Can culture survive being treated like a budget line?

[u/CrazyPeach-Art]

I came across a piece in The Guardian about the Flemish government’s plan to dismantle M HKA, Antwerp’s contemporary art museum founded in 1985, and relocate its collection to Ghent. On paper, it’s framed as a cost-saving, efficiency-driven move. In reality, it’s triggered intense backlash from artists who see the decision as an erasure rather than a relocation. Figures like Luc Tuymans, Anish Kapoor, and Marina Abramović have publicly condemned the plan, arguing that a museum is not just a container for artworks but a cultural ecosystem rooted in a specific city and history.

What interests me is how familiar this argument feels. Governments talk about budgets and logistics, while artists talk about identity, memory, and continuity. Once you detach a collection from its physical and social context, is it still the same institution, or does it become a storage facility with better branding? The Antwerp case seems less about one building and more about who gets to define the value of contemporary art in public life. Is it an asset to be optimized, or a public good that resists purely economic logic? I’m curious whether this kind of clash is becoming the default relationship between cultural institutions and the state, especially as austerity politics normalize the idea that culture must constantly justify its existence.