Art museum aims to rework Molenbeek’s image

The Millennium Iconoclast Museum of Art (MIMA) is based in a former brewery on the banks of Brussels’ industrial-era canal. 

A poor area with a large Muslim population and high unemployment, Molenbeek has been in the international spotlight as a breeding ground for a radical version of Islam and home to the men who carried out the November Paris attacks. 

These include Abdelhamid Abaaoud and Brahim Abdeslam. His brother Salah Abedslam, was caught in a Molenbeek police raid last month. 

Originally due to open on March 23, a day after the Brussels attacks in which 32 people were killed, the museum welcomed its first guests over the weekend. “The project has been to use art as a medium for social cohesion and so to have contemporary art that is accessible,” artistic director Raphael Cruyt said. 

The 100-year-old red-brick brewery was built when Molenbeek was known as “Little Manchester”, after the British industrial city, and where Cruyt said worker protests and riots were regular occurrences.

An array of  works by artists Maya Hayuk, Swoon, Momo and duo Faile are on display for its first temporary exhibition “City Lights”. “It allows people to come and see a completely different perspective on this area, about which there are a huge number of prejudices,” she said. “So I think it could be a great thing.”