Activities

Apart from museum visits The Van Mieghem Museum and the Foundation also organize other activities. We offer guided tours of the Shipowners’ House (see also page Museum), guided City Tours and PowerPoint lectures. Please find more details below. We equally advise our current Van Mieghem exhibition as well as a visit to our partner museum The Red Star Line.

Visiting in group

Collaboration with
the Red Star Line Museum

Those wishing to visit the museum and Het Redershuis can only do so with a guide. A guided visit takes in the ground floor and the first and second floors where you can view the collection relating to the First World War and the Red Star Line. A visit led by our knowledgeable guide lasts approximately two hours.

The visit can be arranged either during or outside normal opening times, in the morning, afternoon or evening, but should be requested well in advance. The minimum charge is 110 euros for a group of up to and including 20 people. For each person above 20, there is an extra charge of 4 euros. Groups of up to a maximum of 50 people are accepted.

Current exhibition

There are at the moment no exhibitions. Please follow this page to remain updated.

The Eugeen Van Mieghem Foundation is a partner in the Red Star Line Museum where 12 works of art by the artist are permanently on show in a constantly changing display.

Among other things, that display draws on the superb collection of 613 drawings owned by the City of Antwerp and housed in the Print Room (Plantin-Moretus Museum).

A guided tour of the Red Star Line Museum lasts 1 ½ hours. A guided tour of the Van Mieghem Museum lasts 2 hours. So a combination of the two museums makes the perfect day-out.

The two museums are 1.5 km apart. During the 20-minute walk along the Scheldt quays, you will discover more vestiges of the Red Star Line and of Eugeen Van Mieghem.

http://www.redstarline.be/en/geolocation-overview/red-star-line-museum-in-de-stad

The Emigrant statue based on a drawing by Eugeen Van Mieghem stands on the Rijnkaai, en route between the two museums.

Guided tours and group visits require separate bookings with the two museums. For more information about guided tours at the Red Star Line Museum, go to: http://www.redstarline.be/en/content/organize-group-visit

Powerpoint talk

The Foundation offers lectures on different themes regarding the artist Eugeen Van Mieghem and the City of Antwerp, where he used to live. Please find details below. If you are interested, please contact the Museum using the contact references at the bottom of the page.
Price per talk 110 euros. The talk can be given in the applicant’s chosen location (subject to a small additional fee when it is outside the province). It can also be combined with a visit to the Van Mieghem Museum and Het Redershuis, or the Red Star Line Museum or a walk.

Powerpoint talk family Franck

By 1900, Antwerp was a European centre of growth and the port had undergone extraordinary expansion. Just as had happened in the 16th Century, Antwerp began to attract migrants from surrounding countries. The German community in Antwerp was close to 20,000 strong before the First World War. As a group they relied greatly on the local, generally liberal, francophone middle classes. At the beginning of the 20th Century one particular Antwerp family played a prominent role in several areas of public life.
They undertook numerous initiatives, the outcome of which would have a municipal, national and even international impact. The business man and patron of the arts Frans (François) Franck was the driving force. Frans' and his brother Charles' donations of masterpieces by James Ensor, Rik Wouters, Jacob Smits, Henri de Braekeleer and others to the KMSKA constitute a highlight in their collection. Their elder brother, Louis, was one of the most important Belgian politicians of his generation (Alderman, Member of Parliament, Minister and Governor of the National Bank).
After the Second World War, their descendants scattered across Europe, Asia and The USA. James Ensor's masterpiece "The Entry of Christ into Brussels" was sold to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles by Louis Franck jr. around 1975. His daughter Martine was Henri Cartier-Bresson's wife. In November 2015 the family drew renewed international attention for a while when a part of the family collection (with works by Van Gogh, Picasso, Chagall, Toulouse-Lautrec and others) was auctioned at Sotheby's in New York.

