Denis Gielen appointed Director

After a career spanning over 30 years, Laurent Busine, the former exhibition director at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Charleroi, the founder and subsequently director of the Museum of Contemporary Arts of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation is now retiring, leaving the MAC’s in the hands of his successor, Denis Gielen.

Born in 1966, after graduating with a science degree Denis Gielen soon turned his attention to the art world, and became an art critic in the ’90s for television, radio and the printed press. He joined the team at the MAC’s in 1999 as head of publications and editor of the Revue DITS, a magazine published by the museum. He is the author of the Atlas of Contemporary Art for Use by Everyone, a book which earned him a special mention in the 2007 Artcurial awards. In the same year, Denis Gielen became Assistant Director and has since curated the exhibitions S.F. [Art, Sciences and Fiction], Tony Oursler’s Phantasmagoria and Patrick Guns’s I Know a Song to Sing on this Dark, Dark, Dark Night. He will officially take up his new function as the museum’s director on February 1, 2016.

Based on over fifteen years of professional experience at the MAC’s, Denis Gielen’s general plans will follow the same lines as the cultural policy initiated by Laurent Busine when the museum opened in 2002. This transition will offer the MAC’s an opportunity to review three of its basic missions, which will be explored in the 2016 programming:

–Developing artistic creation in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation
–Encouraging exchanges with foreign partners
–Raising awareness of contemporary art among young audiences