Abby Kortrijk

With ‘City Living’, Abby introduces an innovative museum concept: an accessible open house draped like an experimental outer shell around the classic museum rooms, acting as a third space in the city centre. Kortrijk locals and visitors, people and makers share space there, compile programmes and set up participatory projects. Here, bridges are built between art, heritage and design; between visitors and local communities. With extensive opening hours, shared ownership and innovative forms of presentation, Abby in City Living explores museum boundaries. This special reception area of the museum is furnished by a different artist every two years. In the first edition, Rinus Vandevelde made all the pieces of furniture, houseplants and lamps out of cardboard, wood and paint; a nod to Kunstwerkstede De Coene (1888-1977).

The jury on Abby Kortrijk:

With a future-oriented approach, Abby Kortrijk plays with concepts of art, heritage and identity, aiming to break open the traditional framework of a museum: from closed institution to accessible venue for a broad artistic experience. This refreshing vision lives on in the architecture, design and experience of the new Abby Kortrijk, where centuries-old heritage now forms a stunning and empowering stage for art, encounters and spending time together.

What does this award mean to you?

It is a wonderful reward for the commitment demonstrated by all the people and makers involved in creating this project, to make Abby a place that reconciles the soul of the historic site with its contemporary mission: a place that breathes art and brings people together; that brims with new inspiration and yet feels like home.

How did the idea for this project come about?

Following the closure of the Broel Museum in 2014, the City of Kortrijk no longer had a museum to display its art collection. Moreover, there was a need for quality exhibition space for temporary exhibits. When the former Museum 1302 moved to the Church of Our Lady, the site of Groeninge Abbey became available for housing an ambitious, quirky visual arts museum. The aim was to create a new kind of museum: an open and versatile place, a ‘house with many rooms’ in the wonderful setting of the Beguinage Park. With subtle interventions, the new architecture enhanced the site’s history and made room for the future: an ideal setting to present art as a mirror of our layered, changing and deeply rooted identities. 

What makes your project so special?

The search for who we are and how we relate to each other is universal and ever-topical. Using art as a medium, Abby aims to make space for curious questions, searching answers, unexpected connections and inspiring insights related to this multi-layered theme. In doing so, it focuses its gaze as much on the general human condition as on curiosities in human identities, and as much on established artists as on creators on the margins. With innovative City Living, bold programming and shared ownership, Abby invites audiences to playfully participate. In an open dialogue between art and community, form and content, past and present, Abby creates space for recognition and reinvention - a place to come home to in a world of change.

Do you have any further plans for this project?

Abby opened on 29 March 2025 with ‘F**klore. Reinventing Tradition’, an exhibition about the poetry and absurdity of the everyday, which raised questions about the value, durability and straitjacket of traditions, about the uniqueness and universality of our idiosyncrasies, about who ‘we’ are and who we are not. From 24 October to 1 March 2026, ‘Faith No More. Rituals for Uncertain Times’, about apocalyptic thinking in the Middle Ages and today, and the search for comfort, an anchor and new rituals in an unstable world. Beyond that, Abby plans inspiring thematic, transhistorical exhibitions and participatory public programmes, including about our ability to create new worlds, transform ourselves, question established values and challenge the norm. Stay tuned!