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Research institutes | Belgium
Centrum voor Religieuze kunst en Cultuur vzw

Heverlee, Belgium

The Centre for Religious Art and Culture (Centrum voor Religieuze Kunst en Cultuur - CRKC) is the centre of expertise for religious heritage in Flanders and Brussels.
The CRKC collects knowledge and shares expertise about religious material and immaterial culture, supports and advises heritage managers, enthusiastically promotes an interest in this rich heritage, and advocates for the active distribution of this valuable information. The CRKC works closely together with religious archives such as KADOC-KULeuven, the State Archives and the Flemish Heritage Library. The primary focus of the CRKC lies with the heritage of the catholic church, but the scope of the Centre’s work encompasses all the recognized religions in Belgium (Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Anglicanism, Judaism, Islam, and Orthodox Churches). The Centre’s base of operations is located at the historical Abbey of Park in Leuven, alongside the Museum for Religious Art and Culture which was established by the CRKC in 2003 and opened to the public in 2009.

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Illuminare - Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Art (KU Leuven)

Illuminare — Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Art (KU Leuven) is located in the Central Library of the University of Leuven. It is a university research and documentation centre, accessible for academics and students. The research of Illuminare is founded upon reception history and the contextual meaning of Early Netherlandish Art; technical research, conservation and cataloging of illuminated manuscripts and the iconology of the Middle Ages from an interdisciplinary perspective (Iconology Research Group). Research is made possible under the auspices of research and doctoral projects.

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KIK-IRPA. Royal institute for Cultural Heritage

The KIK-IRPA is a federal scientific institute responsible for the documentation, study and conservation-restoration of the cultural and artistic heritage of our country.

Art historians, photographers, chemists, archaeologists, engineers and conservator-restorers carry out interdisciplinary research on the materials and techniques used in works of art and cultural artefacts and on the materials and methods used in conservation-restoration.

The KIK-IRPA is a unique resource for scientific, photographic and technical documentation of the cultural heritage of the country. More information

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Rubenianum

The Rubenianum is a study centre specialized in the art of the late Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, with emphasis on the Low Countries.

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The Flemish research centre for the arts in the Burgundian Netherlands

The Flemish research centre for the arts in the Burgundian Netherlands was established in 2010 as an initiative of the Groeninge Museum in Bruges and the Flemish Art Collection. Since 2015, the Flemish research is part of the Kenniscentrum vzw, a cultural heritage not-for-profit organisation under the auspices of the City of Bruges. The centre's mission is to stimulate research on the art of the 15th and 16th-century Burgundian Netherlands and disseminate this research on an international level. The Research centre receives subsidies from the Flemish government within the purview of the cultural heritage decree as a consequence of the acknowledgment of the Groeninge Museum as an accredited museum at the Flemish level.

Since 2013, the Flemish research centre, together with the museum library, has been housed in the Sint-Andreas school on the Garenmarkt in Bruges. The centre is accessible to the public by appointment.

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