Can Brussels still save Philippe Geluck’s Musée du Chat project?

Brussels is facing a cultural-policy test in the middle of its museum district: Philippe Geluck wants to withdraw from the long-delayed Musée du Chat, a project planned on Rue Royale between the BIP and Bozar and backed by the Brussels-Capital Region through the Société d’Aménagement Urbain (SAU). For people living in Brussels, EU staffers working nearby and visitors who know the city through its comic-strip identity, the issue is not only whether Le Chat gets a museum. It is whether a publicly supported cultural project can still be delivered when delays, inflation and political scrutiny change the original bargain. According to BX1, Geluck now wants to step back after more than a decade of delays and a sharp rise in costs. The Brussels broadcaster reports that the urban permit was obtained only in April 2023 for a project launched in 2014, and that the total cost has moved from €11.7 million to €17.8 million. The artist’s non-profit was expected to finance the interior fit-out after the Region delivered the building in closed structural shell form; BX1 says that interior bill has now doubled to about €7 million. That explains Geluck’s calculation. The phrase reported in the Francophone press, that the project has become “écrasant”, is not just emotional language. It points to a practical problem: a private cultural figure, even a very successful one, is being asked to carry a financing plan built under earlier cost assumptions. If he exits, Brussels must decide whether another operator can take over, whether the museum concept is revised, or whether the Region absorbs another awkward delay on a highly visible city-centre site. The broader view is about Brussels as a comic-strip capital. The City of Brussels officially promotes its comic book route and lists Le Chat among the murals on Boulevard du Midi. The Comic Art Museum, already established on Rue des Sables, presents itself as a Brussels institution devoted to the “9th Art”. A dedicated Musée du Chat would therefore not be a random attraction: it would sit inside an existing cultural economy built around Franco-Belgian comics, tourism and urban branding. But this is also why the controversy has persisted. Supporters see Geluck as one of Belgium’s best-known Francophone cultural exports and argue that Brussels should invest in a popular, accessible form of heritage. Fiscal and cultural-policy sceptics ask why scarce regional money should help create a museum centred on one living artist and one commercially successful character, especially while other cultural institutions face budget pressure. The next step is institutional. BX1 reports that talks are under way between Geluck and the Brussels government, and that other entities may be interested in taking over the project under a convention with the Region. What Brussels has not yet provided, at least publicly, is a clear updated delivery plan: who pays for what, who operates the museum, what happens to the SAU-backed building, and how the project fits alongside Bozar, the BIP and the city’s existing comic-strip institutions.