BRUSSELS.- Bozar opens 2026 with an exhibition programme that stimulates the senses. What is beauty? What is ugliness? In the Renaissance, these concepts were often seen as two sides of the same coin, with deviations from the ideal carrying a moral undertone. Bozar presents Bellezza e Bruttezza, a historical exhibition that marks the starting point of a programme exploring how we perceive these dual notions today. Precious works of Botticelli, Titian, Tintoretto, Cranach the Elder, Matsys, and many others are displayed in Belgium for the first and only time.

Picture Perfect explores the pressures of looking beautiful through an exhibition of lens-based media. 55 contemporary artists – from Martha Rosler and Cindy Sherman to Zanele Muholi and Moshtari Hilal – challenge beauty norms and their photographic representations over the past 50 years.

For his first exhibition in Belgium, the established Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen presents a new multimedia installation. Using AI, algorithms and found footage, he unravels our digital and political reality.

This Summer, as part of the Bozar Monumental series, Delcy Morelos invites visitors into an earthy environment shaped with local soil, fibres, and scents. Inspired by ancestral knowledge and vernacular architecture, her work offers a rich sensory and spiritual journey—a moment of grounding that reconnects our bodies to the Earth.

This autumn, Bozar welcomes another renowned artist: William Kentridge will be the “Grand invité” [special guest] through a rich programme consisting of a major exhibition, performances, films, concerts, and talks. Together with The Centre for the Less Good Idea, a space for artistic incubation that he co-founded in Johannesburg, Kentridge will take over the Centre for Fine Arts of Brussels, in a polyphonic dialogue with the city and the public.

Finally, Bozar will present the first large-scale exhibition in 45 years of Jean Brusselmans. With 120 works, this singular voice of the Belgian avant-garde enters into dialogue with contemporaries such as Cézanne, Wouters, Morandi, Permeke and Léger.