10 Years of S.M.A.K. Moves 2026

10 Years of S.M.A.K. Moves – The Final Days of an Exhibition Worth Catching Before It Closes

Some exhibitions earn their place in the cultural calendar by showing you something visually spectacular. Others earn it by showing you something true about how art and people relate to each other at their most generous and honest. "10 Years of S.M.A.K. Moves" at the S.M.A.K. Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent is firmly in the second category.

Open from 29 November 2025 and closing on Sunday, 3 May 2026, this anniversary exhibition is now in its final weeks — the last opportunity to experience one of the most quietly remarkable museum projects in Belgium this season. If you are in Ghent anytime before May 3, this is an exhibition that deserves your time. And if you are planning a trip to Ghent for the city's extraordinary spring season of events, the S.M.A.K. deserves to be on your itinerary.

Tickets are priced at €15 (standard price), with significant reductions available across age groups. Under-19s enter free.

What Is S.M.A.K. Moves? A Ten-Year Story of Art and People

To understand what this anniversary exhibition is celebrating, you first need to understand what S.M.A.K. Moves is — and has been for the past decade.

S.M.A.K. Moves is the museum's participatory platform: its dedicated programme for bringing people and art closer together through doing, thinking, and experiencing together, rather than through the conventional museum experience of looking at works behind barriers in silence. It is the part of S.M.A.K. that believes art is not a passive experience and that the museum's role is not just to house art but to create conditions for genuine encounter between art and people of all backgrounds, ages, and starting points.

For ten years, S.M.A.K. Moves has been doing this with community groups, schools, social organisations, volunteers, residents, and visitors — building relationships that go far beyond the single gallery visit. The programme has worked with partners from across Ghent, from Brussels, from the broader Belgian cultural landscape, and from communities that museums do not always reach.

The 10th anniversary exhibition is not a retrospective display of what happened over those ten years. It is something more alive than that: a continuation of the S.M.A.K. Moves method itself, using the exhibition format as a new form of gathering.

What the Exhibition Actually Contains: An Open House for Collaboration

The structure of the exhibition is built around encounter and collaboration — the two values at the heart of S.M.A.K. Moves itself. The museum has created an exhibition format with four distinct spaces, each operating according to its own logic.

Two Rotating Partner Rooms

In two rooms, the museum alternates between long-standing and new partners from its S.M.A.K. Moves network, giving them the floor in turn. These partners present their work, organise activities, or use the museum simply as a workspace — treating the gallery as a living space rather than a static display environment.

This means the exhibition is not fixed. Return visitors encounter something different on a second visit. The rooms are alive with the ongoing work of organisations that S.M.A.K. Moves has built relationships with over ten years. It is, in the most direct sense, a demonstration of what the programme has built rather than a description of it.

The Collection Room: Chosen by Cultureghem's Dreamteam

A third space presents a selection of works from the S.M.A.K. collection — but chosen in an unusual and genuinely moving way. The selection was made by Cultureghem's "Dreamteam" — a group of dedicated volunteers who, through cooking together at the Abattoir market in Brussels, aim to make everyone feel welcome around the table.

Giving a group of community volunteers the curatorial decision over which works from the S.M.A.K. collection to present is not a gimmick. It is a statement about what the S.M.A.K. Moves programme has always believed: that the people who bring their lives, their experiences, and their perspectives to an art collection see things in it that professional curators alone would not see. The Dreamteam's choices reflect their collective experience of building community through shared activity, and those choices sit in the gallery with a specificity and intentionality that the standard selection process cannot produce.

Tussen Piraten en Papegaaien: Nico Dockx's Mobile Pavilion

The fourth space houses a pavilion titled "Tussen Piraten en Papegaaien" (Between Pirates and Parrots) — created by artist Nico Dockx, VOET Architectuur, and Studio Zuidervaart in 2023, originally commissioned by Be-Part in Waregem as a space for exchange.

The pavilion is a mobile structure designed to change alongside what happens in and around it — the same quality of adaptability and responsiveness that defines the S.M.A.K. Moves programme itself. In the exhibition context, it functions as a gathering space, a conversation starter, and a demonstration in physical form of the idea that the best structures for community life are those that respond to the people using them rather than imposing a fixed function.

Road of Change: Flags and an Ongoing Invitation

Between the galleries, the flags of Road of Change flutter — an experiential learning project in which young people, during a road trip, were challenged to put themselves in the shoes of people on the run. The flags on display were created in 2019, but the exhibition does not leave them as historical artefacts. Visitors are invited to design their own flag, continuing the initiative in their own way and extending it forward in time.

