In Antwerp, ‘Glitter and Glamour’

In the new Diva museum in Antwerp, a eating area installation showcases elaborate samples of silver serving pieces. The museum is dedicated to diamonds and silverwork as well as the history of diamonds in the city.CreditIlvy Njiokiktjien to the New York Moments


ANTWERP, Belgium — A Diva laden with diamonds as well as other cherished objects designed a debut listed here last weekend.

It essentially was a brand new museum termed Diva. And in true flamboyant type, preparations ran right up on the opening.

Such brinksmanship could appear to be minor within a city which has been the cash from the diamond trade given that 1447. But for the town’s leaders and diamond business insiders, the museum’s arrival has not appear a moment also shortly. Regardless that eighty four per cent of the entire world’s rough diamonds nonetheless handed via right here final yr, Antwerp has known for awhile that it required some additional attract to keep up its business dominance and, particularly, to improve its tourism.
Among the list of museum’s reveals: a Flemish heart, in diamonds, created during the mid-1800s.CreditDominique Provost/All legal rights reserved DIVA


“For a long time the myth, electric power and magic of diamonds exercised their own personal pull, so the stones almost offered them selves,” claimed Marcel Pruwer, a diamond service provider and previous president of your Antwerp Diamond Bourse. But recently this charming, vivid port of over 520,000 citizens has observed trading hubs for instance Dubai, Hong Kong, Tel Aviv, Mumbai and also neighboring Amsterdam make inroads as diamond facilities.

The diamond trade may provide the glamour of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” Mr. Pruwer stated, but, he additional, “we’ve come to be uninteresting. What we'd like is the ingenuity, boldness and guts of an Alessandro Michele,” he mentioned, referring to the designer powering Gucci’s fabulously effective revival.

Mr. Pruwer continues to be a chief strategist of Antwerp’s Diamond Year celebrations, a series of activities this yr intended to give the town’s heritage trade more interest in addition to a lashing of neat. And, for town, the opening on the $20 million Diva museum was the headliner. Much more lengthy-term efforts include creating a “Diamonds from Antwerp” brand name and dealing with the Shanghai Diamond Exchange on new marketplaces in China.

Diva has an enviable location, round the corner from city corridor and just blocks from the Rubens-stuffed gothic Cathedral of Our Lady. The painter’s grand townhouse is a fairly easy stroll in a single path; in one other could be the Scheldt River as well as the buzzy Aged Port neighborhood of Eilandje, the key stage of entry for people from cruise ships and river boats, anchored by the popular MAS metropolis museum.

The museum features a fifteenth-century facade, but at the rear of it's a modern six-level structure, renovated because its before times as museums of folk art and ethnography. Its exhibits were being culled from your lasting collections from the Diamond Museum, which closed in 2012, along with the Sterckshof Silver Museum, shuttered in 2014. There are also items on extensive-term mortgage from private groups including the King Baudouin Foundation.

But its organizers, who started engaged on the museum in 2014, understood Diva experienced to provide more than just dazzling stones to achieve success.
The nice Market Sq. in town Heart. Antwerp is attempting to include internet sites that should help it raise tourism.CreditIlvy Njiokiktjien for that Ny Instances


“Diva will not be the blingiest museum, but We've lots of glitter and glamour,” stated Jeroen Martens, Diva’s director. “We wanted to produce a layered, additional human practical experience for an incredibly broad viewers, not simply lifestyle lovers or experts.”

Contrary to These of most modern day museums, Diva’s interior was made to experience intimate, as if you ended up visiting the home of a rather eccentric aristocratic collector — who just transpired to possess a diamond Βαπτιστικοι Σταυροι Με Αλυσιδα Προσφορες workroom, a media home and also a vault.

For the design and Exhibit features, Mr. Martens named on several properly-recognised Belgians, such as Gert Voorjans, an interior decorator whose purchasers have included Mick Jagger and who is known in style circles for developing boutiques for Dries Van Noten. He built the first from the museum’s six galleries: an intimate wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities. Inside the richly hued staging, objects like an owl cup, designed from the mid-sixteenth century of silver plus a carved coconut, the museum’s oldest treasure, locate a counterpoint in a substantial touch-display that displays portraits of and by famous Flemish and Belgian artists. Faucet a portrait, as well as display screen reveals illustrations or photos with the artist’s assortment. (As it seems, Rubens was no slouch during the jewellery Division.)

