Research

How exactly do we look at a painting? Which parts do we focus on and which parts are we less interested in? Does everyone look in the same way? These are the questions that M is investigating together with the Laboratory for Experimental Psychology at the KU Leuven.

Visual literacy - the ability to read visual language - is more and more becoming a basic skill in our culture. But how do we actually do that, view and interpret images?

M exhibits both old and contemporary art. M’s collection presentations are transhistorical, and the exhibitions also often have a transhistorical aspect.

Our collections manager Ko Goubert is working on an artistic-biographical study of the oeuvre of Dom Martin OSB (1889-1965), a monk from the Keizersberg Abbey in Leuven who was active internationally as a silversmith and designer.

It is only possible to open up a collection of tens of thousands of objects online if you have thoroughly researched and digitised it first. Inventory is therefore a basic task for every museum. We are working on it.

Since 2016, head of the Collections Department Marjan Debaene has been working at KU Leuven on a doctorate about Leuven's sculpture production in the 15th and 16th centuries.

M wants to be a museum that welcomes everyone. That is why we actively involve the public in our work. Every two years we put on an exhibition of works of art chosen by people not connected to the museum. Everyone wins.

Tracing and documenting the provenance of art and heritage objects is not always straightforward: often, important information has not been recorded, or has been lost, for example as a result of war or conflict. M also has a work of this kind in its collection: ‘The Legend of St Quentin’.