In memoriam: Dr Paul Huvenne (1949–2026)
Once, dying was an art. The medieval ars moriendi taught how to let go of life: with acceptance and dignity, with faith and hope. But one can only die with grace if one has understood what it is to live.
Dr Paul Huvenne lived – generously and wholeheartedly, with flair and curiosity. As director first of the Rubenshuis (Rubens House), and later of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA), he did not move pebbles, but boulders in the river. Paul breathed Rubens, yet, standing on the giant’s shoulders, he looked towards the future. He set Jan Fabre loose on the Old Masters, brought dispersed diptychs back together, and, as one of the first museum directors in the world, devoted an exhibition to women artists. And when the KMSKA had to close in 2011 for its major renovation, he handled that, too, with panache, giving Jan Vanriet free rein in the increasingly empty galleries.
It was then, in that indeterminate period of a collection without its museum, that he called me, out of the blue. I had just defended my doctoral thesis and did not quite know what to do with myself. I found a respectable job – a permanent contract, a neat Volvo, an orderly life. And then the phone rang: ‘We’re putting on an exhibition here on 350 years of the Antwerp Academy, and I’m looking for someone to do the work.’ A few days later, the Volvo was no more. It was the best decision of my life.
Paul believed in me at a moment when few others did. He gave me extraordinary opportunities – an exhibition at the MAS museum, a project in Mumbai, two exhibitions in the Netherlands. Making books, writing articles, teaching courses: Paul gave wings and confidence. When, after his retirement, he himself sought a new path, I asked him to help develop the CoBrA depot for The Phoebus Foundation. Without hesitation, he threw himself into paintings that at first glance seemed no more than children’s scribbles. To him, they spoke for themselves.
Of course Paul understood the CoBrA movement. He was a homo ludens: an eternally playful boy, who could fold a penguin from a simple piece of paper, a crane, a rabbit or a frog. At one point I had dozens – no, hundreds – sometimes folded from origami paper, more often from napkins, placemats, or, if need be, from the wrapper of a sweet. In his inside pocket lived a calligraphy pen and a Japanese brush, with which he could, in a few strokes, draw bamboo stems. ‘Form follows material,’ he would remark in passing, and suddenly we would move from stems to Pourbus, perhaps by way of a poem he had learned as a child. Then, over a drink, he would unfold a theory that first made you think: what does he mean? Then: how does he come up with this? Only to conclude: he is right.
For Paul saw what others did not. As a dyslexic, he found texts quickly to be too many letters. Yet that apparent limitation proved his greatest gift. Paul thought in images. He could compare Van der Weyden to Spike and Suzy, Rubens to Spielberg or to Walter Van Beirendonck. Antwerp was Hollywood, and of course a laughing emoji was rightly word of the year. An image, after all, says more than a thousand words. Paul looked, Paul saw, and suddenly you understood what seems so self-evident, yet is never neutral.
On 15 April 2026, Dr Paul Huvenne died of a relentless cancer. In his final weeks we spoke of Anne of Austria and Louis XIV, of the ladder of life and Fortune’s wheel: today you are on top; tomorrow laid low. But titans do not die, not really. They go underground – no, under the skin. They carry the stars, they drive the sun. Paul lives on in his writings. In the newly renovated KMSKA. And in his art historical library, which he generously bequeathed to The Phoebus Foundation. For the foundation, too, follows his gaze: by teaching me how to look, Paul, without words, wrote a new story. His flame became Phoebus’s spark.
And the fire burns.
Grand merci, Paul.
Take care as you cross.
Dr Katharina Van Cauteren