Displays in The cupboard of curiosities, a characteristic produced via the very well-acknowledged Belgian interior designer Gert Voorjans in The brand new Diva museum.CreditIlvy Njiokiktjien for your Big apple Moments


Another 5 galleries Βαπτιστικοι Σταυροι Αθηνα had been intended by Carla Janssen Hofelt, and consist of a workshop specializing in diamond cutting, sprucing and environment in addition to a type of eating room installation showcasing elaborate samples of Βαπτιστικοι Σταυροι silver serving parts. The Screen spots complete somewhat more than five,380 square feet.

Like Most recent museums, Diva has immersive attributes: Could it be a diamond or cubic zirconia? Can you notice the fraud that when fooled a member of the Rothschild household? As well as in the ultimate gallery — styled as being a boudoir to Display screen jewellery similar to the museum’s serpent mascot, a flexible piece in gold, green enamel and diamonds relationship from 1860 — readers are invited to determine what sort of diva These are, after which test on Digital diamonds for visuals which might be posted to social media.

A next wave of options, together with lessons, a lending library (a collaboration While using the MoMU vogue museum in Antwerp ), exploration services along with a conservation and restoration atelier are expected to open up in September.
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The director with the museum, Jeroen Martens, described it as “a layered, additional human knowledge for a really wide viewers, not only society lovers or professionals.”CreditIlvy Njiokiktjien for The Ny Situations


Nevertheless, Mr. Martens reported, the museum is more than just reveals and activities, “it’s about the Tale behind the thing.

“You don’t require fashionable know-how to possess an working experience,” he extra, “but Because the performance is there, we felt we should utilize it anywhere we can.”

To complete the storytelling angle, the director and scriptwriter Frank van Laecke produced the character of Jerome Legrand, a virtual butler highlighted on an elaborate audio guidebook that includes quick plays fusing reality and fiction. As an example, a single story is inspired by the courtesan Violetta from Verdi’s “La Traviata,” and the composer Steven Prengels was enlisted Βαπτιστικοι Σταυροι 18Κ to riff on “The Jewel Song” from Gounod’s “Faust.”
The museum shop.CreditIlvy Njiokiktjien for your New York Times
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The museum store.CreditIlvy Njiokiktjien for your The big apple Times

On Might 1, a few days ahead of the official opening, the museum was filled with staff. Exhibits were being even now becoming positioned, technological teams were being modifying lights and ladders, boxes and cables ended up scattered around the flooring.

In the multipurpose Emerald Area, a bar stood Completely ready to the fifty seven-hour opening marathon (one hour For each aspect on a superb-Reduce diamond, you are aware of). The program was to include all-evening D.J.s, tattoo artists, a diamond escape video game along with a workbench primed for the diamond-slicing session that organizers hoped would set the primary Guinness Environment Record of its kind.

Diva organizers stated the museum had about five,000 company above the opening weekend, and the interactive attributes have been specifically common. It now is open up to the general public everyday, except Wednesdays, with tickets at ten euros, or $12, for Older people.

In combination with its raconteur approach to explaining diamonds and cherished metal operate, Diva has long been striving to promote regional artisans and diamond retailers in its retail operation. The museum shop, which opened in December, features rhinestone-topped pencils (€2), regionally designed Diva gin and jewellery from neighborhood designers (from €35).

Silvius Druon, the Λευκοχρυσοι Βαπτιστικοι Σταυροι spouse and children-run diamond organization answerable for the shop, has expanded into jewelry-producing for patrons in search of greater items. There are also modest, Accredited unfastened diamonds starting at a few hundred euros Each and every and rings with fifty percent-carat solitaires at €2,four hundred to €three,000.

Along with the museum, as Section of town’s energy to promote alone being a transparent and ethical destination to trade in diamonds, is presenting a absolutely free brochure of what it calls “Antwerp’s Most Brilliant,” a listing of neighborhood jewelers whose functions are audited by city authorities. A variety of them are highlighted in the main issue of Diva’s in-dwelling journal.

“Ultimately, we have been a museum of tales,” Mr. Martens reported. “Having fun is exactly what brilliant Reminiscences are all about.”