Development

The CKV was founded in 2019 from within the Museum of Contemporary Art (M HKA) in Antwerp and at the behest of the Minister of Culture, Sven Gatz. The M HKA has managed several significant key archives such as the Hugo Roelandt Archive, the Panamarenko Archive and the ICC Archive for several years now. For over ten years, it has worked with its own CMS, Ensembles.org, which supports and archives all of the museum’s operations. Its goal is to render the M HKA’s content accessible to the public.

OBJECTIVES:

• The CKV monitors and encourages the development of the field of art archive makers and heritage communities.
• The CKV shares expertise in the field of visual art archives and legacies, brings them together and, where necessary, stimulates their development.
• The CKV supports archivists and estate managers and estates through advice, in conjunction with the valuation framework.
• The CKV makes art archives and estates sustainable, makes them visible and thus valorizes their relevance for and in society.
• The CKV manages the art archives that M HKA collects, whereby not only M HKA’s own collection policy plan will serve as a guideline, but also CKV’s field-wide archival valuation framework. Guaranteeing, making it more visible, valorizing and opening up art archives are, after all, a crucial task. This own operation is the basis for the expertise of the CKV that carries it. M HKA collects key archives that match its own collection profile, but always weighs this against the added value of other potential repositories from the distributed model that CKV aspires to.

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