Jan Hoet (Leuven, 1936) has won the “Prize for General Cultural Services”, a career prize awarded by the Flemish Community.  

This time they have given it to the most contrary and colourful museum director our country ever managed to produce: the man who taught his people to look at contemporary art.   

Combative

In 1975 the enthusiastic art-lover, who had himself tried to paint for a while, though without success, became the first director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent (now the S.M.A.K.). The combative Hoet turned a destitute museum with neither building nor collection into a high-profile bastion. He fetched arte povera from Italy, conceptual and minimal art from America, and got in important work by Joseph Beuys. 

Hoet’s international breakthrough came in 1986 with the exhibition Chambres d’amis, whereby he showed work in fifty private houses in Ghent. It was daring. It worked. In 1989 he was “Leiter” of the ninth Documenta in Kassel. Meanwhile he’d saved his museum in Ghent.  

Opposition

After his departure from Ghent he went to Herford, in Germany. There was opposition again, and again he put the town on the map.  

With culture managers like Gerard Mortier (De Munt/La Monnaie, Salzburg, Paris, Madrid), Eric Antonis (inspired Antwerp alderman for culture) and Frie Leysen (KunstenfestivaldesArts) he helped change the artistic climate in Flanders and Belgium.  

Provocative

The ever-boyish Hoet still loves to be provocative. Clown, uninhibited critic, maker and breaker of reputations, he wants to be buried in church. Because of the aesthetics of the ritual. And with music by Arvo Pärt.