The German Negatives (1917–18)

Museum Mayer van den Bergh is presenting some of these unique photographs in 2017, exactly a hundred years after the Germans began their photographic inventory of Belgian cultural heritage. The focus exhibition, which runs from 20 June to 17 September, tells the compelling story of the German occupier’s encounter with the museum during the First World War.

The institution’s founder, Henriette Mayer van den Bergh (1838–1920), spent the First World War in the Netherlands and the museum probably remained closed during the first years of the conflict: no one signed the visitor’s book in that period, at any rate. Signatures first began to reappear in March 1917 and, in the months that followed, six pages were filled with the names of around eighty German visitors.

Research shows that several of them were members of the Kunstschutz (‘Art Protection’) commission. The objective of the Kunstschutz was to catalogue and photograph monuments and works of art in occupied Belgium – locations and items that would have to be removed to safety or protected in situ if they risked coming into the line of fire.

A total of 106 photographic records of eighty-one items in the collection were made at Museum Mayer van den Bergh as part of the Kunstschutz initiative. Wars rarely leave a positive legacy, but this focus exhibition offers a selection of some of the finest and most intriguing images that were created at that time. Twelve sculptures and a group of six statues of Calvary angels in the permanent collection are accompanied by photographs that enable visitors to discover the museum through the lens of the German occupier. And the exhibition doesn’t end at the museum’s doors: a city trail in the Antwerp Museum App guides visitors through the streets of the city to explore several gems from its rich history.

This unique project is an initiative of Museum Mayer van den Bergh in collaboration with the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) and the historian Dr Dick Wursten. It is supported by the National Lottery.