This is perhaps the most characteristic gesture of the entire exhibition: not presenting S.M.A.K. Moves' history as something completed and contained, but as something still open, still growing, still inviting participation. The 10th anniversary is not a full stop. It is a pause to look back before continuing.

S.M.A.K.: One of Europe's Most Important Contemporary Art Museums

The exhibition exists within one of the most significant contemporary art institutions in Belgium and in Europe. S.M.A.K. — Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (Municipal Museum for Contemporary Art) was founded in 1999 under the visionary directorship of Jan Hoet, in a former casino building at Jan Hoetplein 1, 9000 Ghent — directly adjacent to the Museum of Fine Arts (MSK) in the cultural quarter of the city.

S.M.A.K. is internationally regarded for its collection and for a series of landmark exhibitions that have shaped contemporary art in Belgium and beyond. Most significantly, the museum's predecessor institution was responsible for "Chambres d'Amis" (1986) — one of the most ambitious and celebrated participatory art events in history, in which 58 artists transformed 58 private homes in Ghent into exhibition spaces, attracting visitors to ordinary living rooms and kitchens to find extraordinary works of contemporary art.

That 1986 project is, in many ways, the ancestor of everything S.M.A.K. Moves has done for the past ten years — the same conviction that art belongs in the spaces and lives of ordinary people, not only in the white cube gallery. The anniversary exhibition sits within that long institutional history and makes it feel not like heritage but like a living practice.

The museum's collection includes works by Francis Bacon, Marcel Broodthaers, Panamarenko, Joseph Beuys, Daniel Buren, and many of the most important names in international contemporary art across the post-war era. Visiting the anniversary exhibition gives you access to a museum whose permanent collection is worth experiencing even independently of the temporary show.

Ticket Prices and Opening Hours

• Basic price: €15
• Reduction for groups: €13
• Ghent residents (Gentenaars): €7
• Under 26: €2.50
• Under 19: Free
• Disability companion: Free
• CityCard Gent: Benefit applies — check details at smak.be

Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday (the museum is closed on Mondays)

The exhibition closes on Sunday, May 3, 2026.

The S.M.A.K. in Ghent's Cultural Quarter: What to Combine Your Visit With

The S.M.A.K. sits at Jan Hoetplein 1 in the cultural heart of Ghent, directly opposite the Museum of Fine Arts (MSK) — which currently houses the "Unforgettable" exhibition on women artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750 (until spring 2026). Spending a full cultural day that combines the S.M.A.K.'s contemporary art with the MSK's early modern collection is one of the most richly rewarding museum experiences available in Belgium.

The Broader Cultural Quarter and City Around the Museum

• Citadelpark — the S.M.A.K. is located within the Citadelpark, Ghent's largest public park, which provides a beautiful approach on foot and a peaceful space for reflection after a long museum visit
• Sint-Baafskathedraal and the Ghent Altarpiece — approximately 15 minutes on foot from the S.M.A.K., in the historic city centre, the Van Eyck brothers' masterpiece should not be missed
• Gravensteen Castle — the 12th-century fortress in the waterways, 15–20 minutes by foot or tram
• Graslei and Korenlei — the medieval quaysides with terraces and guild houses, ideal for lunch or a post-museum drink

Getting to S.M.A.K.

• Address: Jan Hoetplein 1, 9000 Ghent
• By tram: Tram line 1, 2, or 4 from Ghent-Sint-Pieters station to the Citadelpark area; approximately 10–15 minutes
• On foot: approximately 30 minutes from Ghent-Sint-Pieters station; approximately 20 minutes from the historic centre
• By bike: Ghent's public bike hire (Blue-bike, available at Sint-Pieters station) — the route through the park is direct and pleasant

Three Weeks Left: Why Now Is the Right Time to Visit

The final weeks of an exhibition have a particular quality. The curatorial programme is fully in place. The partner rooms have cycled through their full range of contributions. The flags of Road of Change have been joined by visitors' own additions. The pavilion between pirates and parrots has accumulated the traces of months of encounters.

"10 Years of S.M.A.K. Moves" closes on May 3, 2026 — a Sunday, which means it shares its final weekend with the first day of the Gent Smaakt culinary festival (May 13–17). A Ghent trip that takes in the S.M.A.K. anniversary exhibition, the Offside football exhibition at STAM, and the Gent Smaakt culinary festival in a single extended long-weekend visit would be, genuinely, one of the finest cultural city breaks available in Belgium this spring.

Tickets at smak.be or at the museum door.

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