Millennium Iconoclast Museum of Art

The Millennium Iconoclast Museum of Art, commonly known as MIMA, was a private contemporary art museum located in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, a municipality of Brussels, Belgium. Founded in 2016 and closed permanently in 2025, the museum occupied the former Belle-Vue Brewery along the Brussels, Charleroi Canal. Operating as a non-profit institution, MIMA distinguished itself through its focus on urban culture, street art, and what it termed 'culture 2.0' or internet culture, filling a perceived gap in Belgium's public contemporary art museum landscape. Over its nine years of operation, the museum hosted 17 exhibitions and attracted more than 400,000 visitors before its closure due to infrastructure-related access problems.

MIMA opened on 15 April 2016, though its original opening had been scheduled a month earlier and was postponed due to the 22 March terrorist attacks in Brussels. The museum was the initiative of Alice van den Abeele and Raphaël Cruyt, together with Michel and Florence de Launoit. It was privately financed at a cost of €18 million by developer Jean-Paul Pütz, with contributions of artworks from seven collectors. The Brussels regional government granted a subsidy of €40,000 for the organization of the first three exhibitions in 2016 and 2017. Alice van den Abeele was recognized by Politico Europe in early 2017 as one of 28 future-shaping figures of Europe. In March 2020, the museum launched a crowdfunding campaign to offset losses caused by mandatory closure during the COVID-19 pandemic. The museum announced its closure in October 2024, following a sudden drop of over 50% in visitor numbers after the unexpected closure of the Quai du Hainaut for repairs, which cut off road access. With works estimated to last years, MIMA declared its operation 'no longer viable'. Two planned exhibitions were cancelled, and the museum closed permanently on 5 January 2025 following the final weekend of its Multitude exhibition.

MIMA's collection and exhibition program centered on art from the year 2000 onward, embracing what the museum termed 'culture 2.0' or internet culture. The museum maintained a permanent collection of approximately forty works donated by a patron, alongside its temporary exhibition program. Its scope encompassed urban culture of the twenty-first century, including street art and graffiti, as well as connections to musical genres such as punk rock, electro, hip-hop, and folk. The museum also explored artistic influences from cinema, graphic and plastic arts, styling, tattoo, and sports culture including surfing, skateboarding, and extreme sports. This interdisciplinary approach reflected an ambition to capture the breadth of contemporary creative production outside traditional fine art categories. The museum organized approximately two temporary exhibitions annually, presented across eight exhibition rooms.

The museum's opening exhibition, City Lights (15 April, 24 December 2016), featured Brooklyn-based artists Maya Hayuk, Swoon, MOMO, and FAILE, known for their colorful mural art. Subsequent notable exhibitions included A Friendly Takeover (2017) focusing on graffiti artist Boris Tellegen, also known as DELTA; Art Is Comic (2017) with six young artists working at the intersection of comics, illustration, cartoon, and animation, including Brecht Evens, Jean Jullien, and Joan Cornellà; and Get Up Stand Up (2018), which presented more than 450 protest posters from 1968 to 1973 alongside Julio Le Parc's 1971 installation 'Strike the officers'. Other significant shows included Invader Rubikcubist (2022), featuring the French street artist; Jean Jullien: Studiolo (2023); and the final exhibition, Multitude by Vhils (28 June 2024-5 January 2025). The museum also presented Dream Box (2019) with Felipe Pantone, Hell'O, Escif, Elzo Durt, and Gogolplex; Obsessions (2019-2020) on Art Brut in collaboration with La 'S' Grand Atelier; and Zoo (2020-2021) with artists including Parra, Todd James, and Steven Harrington. The Double Bill exhibition (2021-2022) presented the archives of the ABC porn cinema in collaboration with Cinéma Nova, Brussels, alongside posters by Laurent Durieux.

MIMA was housed in the former Belle-Vue Brewery at 41, quai du Hainaut/Henegouwenkaai, a four-storey building dating from 1916 situated along the Brussels, Charleroi Canal in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean. The building provided approximately 1,300 square meters of space across four floors, containing eight exhibition rooms. The museum also featured a museum shop, a dining facility, and two panoramic viewpoints overlooking the canal and Brussels. Since 2021, a pedestrian footbridge over the canal linked the museum directly to the City of Brussels side, improving access for visitors. The industrial heritage setting of the former brewery provided a distinctive context for the museum's contemporary programming, though the site's dependence on road access along the quai ultimately proved vulnerable when the quay was closed for structural repairs.

Located at 41, quai du Hainaut/Henegouwenkaai in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, MIMA was privately owned and operated as a non-profit institution throughout its existence from 2016 to 2025. The museum operated with an annual budget of around €600,000. In its early period, it attracted approximately one thousand visitors per week. Access was improved in 2021 by the addition of a pedestrian footbridge connecting to the City of Brussels across the Brussels, Charleroi Canal. However, the permanent closure of the Quai du Hainaut to road traffic in 2024 due to structural instability proved catastrophic for visitor numbers, leading to the museum's closure announcement in October 2024 and final closure on 5 January 2025. The museum's website remained at www.mimamuseum.eu at the time of its closure.