Plans for a long-awaited Modern and contemporary art museum in the Belgian capital have stalled because the federal government of Belgium and the regional government of Brussels have very different visions for the project. Leading Belgian cultural figures have expressed concerns that Brussels’s equivalent of London’s Tate Modern or New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) will ever be created.

Earlier this year, the president of the Brussels region (Brussels-Capital), Rudi Vervoort, told Belgian media that the regional government of Brussels planned to convert a 16,000 sq. m Art Deco building north-west of the city center, formerly owned by the French car manufacturer Citroën, into a Modern and contemporary art center.