BOZAR

The BOZAR experience Creativity, quality, and artistic diversity have been at the heart of the Centre’s mission since its foundation. But for art not to be something abstract and distant, for it to be truly part of the “culture” of a society – and particularly in a city as variegated and international as Brussels – the public must be able to experience it in a way that is both natural and lively. Art and people must find and recognise each other, must interact with and enrich each other. For the greater happiness of all. Our commitment, accordingly, is not only to the provision of a range of artistic activities, but also to achieving a “total experience”. Whether with friends, as a family, alone, as a couple, in a group, or with a class, whether young or old, fans of video or of string quartets, you are all invited to feel, to breathe, to view and to check out the atmosphere of the Centre for Fine Arts. To let yourselves be seduced by the strange beauty of a building that is at once imposing and intimate. To appreciate, day after day, the remarkable quality of the events programmed here. To discover that, when it comes to art, “total experiences” are the most intense and the most precious, that they cannot be repeated, that they represent, each time, a unique experience.

HISTORY AN UNDERGROUND "MOUNT" OF THE ARTS

The Centre for Fine Arts, a palace of the arts. Immense and yet almost invisible, overlooking the city and yet buried underground, multiple and yet unified, prestigious and yet open to all...this was how Victor Horta imagined the first cultural centre of its kind to be constructed in Europe, the Brussels Centre for Fine Arts. His ambitious project was designed to meet several challenges. A town planning one, first of all: linking the upper to the lower town. An architectural one: creating a building that would meet the needs of different disciplines while still preserving its own architectural cogency. An artistic challenge: to host all forms of art, at the highest level and in the best possible conditions. A cultural challenge, finally: to make art accessible to as many people as possible, free of elitism but without lowering standards. The Centre for Fine Arts first opened its doors in 1928. Here, Horta traded the sinuous lines of art nouveau for the geometric design language of art deco, but the incidence of light in the exhibition rooms and the ingenious arrangement of the different spaces betray the hand of the master. In his memoirs, Horta referred to the Centre as a high point in his career. An underground "Mount" of the Arts All forms of art come together in the PSK. Horta pieced together a jigsaw combining three concert halls, exhibition spaces, and lecture rooms in one harmonious whole. From the outset, music and exhibitions were placed on an equal footing. The open plan was made possible by a steel skeleton of rafters and the use of reinforced concrete. When walking through the building, without really being aware of it one is climbing a hill: the Mont des Arts/Kunstberg. In total, Horta’s Palace has no fewer than eight levels. It is quite difficult to represent all these floors and mezzanines in a single, easy-to-use floor plan. In order to orient oneself, it is easiest to use the main entrance on rue Ravenstein/Ravensteinstraat as the point of reference.