Following a launch at the iconic Bozar building on 28 January, it is now officially Art Deco Year 2025 in Brussels, marking 100 years since the birth of Art Deco in a city boasting a unique Art Deco heritage of discreet details and monumental architecture that fills the streets with treasures, just waiting to be discovered.
Heritage Days and the Brussels Art Nouveau Art Deco Festival
The focus on Art Deco follows up on the city’s success with Art Nouveau Year 2023, a celebration that brought over two million visitors to the Belgian capital. Officials hope to repeat that success with another programme of exhibitions, conferences, guided tours and openings of normally closed buildings. In addition, a series of Heritage Days organised by urban.brussels and themed around “Art Deco – Roaring Twenties, Crashing Thirties” will take place; not forgetting the Brussels Art Nouveau Art Deco Festival (BANAD Festival) from March 15 to 30, with a schedule 90% dedicated to Art Deco buildings, featuring numerous “never-before-seen” locations.
Tours and openings of iconic buildings
Among the delights to look out for will be tours conceived by numerous guide associations, such as Pro Vélo, ARAU, Arkadia, Korei, Bruxelles Bavard, Itinéraires, Brussels Art Deco Society, Explore Brussels, and more.
Municipal partners in the communes of Anderlecht, Schaerbeek, Forest, Ixelles, and the City of Brussels, will also present a rich and varied offering throughout 2025, including unique opportunities to discover what Rudi Vervoort, Image of Brussels representative has called “the magnificent sites created by this emblematic and characteristic architectural movement.”
Those sites include several iconic buildings that will be open to the public year-round: from the beloved streamline gem that is the Flagey Building, to the eerie Hockney-esque lines of the pool at Villa Empain. The van Buuren Museum and Gardens, Tenaerts House, Riez House, UGC de Brouckère with its Eldorado cinema hall, Forest Town Hall, the House of European History, the Basilica of Koekelberg, Sainte-Suzanne Church in Schaerbeek – all will be shedding new light on their Art Deco magic.
Top pick exhibitions
In some of those venues, exhibitions will be taking the theme to new heights. Travel Tomorrow’s top picks include:
- A focus on the posters and magazines of the Art Deco age at Autrique House, exploring the evolution of society in the interwar years through graphic design.
- “Opalescents” – a display that promises to be a true thing of beauty showing over 100 opaline glass creations from the Philippe Decelle collection at Marinus Centre.
- Art Deco furniture, lighting, textiles, and interior decoration from the estate of René Baucher and Sylvie Feron at The Design Museum Brussels.
- And a major exhibition featuring Art Deco Cinemas in Brussels at the Halles Saint-Gery.
Launching the year, Ans Persoons, the city’s Town Planning and Heritage representative, said it will introduce “Brussels residents and visitors to the origins of this artistic movement, how it characterised our society in the 1920s and 1930s, and how art deco continues to define the landscape of our city today. It’s an opportunity to showcase and promote our exceptional heritage and to reclaim a part of our collective history.”
The Art Nouveau-Art Deco Pass
Ways to take part include getting your hands on the Art Nouveau Pass, which is evolving to become the Art Nouveau Art Deco Pass and, in addition to the nine Art Nouveau venues on this combined ticket, will now give access to several Art Deco venues in the capital.
And on the conference scene, many partners will be introducing specific aspects of Art Deco through a series of themed events, including in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg – in collaboration with the Luxembourg National Museum of History and Art (MNAH) – where a conference on Art Deco in Luxembourg will tie in with the Brussels celebrations.
