Why is an Olen exhibition about faith and reason moving to Herentals next year?

The venue matters. Sint-Martinuskerk is an active Roman Catholic church on the village square in Olen-Centrum, not a purpose-built gallery. Services continue during the exhibition, and visitors should treat the building as a place of worship even when entering primarily for the art. That means keeping noise down, allowing liturgical activity to take precedence and checking locally if travelling on a religious feast day.

The exhibition’s published visiting information is in Dutch. English-speaking residents can ask for clarification through the Vrije Tijd service of gemeente Olen, whose official municipal website lists the service at Lichtaartseweg 9 and provides the telephone number 014 27 94 22 and the email address [email protected]. In Flanders, local cultural communication is normally Dutch-language; “gemeente” is the Dutch equivalent of the French-language Belgian term “commune”. There is no indication in the available published information that a complete English-language guide is provided, so visitors who need one should enquire before travelling.

No ticket reservation is advertised in the available reporting, and the exhibition is described as free. However, the organisers have not published a verified running attendance total, daily capacity or detailed accessibility information. Wheelchair users and visitors who need step-free access, seating or an adapted toilet should therefore contact gemeente Olen or the church beforehand rather than assume that a historic building has modern facilities throughout.

The planned move to Herentals will place the same artistic argument in a markedly different setting. NNieuws says the series is due at the Lakenhal in April 2027, although exact opening dates, hours and visitor arrangements have not yet been announced publicly. The move is therefore confirmed at the level of venue and month, but the detailed programme remains provisional from a visitor’s perspective.

Herentals reopened its restored Lakenhal and adjoining Fraikinzaal to the public in May 2026, according to regional broadcaster RTV. The historic building is again intended to serve as a principal exhibition location for cultuurcentrum ’t Schaliken, while the Fraikinzaal houses sculpture associated with Herentals-born artist Charles Auguste Fraikin. Later reporting by Het Nieuwsblad said exhibitions at the Lakenhal would generally be accessible on Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons, but visitors should not assume those standard hours will automatically apply to Spiessens’ show in 2027.

The change of venue may also change how the paintings are read. In Sint-Martinuskerk, religious images share space with altars, worship and the accumulated visual language of Catholic practice. In the Lakenhal, they will enter a civic cultural programme. That shift—from consecrated space to municipal exhibition hall—could make the project more approachable for visitors who would not normally enter a church, while removing some of the immediate religious context that gives the Olen installation its force.

“Religio” belongs to a wider pattern in which historic churches in Belgium serve simultaneously as places of worship, heritage sites and cultural venues. The arrangement can bring people into buildings they might otherwise overlook, but it also requires clarity about whether an event is devotional, artistic or historical. Spiessens’ position as a non-believing artist makes those boundaries especially visible: his paintings engage with religious narratives without asking the audience to share a creed.

The series also carries a local biography. NNieuws reports that Spiessens began painting after visiting the Academie voor Beeldende Kunst in Herentals in 2010. Its return to Herentals will therefore connect the completed project with the city where his artistic development began. He has said he hopes to reach believers and non-believers and would ultimately like the works to travel more widely through Flanders, although no further venues have been confirmed.

For newcomers to the Kempen, the exhibition offers more than an indoor cultural stop. Olen and Herentals are neighbouring municipalities in Antwerp province, and the project shows how cultural programming here often moves through a regional network rather than remaining in one large city. Dutch is the working language, but the visual subject and the central disagreement between faith and reason are readily recognisable beyond Belgium’s linguistic borders.

The next firm date is 20 September, when the Olen presentation is scheduled to close. After that, attention turns to the Lakenhal programme for April 2027. Prospective visitors should watch the official websites of Stad Herentals, cultuurcentrum ’t Schaliken and gemeente Olen for confirmed dates, opening hours, accessibility arrangements and any guided visits. Until those details appear, the current church exhibition remains the only fully scheduled opportunity to see the works in the setting for which this phase of the project was organised.