The talk is illustrated with almost 200 pictures and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

Powerpoint talk Augustine Pautre

Eugeen Van Mieghem is well-known for his impressive, masterfully executed and unique oeuvre about life in the port of Antwerp around 1900. Driven by idealism, he drew and painted not only the people who lived and worked there, but also those leaving the country to make a new life for themselves in America or Canada.
After his first taste of success at La Libre Esthétique salon in Brussels, in 1902 Van Mieghem married his fiancée Augustine Pautre. However, this stunningly beautiful woman of Swiss nationality died of tuberculosis in 1905, at the age of just 24. Foreign art critics and curators compare the cycle he made of her during the last days of her life with work by Rembrandt, Edvard Munch and Ferdinand Hodler.
The Powerpoint talk includes those last works the artist made of her and the story of her tragic life.

The talk is illustrated with almost 200 pictures and lasts approximately 70 minutes.

Powerpoint talk Eugeen Van Mieghem and the emigrants of the Red Star Line

Nowadays immigrants are pouring into Europe. A century or so ago millions of people were leaving this part of the world. The port of Antwerp, a major departure point for the New World, was home to the artist Eugeen Van Mieghem (1875-1930) who drew and painted the usually destitute emigrants setting sail from the port.
His work is an invaluable record of that mass exodus (see also the book The Missing Images, under Publications). It is estimated that between 1873 and 1934, 2.4 million people (including some 35 percent Jews) sailed for the New World (America and Canada) with the Red Star Line.
In 1893 the shipowner kitted out a building on the corner of the Rijnkaai and Montevideostraat where the emigrants were given a brief medical check and their clothes and luggage disinfected.
Opposite this warehouse was the tavern owned and run by Eugeen Van Mieghem’s parents. Consequently, the artist had a front-line view of the mass migration to America and the growth of the Red Star Line.

This talk is illustrated with almost 200 pictures and lasts approximately 70 minutes.

Walks

The Museum organizes several guided city walks with Eugeen Van Mieghem as the central theme. Please find the list of city walks below.
Price per group (max. 30 people) 110 euros. As a day-out, the walk can be combined with a visit to the Van Mieghem Museum and Het Redershuis or the Red Star Line Museum or a Powerpoint talk..

Eugeen Van Mieghem Sculpture Walk on the Eilandje

The guided Van Mieghem Sculpture Walk on the Eilandje starts at The Port Girl statue (behind Shed 26, on the Rijnkaai at the filled-in entrance to Bonaparte dock) and ends at the MAS.

On the two-hour walk, the guide describes the growth of the old port between 1803 and 1930, the fascinating history of the Red Star Line and the life and work of Eugeen Van Mieghem (1875-1930). The walk takes in the five life-size bronze sculptures on and around the Eilandje commissioned by the Eugeen Van Mieghem Foundation after the work of the Antwerp artist Eugeen Van Mieghem. The Port Girl, The Emigrant, The Port Urchin, Augustine Pautre and Wiske are the work of the Dutch sculptor Carla Kamphuis-Meijer, sponsored by the Eugeen Van Mieghem Foundation and gifted to the City of Antwerp between 2005 and 2009.

François Franck inner city walk

In its more than 50-year history (1905-1959), the Antwerp art association Kunst van Heden / L'Art Contemporain played a major role in the cultural life of Antwerp and even of Belgium.

François Franck was a magnet for Antwerp’s most important families of the time. This charismatic businessman, merchant, decorator and patron brought innovation to Antwerp’s conservative exhibition policy. He invited famous foreign artists to Antwerp and introduced the work of James Ensor, Rik Wouters, Jakob Smits and Eugeen Van Mieghem to a much wider audience.
During this walk we tell the story of people in François Franck’s circle like Oscar Jespers, Pol de Mont, Arthur H. Cornette, Joseph Hertogs, Enrique Mistler, Cléomir Jussiant, Ernest Van den Bosch, Baron Armilde Lheureux, Georges Serigiers, Jef de Lange, René Victor, Jef Van Overloop, Maurits Nijkerk, Emma Lambotte-Protin, Roger Avermaete, Jozef Beuckeleers and Carlito Grisar.

The walk starts on the Leopold de Waelplaats in front of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts. It ends almost two hours later at the home of François Franck, No. 43 Everdijstraat. Along the way we pass places where all the main characters associated with Kunst van Heden / L'Art Contemporain lived or worked.