Kanal to Open Long-Term Centre Pompidou Collection Exhibition in Brussels

Kanal will open ‘A truly immense journey: 100 Years of Masterpieces — Centre Pompidou Collection’ in Brussels on 28 November 2026, marking its first long-term exhibition developed in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The presentation will bring together more than 350 works from the Centre Pompidou, Kanal and other Belgian public and private collections, and will remain on view until 10 January 2028.

The exhibition forms part of Kanal’s opening programme, which will launch on 28 November with ten exhibitions spanning art and architecture. The institution’s programme includes collection displays, group exhibitions and site-specific installations, with the organisation describing its wider spaces as encompassing a library, archives and research centre, salon, bookshop, playground and other public facilities. ‘A truly immense journey’ is listed as an art exhibition and as one of the opening presentations at Kanal.

Rather than organising the works around a single national school or chronological account, the exhibition is structured as a journey through the movement of people, ideas and artistic practices across geographies and histories from the early 1900s to the present. Its starting point is Kanal’s location along the Charleroi-Brussels canal, described by the institution as a historical conduit of trade, exchange and migration.

The display unfolds in three movements. One section examines circulation and the displacement of people around the world, including in Belgium, for political, social or environmental reasons. Another places early 20th-century European Modernism within its colonial entanglements with Africa, Oceania and the Caribbean, while also highlighting the contribution of travelling and migrating artists to the spread of new artistic languages.

A final section focuses on movement within artistic form itself. It traces practices that moved beyond traditional static forms, bringing together examples associated with Constructivism, De Stijl and Bauhaus alongside later developments including Minimalism and Kinetic art. The exhibition’s stated approach is to create juxtapositions between historical and contemporary works, producing constellations connected to debates concerning Brussels and the histories of art.

Artists represented include Lygia Clark, Sonia Delaunay, Natalia Goncharova, Henri Matisse, Wifredo Lam, Katarzyna Kobro, Pablo Picasso and Alberto Giacometti, together with contemporary international and Brussels-based artists Sammy Baloji, Edith Dekyndt, Aglaia Konrad and Hana Miletić. The announcement identifies the Centre Pompidou and Kanal as the predominant sources of the works, supplemented by loans or contributions from other Belgian public and private collections. The exhibition is scheduled at Kanal in Brussels from 28 November 2026 through 10 January 2028.