark Galleries: A Museum Guide to Painted Portraits in Film Noir (2013), Screening Statues: Cinema and Sculpture (2017), The City Symphony Phenomenon: Cinema, Art, and Urban Modernity Between the Wars (2018) and Art in the Cinema: The Mid-Century Art Documentary (2020). He teaches at Ghent University and the University of Antwerp.

LISE VAN ACKER (b. 1999) is a doctoral researcher at the Centre for Literary and Intermedial Crossings (CLIC) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where she is working on the project Theatre of the Embodied Mind: Cognition in Contemporary British Audio Drama. She holds a master’s degree in Dutch and English language and literature (2021) and an advanced master’s degree in literature studies (2022). Her theses deal with the presentation of cognition in modernist and contemporary texts. She also holds a postgraduate degree in curatorial studies (2023).