FOMU Photo Museum Antwerp

FOMU Photo Museum Antwerp, abbreviated as FoMu, is a museum of photography located in Antwerp, Belgium. It is recognized as one of the most prominent institutions in Europe dedicated to the photographic medium. The museum manages a vast collection of approximately 3,000,000 international, historical, and contemporary objects and images. It presents rotating exhibitions of both current and historical photography alongside photographic equipment, and it publishes specialized magazines while offering an extensive public program of guided tours and workshops.

The origins of the museum trace back to 1965, when an exhibition titled 125 Years of Photography was held at the Provincial Museum of Art Crafts Sterckshof in Deurne. Organized in collaboration with the Agfa-Gevaert firm, the event sparked significant cultural interest. Following this, the museum established a Photo and Film department centered on loans from Agfa-Gevaert. A work committee, including Karel Sano and Dr. Laurent Roosens, advocated for a standalone photography museum. In 1973, a dedicated Department of Photography and Cinema was created within the Sterckshof institution, and the province acquired the private camera collection of Swiss collector Michel Auer. By 1980, the growing collection, managed by historian Roger Coenen and later art historian Pool Andries, was temporarily relocated to an office on Karel Oomsstraat and named Museum voor Fotografie. In 1984, plans to move into the Pakhuis Vlaanderen warehouse were approved, and the Fotomuseum officially opened there as an independent provincial museum in 1986. The museum received national recognition in 2009. After operating under the Province of Antwerp for 53 years, it transitioned on January 1, 2018, to an autonomous structure under De Museumstichting. The current director is Elviera Velghe, who succeeded Christoph Ruys.

The museum's collection originated from the Agfa-Gevaert publication archive and the initial exhibition loans. As of 2018, the holdings are divided into four main categories: an image core collection of 75,923 items, funds and archives totaling 2,774,987 items, 23,000 pieces of equipment, and a library of 43,000 volumes. The equipment segment largely consists of the 8,000-piece camera collection of Michel and Michele Auer, acquired in 1973, which was expanded in 2005 by a long-term loan of the Agfa Foto-Historama. The Agfa Foto-Historama collection, comprising around 15,000 items including daguerreotypes and historical processes, was previously exhibited in Leverkusen in 1974 and moved to the Museum Ludwig in Cologne in 1985 before arriving at FOMU in 2005, though its image sub-collection remains in Cologne. The museum also holds extensive archives of Belgian photographers, including Herman Selleslags, Rik Selleslags, Antoon Dries, Paule Pia, Patrick De Spiegelaere, Filip Tas, Frank Philippi, Gerald Dauphin, Suzy Embo, Willy Kessels, and many others.

The museum's historical and contemporary fine art photography collection includes works by significant figures in the history of the medium. Among the notable photographers represented are Charles Negre, Henri Le Secq, Edmond Fierlants, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Leonard Misonne, Edward Steichen, Paul Strand, Man Ray, Brassai, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Irving Penn, William Klein, Lee Friedlander, Robert Adams, Nicholas Nixon, Lynne Cohen, Carl De Keyzer, Dirk Braeckman, and Andreas Gursky. Between 1986 and 2018, the museum organized 106 solo exhibitions, though 86.7 percent of these featured male photographers. The only year where women outnumbered men in solo shows was 1997, featuring Sally Mann, Annie van Gemert, and Stephen Feldman. A 2018 group exhibition titled Claude, Samuel, Zanele included works by non-binary artist Zanele Muholi and Claude Cahun, while other notable solo retrospectives have included one of Anton Corbijn.

The museum is situated on the Waalse Kaai, opposite the Waterpoort in the Zuid-Museum district. Since 1986, it has been housed in the Pakhuis Vlaanderen, a warehouse designed in 1911 by architect Frans Van Dijck. The building is an early example of reinforced concrete construction using the Hennebique system, featuring non-load-bearing exterior brick walls that serve a purely decorative function. The structure became obsolete as a warehouse after the southern docks were filled in 1969, but required few modifications when it first opened as a museum. Extensive renovations and an expansion took place between 2001 and 2003 through a collaboration between architects Georges Baines and Patrick De Sterck, culminating in a reopening on March 21, 2004. A further expansion occurred in 2016 with the construction of the Lieven Gevaert tower, named after a key Belgian photography industrialist. Built on an adjacent demolished site on Verviersstraat, the tower serves as a climate-neutral storage depot, the first of its kind in Europe, utilizing sustainable materials and insulation. In early 2023, the museum's entrance hall and cinema were also renewed and reconfigured.

The museum is located in the Zuid-Museum district of Antwerp, Belgium. Structurally, it transitioned from provincial ownership to an independent entity under De Museumstichting in 2018. The institution features a specialized library, a museum shop, and a museum cafe. Its cinematic offerings evolved significantly in recent years. Initially, the film program of the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, known as Cinema Zuid, was presented in the museum's two cinema halls. In 2019, this operation moved to De Studio and was renamed De Cinema. Concurrently, the cinema spaces at the museum were taken over by the Lumiere group, which launched Cinema Lumiere to offer a broader program of contemporary, classic, and thematic films that occasionally align with the museum's exhibitions. In addition to its exhibition and public programs, the museum publishes two magazines: the Dutch-language .tiff, focusing on fine art photography, and the English-language Trigger, which debuted in November 2019.