IKOB International Art Centre East Belgium
The IKOB Museum of Contemporary Art is a cultural institution in the Province of Liège (Belgium). It is situated in Eupen, the largest city in the German-speaking Community of Belgium. It was founded in 1993 by Francis Feidler as the "IKOB - International Art Centre of East Belgium" and was renamed to its current name in 2005. Since then, the IKOB is the only recognised art museum in the German-speaking Community of Belgium. IKOB is an abbreviation for "Internationales Kunstzentrum Ostbelgien in Eupen". History After the Eupen abattoir located on the Rotenbergplatz was closed down in the early 1990s, plans were made to convert it into a cultural centre. The executive of the German-speaking Community together with the freelance art teacher Francis Feidler founded the "IKOB - international art centre of East Belgium" on 16 February 1993, which was as an umbrella organisation for the coordination and reorganisation of the Eupen cultural scene in the field of contemporary art. Due to a lack of permanent premises in the first few years, exhibitions and events were organised in public parks or in temporarily rented premises. The IKOB was able to garner international attention through the sculpture exhibition Kontakt 93 that took place at the opening in 1993, in which, among others, the works of Guillaume Bijl, Jacques Charlier, Ann Veronica Janssens, Bernd Lohaus and Berlinde De Bruyckere were shown. The IKOB gained further international attention with exhibition "Volle Scheunen" (Full Barns) in 1997 as renowned artists such as Tony Cragg, Ugo Dossi, Wolfgang Nestler, Maik and Dirk Löbbert or Marie-Jo Lafontaine agreed to exhibit at the IKOB, under the encouragement of the documenta organiser Manfred Schneckenburger. In 1999, the IKOB was able to rent permanent premises, using its own funds to set up a former warehouse as an exhibition space. This enabled the IKOB to build up its own collection from 2003 onwards. As of 2021, the collection includes more than 400 works by renowned artists from Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Luxembourg and Germany, including for example Günther Förg, Joachim Bandau and Kati Heck. This collection was presented in 2008 at the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, at the Museum of Young Art in Vienna and in 2009 at the Museum van Bommel van Dam in Venlo as "The IKOB Collection - in progress". In 2010, the IKOB was able to enlarge, remodel and expand its premises, creating space for the IKOB collection as a permanent exhibition as well as for the annual temporary exhibitions. At the beginning of 2013, French art historian and curator Maïté Vissault took over from Francis Feidler as director of the IKOB. After curating her last exhibition at the IKOB in 2015 together with Marcel Berlanger and Adrien Lucca, she moved to Brussels, where she became director of the Institut supérieur pour l'étude du langage plastique (ISELP) in Brussels. The German art scholar Frank-Thorsten Moll was engaged as her successor at the IKOB from 2016 onwards. He introduced, among other things, the "Artists' Talks" and