UNITED KINGDOM SUMMER PEARLS: London's architectural gems along the banks of the Thames
MUSIC: Europe's best pop and rock gatherings
BAGPIPES: The plaintive sounds of Scotland
SUBMARIUM: Journey to the bottom of the sea FESTIVALS: Fun in the sun in West Belfast
MORE ..
FRANCE and SWITZERLAND VULCANIA: Blow your top at France's volcano park
ART: Berthe Morisot, the unknown Impressionist
FESTIVALS: Aix-en-Provence has it all
ART: The Barbizon School painters come to life
ART: Take a stroll through medieval gardens of delight
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SPAIN, PORTUGAL, ITALY and GREECE SALAMANCA: The city splashes out on culture
MUSIC: God's rock stars: the singing Greek monks
FOOD: Italy's unusual culinary delights
FILM: Great outdoor viewing in Rome
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GERMANY and BENELUX HORTICULTURE: The world blossoms at Floriade
BRUGGE: Belgium's second city shines
ART: Berlin's homage to multiculturalism ART: The best of the world's artists on show at Documenta 11
DANCE: Czech twin ballerinos steal the show in Hamburg MORE ..
CENTRAL and EASTERN EUROPE ART: Yugoslavia's modern art museum is back
ART: A retrospective of Samizdat art and writing from the Communist bloc
GRAZ: Austria's little-known city of culture
MORE ..
THE NORDIC REGION DESIGN: Denmark celebrates Arne Jacobsen
MUSEUM: Get a blast from the past at Stalin World
STOCKHOLM: Welcome to the Venice of the North
MUSIC: Pianist Leif Ove Andsnes on tour MORE ..
PLUS LISTINGS: Other things to see and do in each region
Brugge 2002 shows off a medieval city with a clear vision of its future
Brugge owes much of its considerable charm to a near-death experience.
It enjoyed a golden age in the 14th and 15th centuries as a
bustling trading pivot between the Hanseatic League and the
Mediterranean world. But once its access to the sea silted up
in the late 15th century, it fell into desuetude, sparing many
of its medieval charms from the predations of the Industrial
Revolution.
Not until the end of the 19th century was the town "rediscovered,"
and since then it has become an open-air museum of the Middle
Ages. That rich legacy alone wasn't enough to earn Brugge, as
the Flemish call it (the French say Bruges), its selection as
one of this year's Cultural Capitals of Europe. For that, the
city had to show it aims to be more than its past, and it has
done so with a spate of new buildings and a full palette of
artistic, theatrical and musical offerings. "We tried to present
a crossover between many different art forms," says Hugo De
Greef, the manager of Brugge 2002. He has put avant-garde art
in a seminary, photo-exhibitions in underground car parks and
theater performances in the city's jail. This happy marriage
between old and new adds to the simple pleasure of a walk around
a compact city girdled by canals.
As far as the new goes, the pièce de résistance is the Concert Hall, completed this year, which has all the right stuff for a modern architectural dream project: international ambition, long-term vision and a touch of megalomania. The sheer bulk of what is now the largest performance venue in Belgium is countered by a seating design that gives the stage a surprising air of intimacy. And Lieven Bertels, the young artistic director, raves about the building's "impressive acoustic effects."
With the great sound comes superb light, which pours in from two apertures in the ceiling, and brings inside views of the entire city by way of giant glass panels. The building also incorporates an urban take on a lighthouse, which will emit a soft light over the central square at night. From the open-air coffee shop at the top, visitors can see beyond the city's medieval buildings to the spinning wind turbines on the distant seashore.
Brugge is the natural site for an impressive exhibition of 15th
and 16th century art entitled "Jan van Eyck, Early Netherlandish
Painting and Southern Europe," which opened on March 15 in the
Groeninge Museum. "A good deal of research has been devoted
to the influence of Mediterranean painting on northern artists,
but less attention has been paid to the reverse movement," says
curator Till-Holger Borchert. The show takes care of that, explaining
how the Flemish Primitive painters used technical virtuosity,
an unrivaled eye for detail and brilliant colors to unleash
a revolution that marked the transition of European painting
from the Middle Ages to the early Renaissance.
The show's 120 paintings include loans from New York's Metropolitan
Museum of Art, the Louvre in Paris, Vienna's Kunsthistorisches
Museum and the State Museums of Berlin. The Duchy of Burgundy
and its crown jewel, Brugge, were at the height of prosperity
and achievement in the roiling 15th century, and the dukes magnified
their prestige by sponsoring the early Flemish painters. Italian,
Spanish and Portuguese merchants had important trade with 15th-century
Brugge, came into contact with the local style of painting and
took examples home to vast acclaim.
That is how the influence of tiny Flanders extended as far as Italy and Portugal. In this exhibition, Flemish masters Van Eyck, Van der Goes and Vander Weyden interact with Fra Angelico, Giovanni Bellini, Jean Fouquet, Fernando Gallego and many other foreign painters of great repute. "Look and compare" is the message.
Brugge will also offer a program called "Kaapstad — City
on the Cape" that will feature theater, dance, movies, music
and multimedia by and for children and teens for three weeks
beginning in late August. "We hope the creative spirit of young
people will persist after this year is over," says De Greef.
They have a lot of local history to live up to.
