CKV - Flemish Centre for Art Archives
The Flemish Centre for Art Archives is a hub for the distributed care of art archives and legacies. The organisation works autonomously from within the M HKA and focusses on the conservation, sustainable public access and effective field development of visual art archives under public and private management. To this end, the CKV provides the services required to archive creators and legacy managers, identifies archive potential and expertise and deploys its own expertise to serve the field of visual art archives and legacies in Flanders.
CKV’s core purpose is to assign art archives a place in the public space. Through this, we try to raise awareness about and engage the field of art archives by promoting research on, contextualisation and social activation of these archives. The CKV takes a number of initiatives to this end, but primarily works with the networks it has in place.
The Flemish Centre for Art Archives aims to provide practical support via consultants, the provision of practical tools and well-timed activities to archive creators and legacy managers related to archive care or legacy management. The CKV belongs to a network of collection management institutions in Flanders and, where possible, mediates between archive managers and repositories. The Flemish Centre for Art Archives also pro-actively approaches artists who have been selected based on the valuation framework and methodology. The objective is to help make their archives accessible, contextualise them and socially activate them.
The leitmotif throughout the entire operation is expertise. The Flemish Centre for Art Archives has its own expert staff and, where necessary, calls in expertise from partners or third parties on behalf of the field. It focusses on expertise that has been internationally developed and is available. The Centre develops best practices and shares its experience with actors in the Flemish and international network.
The basis for all activities and the guideline for determining the best use of an archive or legacy is the valuation framework. This framework focusses on differentiation and does not aim to establish a ranking or create a general standard. The cornerstone of focussed, purpose-driven operations is a comprehensive knowledge of the field that is constantly updated and includes active networking in this field.
The CKV strives to make as many art archives as possible accessible, regardless of who or what they manage, so that they are available on sustainable digital platforms for consultation, research, contextualisation and social activation.
