La Boverie
Liège's fine-art museum in a 1905 exhibition pavilion with a Rudy Ricciotti extension over the Meuse.
La Boverie holds the fine-art collections of the city of Liège, covering Western art from the late eighteenth century to the present. Belgian artists are strongly represented, among them Constantin Meunier, Félicien Rops, James Ensor and Pierre Paulus, alongside international works by Monet, Gauguin, Picasso, Chagall and Kokoschka. The museum also runs a programme of large temporary exhibitions and, until 2020, worked in partnership with the Louvre on loan-based shows.
The building was erected in the Boverie park as the Palais des Beaux-Arts for the 1905 Liège World Exposition, to designs by Charles Soubre and Jean-Laurent Hasse, and is one of the few permanent structures from that fair. After a long period as the city's modern art museum it was closed for reconstruction and reopened in May 2016 with a glazed extension by the French architect Rudy Ricciotti, cantilevered towards the Meuse. A footbridge, the Passerelle La Belle Liégeoise, links the park to the city centre.
Highlights
- Surviving Palais des Beaux-Arts from the 1905 Liège World Exposition
- Glazed 2016 extension by Rudy Ricciotti facing the river Meuse
- Belgian painting from Meunier and Rops to Ensor and Paulus
- Set in the Boverie park, reached by the Belle Liégeoise footbridge
