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Leuven
Saturday we had reserved tickets to the M museum in Leuven, to make double-sure we didn’t miss the Leuven Chansonnier exhibit. So we took a train to Leuven (a 20-30 minute ride) and walked to the museum.
We needn’t have worried: the museum wasn’t crowded. M Museum is all about juxtaposing old and new: every room seemed to have Renaissance art alongside 20th or 21st century art on the same theme, or commenting on the Renaissance works. The first floor was given over to permanent collections (an impressive collection of Renaissance stuff, and I have no idea how impressive the modern collection was), while part of the second was “The Pursuit of Knowledge”, an exhibition about the 600-year history of KU Leuven that includes the Chansonnier.
I was uncertain how the museum would go about presenting the Leuven Chansonnier, which is after all a single object the size of a large wallet. The installation, entitled "Forty-Nine", set up a darkened room, with speakers on all sides and The Book partly open in a lit display case in the center, and played a recording of piece 49 from the Chansonnier (one of its 12 unica, pieces not known from any other source). On the front wall, five spots of light became the five performers on the recording — two singers, two lutes, and a vielle — with various digital manipulations done on their images. Effective.
Anyway, we saw a bunch of other stuff from the University’s collections -- fossils, 19th-century lab equipment, etc. -- before leaving the museum.
Stopped at the nearby Sintpieterskeerk, which houses Dietrich Bouts's famous and influential Last Supper, as well as a couple of other Bouts pieces.
Obligatory visit to the modern statue of a student having knowledge poured into its head, then walked back to the station for the train to Brussels. Got take-out Thai food and ate it in the room.
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We needn’t have worried: the museum wasn’t crowded. M Museum is all about juxtaposing old and new: every room seemed to have Renaissance art alongside 20th or 21st century art on the same theme, or commenting on the Renaissance works. The first floor was given over to permanent collections (an impressive collection of Renaissance stuff, and I have no idea how impressive the modern collection was), while part of the second was “The Pursuit of Knowledge”, an exhibition about the 600-year history of KU Leuven that includes the Chansonnier.
I was uncertain how the museum would go about presenting the Leuven Chansonnier, which is after all a single object the size of a large wallet. The installation, entitled "Forty-Nine", set up a darkened room, with speakers on all sides and The Book partly open in a lit display case in the center, and played a recording of piece 49 from the Chansonnier (one of its 12 unica, pieces not known from any other source). On the front wall, five spots of light became the five performers on the recording — two singers, two lutes, and a vielle — with various digital manipulations done on their images. Effective.
Anyway, we saw a bunch of other stuff from the University’s collections -- fossils, 19th-century lab equipment, etc. -- before leaving the museum.
 |
 |
Stopped at the nearby Sintpieterskeerk, which houses Dietrich Bouts's famous and influential Last Supper, as well as a couple of other Bouts pieces.
Obligatory visit to the modern statue of a student having knowledge poured into its head, then walked back to the station for the train to Brussels. Got take-out Thai food and ate it in the room.