LEUVEN.- After fifteen years of restoration, the historic monastic complex of Park Abbey in Leuven is opening fully to the public for the first time. Museum PARCUM marks this exceptional moment with Threading Landscapes: Art at Park Abbey, an ambitious exhibition featuring work by 24 contemporary artists from around the world. Nine artists have developed new projects in direct response to the abbey, its architecture, landscape, biodiversity, archives and history. This moment represents more than the completion of a restoration. It marks the beginning of a new phase. Heritage, after all, is not static, but an ongoing process of interpretation, care and meaning-making. How do we relate today to a place that carries almost nine centuries of history, while at the same time inviting us to shape its future?
Museum PARCUM places this question at the heart of its work. The museum opens up the abbey's exceptional religious heritage while using it as a starting point for exploring and questioning contemporary societal issues.
The exhibition Threading Landscapes, curated by Daniel Feldman, Katya García-Antón, María Inés Rodríguez and Ana Sokoloff, marks the first major milestone in this new phase. The curatorial team brings together artists from around the world in Leuven to explore the specific genius loci—the spirit of the place—of Park Abbey and to question what it might mean in the 21st century. In an increasingly complex and unpredictable world, faced with challenges relating to ecology, polarisation, loneliness and technology, these concepts take on renewed relevance. Community-building, local connection, contemplation, spirituality and care for one's surroundings are not nostalgic values, but potential tools for thinking about contemporary forms of living together.
Threading Landscapes invites artists and visitors to explore the abbey's layered history, its visible traces and spiritual traditions. The works touch on ecological awareness, cultural memory, social structures, the transmission of knowledge, migration, labour, spirituality and care. Together, the 24 artists reveal just how broadly “landscape” can be understood: as nature and architecture, but also as body, archive, language, labour, spirituality, technology, memory and community.
This genius loci resides not only in the architecture. It emerges from the accumulation of lives, landscapes and practices: the Norbertine community, daily work, the ponds and fields, the park and gardens, the visitors, but also the centuries-old manuscripts, maps, liturgical books and administrative documents preserved at the abbey.
Park Abbey is distinguished by its exceptional authenticity. Its historic layout and buildings have remained remarkably well preserved since the 17th and 18th centuries. The monastery lies at the heart of a 42-hectare green oasis in the Molenbeek valley, with ponds, meadows, woodland, gardens and tree-lined avenues. Culture, spirituality, architecture and nature form a remarkable whole.
Artists: Noor Abed, Gabriela Albergaria, Leonor Antunes, Bianca Baldi, Rossella Biscotti, Ana María Caballero, Carlos Casas, Edith Dekyndt, Pierre Huyghe, Julia Isídrez, Tarik Kiswanson, Irene Kopelman, Eunjo Lee, Guadalupe Maravilla, María Angélica Medina, Hana Miletić, Felipe Mujica, Amol Patil, Laure Prouvost, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Erik Tlaseca, Ahmed Umar, Cecilia Vicuña and Meg Webster
