Park Abbey in Leuven celebrates the completion of a fourteen-year restoration with a major international exhibition in Museum PARCUM
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Threading Landscapes: Art at Park Abbey
24 October 2026 - 28 March 2027
Opening: Saturday 24 October 2026
Press preview: Thursday, 22 October 2026
Location: Museum PARCUM, Leuven
Curated by Katya García Antón, Daniel Feldman, María Inés Rodríguez and Ana Sokoloff
Park Abbey in Leuven and PARCUM announce the opening of Threading Landscapes: Art at Park Abbey in Museum PARCUM. This major international exhibition, with works by more than 25 artists, will open on 24 October 2026 and marks a new chapter in the cultural life of one of Belgium’s most remarkable monastic sites.
Park Abbey, founded in 1129, is one of the best-preserved abbey sites in Western Europe. On the outskirts of Leuven, surrounded by greenery, the domain — with its monastery, abbey farm, ponds and enclosing walls — forms an exceptionally intact ensemble. Its cloisters, vaulted halls and landscaped grounds offer both a tangible record of monastic discipline and a space charged with contemplative resonance. After a fourteen-year restoration campaign, the abbey has been carefully restored and sustainably reimagined, reopening fully to the public in October 2026 as a place where heritage, culture, nature and reflection converge.
The cloister, the vaulted halls with their impressive ceiling frescoes and the colourful stained-glass windows by Jan de Caumont (recognised as a Flemish masterpiece) at Museum PARCUM, together with the surrounding 42-hectare nature reserve, form a unique site where meaning, religion, heritage, culture, knowledge and innovation come together.
Within this renewed context, Threading Landscapes invites contemporary artists to engage with the abbey’s layered architecture and landscape, exploring questions of being, attending and acting in a world where traditional spiritual and social structures are fragmenting and new forms of belonging are still emerging. Works respond to the Abbey’s architecture, its gardens, and its rhythms, creating dialogues between the temporal weight of the past and the immediacy of contemporary practice. The exhibition also presents highly new artworks specially created for the project.
The exhibition positions Park Abbey not only as a historical monument but as a living cultural ecosystem. By threading contemporary interventions through historical space, the exhibition examines how location shapes meaning, how art negotiates ritual and reflection beyond traditional religious frameworks, and how the body, time, and attention inhabit architectural and cultural memory. Visitors are encouraged to experience the reimagined Abbey as a heritage site and as an active presence within the community, creating an environment where contemplation, movement, and encounters coalesce.
Bert Cornillie, Alderman for Culture, Events, Part-time Art Education and Personnel of the city of Leuven, notes:
“Park Abbey is one of Leuven’s most meaningful heritage sites. With Threading Landscapes, contemporary artists bring new perspectives to this historic place and connect its centuries-old spirit of reflection with the questions and challenges of our time.”
About the exhibition
How do we imagine the future amid political fragmentation, environmental precarity and rapidly shifting social landscapes? What forms of attention, care and collective agency are required to navigate these transformations?
Threading Landscapes explores these questions within the resonant environment of Park Abbey. Drawing inspiration from the Norbertine principles Localitas, Contemplatio and Actio, the exhibition revisits the relationship between place, introspection and action through a contemporary artistic lens, exploring how place, introspection, and action shape meaning today..
Artists inhabit the abbey and its surroundings through installations, film, sculpture, sound and performative interventions. Their works respond to the architecture, gardens and waterways of the site, examining ecological interdependence, cultural memory, technological transformation and social connection. In doing so, the exhibition foregrounds presence as a critical practice — attentive engagement with the world, ritual beyond religion and action rooted in care and responsibility. Participating artists respond to local and global realities, crafting works that examine ecological, technological, and social interdependencies while fostering trust, solidarity, and new imaginaries for collective futures.
The Abbey’s park and communal spaces extend the exhibition beyond its walls and into Leuven’s diasporic and academic networks. Collaborations with local institutions such as the Carillonneur and the abbey brewery highlight intergenerational, cross-disciplinary, and site-specific practices.
Through new commissions, performative interventions, and ephemeral works, the exhibition traces the rhythms of human and non-human presence across architecture and landscape. The Abbey becomes a laboratory for exploring how art, action, and ritual—secular and spiritual—intersect with ethical and ecological responsibility.
