Perhaps you already knew that the Belgians were Dutch for a short while. But why was William I given nicknames like the Canal King and King Cheese? And why did the Belgians want William out and then back again? Find out in The Lost Kingdom.
In 2015 it will be 200 years since the Netherlands and what was to become Belgium were unified in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The kingdom held out for 15 years, from 1815 to 1830. For a short while the ‘Belgians’ and the Dutch inhabited one and the same state. Though King William I reigned as an enlightened despot, he also did a great deal to develop the industry, the infrastructure, education and cultural life.
But why did the South feel so differently about King William I from the North? How did William I come by nicknames like the Copper King and the Canal King? Why did the Belgians daub this slogan on street walls around 1830: “We want William out - should William grow wiser - we want William back”? What was the long-term significance of this period for Belgium?
The STAM exhibition The Lost Kingdom. William I and Belgium provides all the answers, and more. Telling quotes, cartoons, historical objects and interactive multimedia give visitors a sense of the zeitgeist of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and the early years of the independent Belgium. An interactive game makes us reflect on the differences and similarities between the Belgians and the Dutch today.
With the cooperation of the National Archives of the Netherlands, The Hague, and lenders at home and abroad.
Photographer Michiel Hendryckx establishes a link with the present day. In a new series of photographs he captures vestiges of the period of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, in Belgium and the Netherlands. Photo: Michiel Hendryckx / De Leeuw van Waterloo.
The exhibition will comprise exceptional objects, documents, paintings and prints from STAM’s own collection and from museums and heritage institutions at home and abroad, including:
the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Royal Archives and the National Archives in The Hague, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and of Military History, the Royal Library of Belgium, the Royal Collection, the Musical Instruments Museum, the National Bank of Belgium, the Print Collection of the University of Antwerp, the archives and collections of the University of Ghent and the Diocese of Ghent, and Ghent City Archives.
Prins van Oranje in de fabriek van Jan Rosseel
Portret van koning Willem I
De brug te Meulestede
Erepenning van Willem Frederik, Prins der Nederlanden aan Hippolyte Metdepenningen, 1879
Sjaal
De Prijsuitreiking aan de laureaten van de tentoonstelling der Nationale Industrie te Gent in 1820
Portret van Joseph van Crombrugghe, burgemeester van Gent en koning van de Sint-Jorisgilde
STAM turned ten last year... time for a make-over for the permanent exhibition! Since the end of 2020 you can stroll through the new Story of Ghent.
Feel free to touch! A fun children’s trail that leads through every room in the museum. Children become merchants, craftspeople, architects or city trippers and participate in city life. They sell cloth, make coats of arms, face façades and work out routes.
