Living art history is the private collectors who write it. Well before museums woke up to new expressions, it was these curious people who, skimming workshops, exhibition and fairs, nurtured the breeding ground of art today. In Liège, the generation of the Graindorges and other great patrons surrounding the APIAW (Wallonia association for intellectual and artistic progress) has passed, but the thread has never broken. In this city and all around it remains a powerful network of committed collectors who bring to life contemporary creation. 

For the first time in Wallonia, these people have agreed to major loans for an exhibition exclusively based on their contributions. Pushing back the museum’s walls, these loans will enable visitors to discover a host of almost all brand new pieces, illustrating territory in contemporary art into which most of our museums hardly venture.

Private views is therefore an alternative contemporary museum, a living share of our cultural history, in direct contact with today’s world. This is a disconcerting and dazzling, impertinent and funny, disturbing and stimulating discovery of works patiently amassed by people from all backgrounds, moved by their interest in art alone.  

The selection, made from a treasure of several thousand pieces, will take the visitor on a journey through five decades of plastic creation, comparing artists of international stature with creators from our region, as the collectors do themselves, in an exceptional dialogue with the works chosen from the permanent collections.

With, among others, works by: 
Pierre Alechinsky, Francis Alys, Charlotte Beaudry, Christian Boltanski, Daniel Buren, Jacques Charlier, Patrick Corillon, Michael Dans, Marlene Dumas, Fred Eerdekens, Jan Fabre, Michel François, Simon Hantaï, Shirley Jaffe, Bertrand Lavier, Barbara et Michael Leisgen, Sol LeWitt, Jacques Lizène, Bernd Lohaus, Messieurs Delmotte, Giorgio Morandi, Herman Nitsch, Giulio Paolini, Philippe Ramette, Niki de St Phalle, Charles-Henry Sommelette, Walter Swennen, Philippe Vandenberg, Léon Wuidar and many others.