Image: Roger Raveel, Koren en witte rechthoek, 1968–88. Collection Roger Raveel Museum, Machelen-aan-de-Leie
The Roger Raveel Museum in Machelen-aan-de-Leie, Belgium, has reopened after a year and a half of renovation with ‘koren nog altijd / koren’, a collection presentation devoted to the work of Roger Raveel. The exhibition brings together familiar and lesser-known paintings and works on paper, arranged through thematic accents and connections rather than a chronological account. It is on view from 28 June through 24 December 2026.
The museum closed temporarily in February 2025 for building work. According to the institution, structural interventions improved climate conditions in two exhibition galleries and the depot, while the building and garden also underwent extensive refurbishment. During the closure, a selection of works from the collection travelled to exhibitions elsewhere, allowing Raveel’s work to remain publicly visible while the museum was unavailable.
The reopening presentation is intended to expose the core of the museum’s holdings and to trace the development of Raveel’s artistic language through relationships between works. Particular attention is given to early paintings and drawings, in which the museum identifies recurring concerns including everyday life, the tension between figuration and abstraction, and the relationship between image and reality.
The presentation also focuses on the wall paintings made in Beervelde in 1966–67 by Roger Raveel, Raoul De Keyser, Etienne Elias and Reinier Lucassen. The museum’s attention to the project anticipates its 60th anniversary in 2027. The Beervelde paintings form part of the exhibition’s broader effort to connect Raveel’s individual practice with the artistic exchanges and experiments surrounding his work in the postwar period.
Another element concerns Raveel’s friendship with the poet Roland Jooris, who was also the first conservator of the Roger Raveel Museum. Jooris turns 90 in 2026, according to the museum. The exhibition’s title is taken from a poem associated with Jooris and cited by Raveel at the poet’s retirement. The phrase links the presentation to the recurring presence of landscape, language and the grain of the visible world in Raveel’s work.
Melanie Deboutte is the curator of ‘koren nog altijd / koren’. The museum is also presenting the 10th Biennale of Painting from 28 June to 18 October 2026, as part of a three-museum project with Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens and mudel. That exhibition is a separate programme from the Raveel collection presentation, which remains on view at the Roger Raveel Museum until 24 December.
