Wide White Space Gallery

Wide White Space was an influential avant-garde art gallery in Antwerp, Belgium, operating from 1966 to 1976. Founded by art historian Anny De Decker and artist Bernd Lohaus, the gallery provided a crucial platform for emerging and radical artists who lacked exhibition opportunities in conservative museums. It rapidly became one of Europe's leading avant-garde spaces, hosting many figures who would become icons of modern art.

De Decker and Lohaus established Wide White Space on March 18, 1966, to create a free space for happenings and new art. The gallery opened with the Milky Way Happening, featuring works and events by Lohaus, Panamarenko, and Hugo Heyrman. To make art accessible, De Decker placed an ice cream cart outside the inaugural opening, offering free ice cream, a gesture repeated with fries at Marcel Broodthaers's opening on May 26, 1966. Through ties with Düsseldorf gallerist Alfred Schmela, the gallery secured early Belgian showings of international artists like Christo. By the early 1970s, fatigue with conceptual art's repetition set in, prompting a second space in 1973 in the Le Bailli shopping gallery in Brussels to stimulate new artistic responses. Exhibition activity slowed by late 1973, and De Decker ceased operations in May 1975, with the gallery closing entirely in 1976. In 2012, De Decker received the ART COLOGNE prize, including a 10,000 euro award, recognizing her work with the gallery.

The gallery focused on international avant-garde and contemporary art, maintaining close contacts with the ZERO group and rapidly rotating new artists. It gave many artists, including Daniel Buren, Christo, Carl Andre, Panamarenko, and Marcel Broodthaers, their first opportunities to exhibit in Belgium. Artists conceived their exhibitions as total artworks, integrating the gallery space, invitation cards, and vernissage rituals. The gallery also fostered market participation, such as at documenta 4, and presented work at PROSPECT 68 and PROSPECT 69 at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf.

During its decade of operation, the gallery showed work by Carl Andre, Richard Artschwager, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Christo, Dan Flavin, Gotthard Graubner, Edward Kienholz, Bruce Nauman, Richard Long, Piero Manzoni, Gerhard Richter, Dieter Roth, Bernard Schultze, Niele Toroni, Gunther Uecker, Victor Vasarely, and Andy Warhol. It worked particularly closely with Joseph Beuys. On February 9, 1968, Beuys and Henning Christiansen performed Eurasienstab in the gallery, adapting the copper staff and felt corners to the room's height, an 82-minute event filmed on 16mm by cameraman Paul de Fru. For PROSPECT 68 and 69, Beuys created the felt-covered grand piano Infiltration homogen fur Konzertflugel. In April 1969, James Lee Byars transformed the gallery entirely in pink, requiring visitors to remove their shoes for performances like 75 in a Hat and A Pink Silk Airplane for 100. Between 1969 and 1974, Daniel Buren created five versions of his in situ work Travail in situ, pasting striped exhibition posters on the interior and exterior walls. In 1974, Bruce Nauman exhibited Wall with Two Fans, a partition dividing the space with a fan in each corner.

The gallery was situated behind the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp in the southern part of the city, a location humorously noted on invitations as Hinter dem Museum. It occupied the ground floor of an iconic 1901 Art Nouveau corner house known as Het Bootje, designed by architect Frans Smet-Verhas and featuring an erker shaped like a ship's hull. The ground floor's stark white walls inspired the gallery's name, serving as a statement for the autonomy of the artwork. Initially addressed at Plaatsnijdersstraat 1, the official address changed to Schildersstraat 2 in 1968, though it remained in the same corner building.

The original Antwerp gallery at Plaatsnijdersstraat and Schildersstraat closed in 1976. Retrospective exhibitions about the gallery's history and impact have been held at the Palais voor Schone Kunsten in Brussels in 1994, the Kunstmuseum Bonn in 1995, and the MAC in Marseille in 1996. A comprehensive publication, Wide White Space. Hinter dem Museum, was released by Richter Verlag in 1995.