On Saturday, 12 September, TheMerode in Brussels opens its doors to everyone for the second edition of TheMerode Art Day. Visitors can expect a full day of exhibitions, artist encounters, performances, screenings and conversations throughout the Club, as part of the RendezVous – Brussels Art Week.
TheMerode, a private social club in Brussels, sits on Place Poelaert facing the Palais de Justice and is reserved to members on most days. This Saturday, 12 September, the second edition of Art Day will open the doors of the club to anyone who registers for the event, from 9am until 8pm.
The timing follows the city’s calendar. Art Day is part of RendezVous – Brussels Art Week, which runs from 10 to 13 September and brings the capital’s galleries, institutions and artist-run spaces back to work after the summer. For TheMerode, it also marks the start of the cultural season.
What to expect?
The day starts with coffee and David Shrigley. The British artist hosts a walking breakfast in the Salon Black&White from 9am to 11am, in the company of Works on Paper, a selection of sixteen of his drawings that stays at the club until the end of the year. Shrigley works economically: a quick line, a few handwritten words, a joke that turns out to be about something else. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2013, and three years later placed a seven-metre bronze thumbs-up on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.
What sits outside the picture
Must Be, bronze sculpture by Sir Tony Cragg
At 11am the main exhibition opens. Peter Lindbergh. Hors-Champ brings together more than 55 photographs by the German photographer, who died in 2019. It was curated for TheMerode by Benjamin Lindbergh and Thoaï Niradeth, in collaboration with the Peter Lindbergh Foundation.
Hors-champ is a term borrowed from cinema: the space beyond the edge of the frame, present but unseen. The hang takes the idea at its word. The prints are on soft, uncoated paper, with no frames and no mounts, nailed directly to the wall. They read less like museum pieces than working proofs pinned up in a studio.
The fashion pictures for which Lindbergh is known are here – Linda Evangelista, Michaela Bercu and Kirsten Owen at Pont-à-Mousson in 1988, Catherine Deneuve in Deauville, Tina Turner in Los Angeles. Hung among them are places with no one in them: the Dorset coast, the beach at Beauduc, and the industrial Duisburg of his youth. Seen together, the portraits and the empty landscapes start to explain each other.
Guided tours leave on the hour from 11am to 4pm. On the half hour, from 11.30am to 4.30pm, the club screens Lindbergh’s short film portrait of Pina Bausch, based on her piece Der Fensterputzer.
Around the building
Two further works are on view during the day. In the front courtyard, Tony Cragg’s bronze sculpture Must Be is unveiled. Inside, TAEX Gallery presents a digital exhibition of Marina Abramović, drawn from her METHOD and ART series. From 3pm, TheOtium serves tea to the sound of a pianist.
Into the evening
At 5pm the programme moves to the Grande Merode for a concert by soprano Elise Caluwaerts and The Now Collective, the ensemble she founded with Lev Adamov. The programme is built around seasons, natural and human: Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.
The day closes with conversation. At 6.30pm, Marc Spiegler – global director of Art Basel from 2012 to 2022, and now an adviser to cultural organisations – sits down with the Brussels-based artist Kendell Geers. Their subject is the art world in 2026, framed by three words: destabilisation, disruption and degrowth. At the end of a week given over to openings and new seasons, it is a fair question to put on the table.
Registration does not commit anyone to the full day. Visitors are welcome to come for different activities of their choice. All food & drink venues will be open throughout TheMerode Art Day, for those wishing to take a break or settle in between events. You can start the day with brunch at TheStables, stop by TheOtium for coffee or a drink accompanied by live piano, and end the day with dinner at the club’s Italian restaurant, CIAO.
Practical info:
TheMerode Art Day Saturday 12 September 2026, 9am–8pm
TheMerode, Place Poelaert 6, 1000 Brussels
Registration via themerode.com
Nearest parking: Parking Poelaert
