Belgian Art & Diplomacy

The art collection of the FPS Foreign Affairs can be described as a semi-public governmental corporate collection. This is a collection belonging to the Belgian State. The collection is accessible to the public, but not as in a museum, for example, to everyone, but within the framework of the opening hours and access possibilities of the FPS and the embassy buildings.

This corporate collection finds its place alongside other institutions that manage collections, such as other public companies like federal ministries, federal scientific institutions, parliaments, universities, as well as collections of public and private companies like, for example, financial institutions.

Between museums and private collectors, corporate collections represent an important, and often less well-known, part of the collecting community. This is why the FPS Foreign Affairs is also a member and co-founder of the informal group ‘BECC( C )A’, Belgian Corporate Collections of (Contemporary) Art. By analogy with the international grouping of corporate collections IACCA and the Dutch corporate collections VBCN, Belgian corporate collections meet informally several times a year within BECC( C )A.

The management of the SPF's collections most closely resembles that of foreign ministries in other countries. Some examples: United Kingdom, US State Department