A public program of talks, performances, and a series of connected and thought-provoking lectures and workshops will accompany the exhibition, alongside guided mediation activities that encourage immersive reflection. An accompanying publication will document the works in situ and offer scholarly and artistic perspectives on the project.
Ultimately, Threading Landscapes positions Park Abbey not only as a historical monument but as an active site of contemporary inquiry, where introspection and imagination converge to envision futures grounded in care, presence, and collective possibility.
Participating artists (selection, more artists to be announced soon)
Leonor Antunes · Edith Dekyndt · Carlos Casas · Tarik Kiswanson · Dala Nasser · Erik Tlaseca · Jenny Holzer · Pierre Huyghe · Irene Kopelman · Gabriela Albergaria · Meg Webster · Bianca Baldi · Hana Miletić · Ana María Caballero · Felipe Mujica · Laure Prouvost · Cecilia Vicuña · Guadalupe Maravilla · Rossella Biscotti · María Angélica Medina · Ahmed Umar · Eujon Lee · Julia Isídrez
Press preview
A press preview will take place on Thursday 22 October 2026 at Park Abbey, Leuven.
Further details and accreditation information will follow.
About Park Abbey and Museum PARCUM
Park Abbey, founded in the 12th century, is one of the best-preserved abbey sites in Western Europe. On the outskirts of Leuven, surrounded by greenery, the domain — with its monastery, abbey farm, ponds and enclosing walls — forms an exceptionally intact ensemble. Since the end of the 18th century, very little has been demolished or added. This rare authenticity makes the site a unique heritage destination where 900 years of history are tangibly present.
Museum PARCUM showcases the authentic heritage of Park Abbey and takes a unique approach to religious heritage. In the museum, you can discover the abbey’s well-preserved artistic treasures, including 20 17th-century stained glass panels in the cloister gallery and magnificent stucco ceilings in the library and refectory. The colourful stained glass windows by Jan de Caumont represent one of the most extensive collections of 17th-century painted glass in the Low Countries still in their original location. Their historical significance and exceptional craftsmanship have earned them recognition as a Flemish Masterpiece. In the refectory, library and the former private dining room of the abbot, three breathtaking stucco ceilings by 17th- century master Jan Christiaen Hansche catch the eye. His baroque scenes — including a striking Last Supper — display an unparalleled three-dimensionality. Another highlight is the 16th-century chapter house with 13th-century frescoes in the east wing.
Beyond its heritage value, Park Abbey also serves as a green lung and an official quiet zone. The surrounding natural estate of 42 hectares, with its ponds and meadows, provides a habitat for rare fauna and flora. The site forms a unique microcosm where heritage, ecology and reflection converge — just two kilometres from the centre of Leuven.
Tradition in renewal, renewal in tradition
Park Abbey is a model for how abbeys can fulfil a contemporary, sustainable role. The 12th-century heritage site lives on in its distinctive and spiritual atmosphere. Various partner organisations are housed and active in the restored outbuildings and spaces. Modern craftspeople such as the microbrewer and the miller, innovative organic farmers, researchers and social entrepreneurs all contribute to
the abbey's contemporary identity — driven by the same pioneering spirit as the Norbertines who have called this place home for centuries.
Partners on the estate include PARCUM, the museum and expertise centre for religious art and culture; the Alamire Foundation, KU Leuven's research centre for polyphonic music; the abbey brewery Braxatorium Parcensis; the volunteer association Vrienden van de Abdij (Friends of the Abbey); brasserie De Abdijmolen; Kerk in Nood, and the Abdijboerderij, a collaborative urban farming initiative between BoerEnCompagnie, Landwijzer and Wonen en Werken – De Wikke. The Norbertine fathers continue to maintain the monastic tradition on the abbey site to this day.
Practical information
Threading Landscapes: Art at Park Abbey
24 October 2026 - 28 March 2027
Opening: Saturday 24 October 2026
Press preview: Thursday, 22 October 2026
Museum PARCUM — Park Abbey
Abdij van Park 7
3001 Leuven
Belgium
Curated by Katya García Antón, Daniel Feldman, María Inés Rodríguez and Ana Sokoloff
Selection of images
Download the images here
Press Contact
Club Paradis
Micha Pycke
+32 (0)486 680 070
micha@clubparadis.be