Group Visit Without a Guide

Visit the museum with your group and discover MoMu's temporary exhibitions and the collection presentation.

The exhibition Masquerade, Make-up & Ensor presents work by make-up artists and visual artists who delve more deeply into such themes as the representation of women, physical and digital face filters, distorted body images and the ritual of making up.

Throughout history, people have viewed make-up with suspicion and compared it to wearing a mask, a mask behind which – in particular – a woman would hide. Today, make-up has become a multibillion-dollar industry that nonetheless confronts us with our physical impermanence, imagined imperfections and existential fears. But make-up is also a means of personal expression, artistic experimentation and freedom.

MoMu’s collection presentation looks back at four decades of Belgian fashion, complemented by a selection from the museum’s historical collection. The exhibition gives an overview of the most important protagonists of Belgian fashion, based on the themes that characterise the distinctive nature of the MoMu Collection.

For this exhibition, Brandon Wen, creative director of the Antwerp Fashion Department, selected several exceptional silhouettes and drawings from the undergraduate and graduate years for this exhibition. Celebrating and highlighting the students’ experimentation and research creates an interesting dialogue with the MoMu collection presentation, where silhouettes of many alumni are on display.