Sophie Lauwers

Sophie Lauwers was appointed Director-General of Bozar - Centre for Fine Arts in October 2021. Sophie Lauwers studied history at the Free University of Brussels. In 1999, she was responsible for the contemporary art section during the Van Dyck year in Antwerp through Barbara Vanderlinden's Roomade vzw. In 2000, she became project manager for Brussels 2000, cultural capital of Europe. In 2002, she started working as an exhibition coordinator at the Centre for Fine Arts, and was subsequently appointed Director of Exhibitions in 2011. She is always looking for synergies between classical art and contemporary art, but also between the visual arts and other disciplines. As coordinator, Sophie Lauwers was responsible, among other things, for the exhibition Rosas XX (2002), a lively exhibition around the dance ensemble of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, and the experiential exhibition Arthur Rimbaud, een seizoen in de hel (2004). As Director of Exhibitions, she pursued a three-track policy with great classical art by Antoine Watteau (2012), Franciso de Zurbarán (2014), Peter Paul Rubens (2014) and Bernard Van Orley (2019), among others, leading figures of the avant-garde after the two world wars with Theo Van Doesburg (2016), sculptures by Picasso (2016), Yves Klein (2017), Pol Bury (2017), Fernand Léger (2018) and Roger Raveel (2021) and contemporary artists from Belgium and abroad, including Jeff Wall (2011), Michaël Borremans (2014), Pascale Marthine Tayou (2015), Daniel Buren (2016), Keith Haring (2020), Jacqueline Mesmaeker (2020) and the successful David Hockney double exhibition (2021).

Sophie Lauwers revived the tradition of contemporary exhibitions in the Antichambres of the Centre for Fine Arts. She gave space to Valérie Mannaerts, Orla Barry, Mehkitar Garabedian, Benoit Platéus, Tshela Tendu & Vincent Meessen, Charlemagne Palestine, Harald Thys & Jos De Gruyter, Tina Gillen, Anouk De Clercq, Ana Torfs, Sophie Whettnal and Anne Daems, among others.

Together with the Bozar team and the renewed board of directors, Sophie Lauwers wants to undertake an expedition between the established and the unknown during the next six years of her mandate. The guiding principles are imagination, connection and
generosity.

In a house called the Palais des Beaux-Arts, I think the emphasis should be on the arts. We already do that, but there is room for more: departure from the artists, in all the disciplines we cover. Art offers a different perspective on today's debates. With imagination, with daring to dream, you can really achieve concrete things. For me, that is a powerful starting point. You don't need art if you don't want to depict the world differently' - Sophie Lauwers