Culture

Happy 25th, Belgian Strip Cartoon Centre!

The Belgian Comic Strip Centre in Brussels is marking its 25th anniversary. All weekend special activities are being planned and the artists Peyo and Pieter De Poortere are both being given a permanent room of their own. The festivities coincide with the launch of a new exhibition devoted to how to discover Brussels by strip cartoon.

It was in October 1989 that King Boudewijn and Queen Fabiola opened the Strip Cartoon Centre making it the world's oldest surviving strip cartoon centre today. This year some 200,000 visitors are expected to file through its doors, but only 20 percent of these visitors are Belgians.

The centre provides a home for original works and publications, but is also a centre for scientific research and learning.

Peyo, the father of the Smurfs, now gets a room all to himself. 'Picturing Brussels' is the name of the new exhibition that allows you to discover the neighbourhoods of Brussels thanks to the work of strip cartoonists who have illustrated the Brussels of their time. One hundred and thirty original works are on show.

The first results of Google Online's trolley visit to the centre are already visible. At the beginning of September Google visited Brussels to make the Comic Strip Centre the first Belgian museum to which you can pay a virtual visit. The Belgian Comic Strip Centre's Willem Degraeve: "We opened our browser this morning and witnessed how you can already visit the entrance hall and the ground floor.
 

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