<p>Who said there weren’t any famous Belgians? Two museums honour country’s most celebrated sons.<br /><br />One is perhaps the owner of the world’s most resilient quiff, the other one of the most influential surrealist painters of his generation — but despite being two of the most famous Belgians of the last century, neither Tintin nor René Magritte could lay claim to a permanent home in their native country.<br /><br />Now the subversive artist and the wide-eyed boy reporter are each being honoured with museums in the land of their birth: Magritte in Brussels, and Tintin 20 miles south, in the university town of Louvain-la-Neuve. Coincidentally, both open to the public last week.<br />Georges Remi, better known under his pen-name of Hergé, created Tintin in 1929 and sent him adventuring through the Congo, Peru, the Soviet Union and even, over the course of two books, on the moon. Although the Tintin stories have been translated into more than 80 languages with 230 million copies of the books sold, Hergé’s work has, until recently, only been displayed as part of touring exhibitions.<br /><br />The €15m (£13m) Musée Hergé, designed by Pritzker-winning French architect Christian de Portzamparc, will bring together the bulk of Hergé’s oeuvre as a graphic artist.<br /><br />Financed by Hergé’s second wife, Fanny Rodwell, the white, prism-like space is designed, says Portzamparc, “to create a microcosm of the adventures of comic books.”<br /><br />As well as being born within a decade of each other — 1898 and 1907 respectively — both Hergé and Magritte managed to create art with enduring critical and commercial success, earning lasting appeal in contemporary pop culture.<br /><br />The Magritte museum will chronologically order 250 works over three floors, in a neoclassical 19th-century building on Brussels’s Place Royal.<br /><br />The artist’s famous candyfloss clouds, green apples and bowler hats will be displayed alongside graphic works and memorabilia, making the gallery the biggest Magritte collection in the world.<br /><br />The museum’s curator, Virginie Devillez, was keen to emphasise the importance of the opening to the city’s tourism. She told the local press: “The opening will have a huge echo in the world and bring a lot of tourists. Magritte is important because he is part of the Belgian landscape — it is because of him we understand the word surreal.”</p>
<p>Who said there weren’t any famous Belgians? Two museums honour country’s most celebrated sons.<br /><br />One is perhaps the owner of the world’s most resilient quiff, the other one of the most influential surrealist painters of his generation — but despite being two of the most famous Belgians of the last century, neither Tintin nor René Magritte could lay claim to a permanent home in their native country.<br /><br />Now the subversive artist and the wide-eyed boy reporter are each being honoured with museums in the land of their birth: Magritte in Brussels, and Tintin 20 miles south, in the university town of Louvain-la-Neuve. Coincidentally, both open to the public last week.<br />Georges Remi, better known under his pen-name of Hergé, created Tintin in 1929 and sent him adventuring through the Congo, Peru, the Soviet Union and even, over the course of two books, on the moon. Although the Tintin stories have been translated into more than 80 languages with 230 million copies of the books sold, Hergé’s work has, until recently, only been displayed as part of touring exhibitions.<br /><br />The €15m (£13m) Musée Hergé, designed by Pritzker-winning French architect Christian de Portzamparc, will bring together the bulk of Hergé’s oeuvre as a graphic artist.<br /><br />Financed by Hergé’s second wife, Fanny Rodwell, the white, prism-like space is designed, says Portzamparc, “to create a microcosm of the adventures of comic books.”<br /><br />As well as being born within a decade of each other — 1898 and 1907 respectively — both Hergé and Magritte managed to create art with enduring critical and commercial success, earning lasting appeal in contemporary pop culture.<br /><br />The Magritte museum will chronologically order 250 works over three floors, in a neoclassical 19th-century building on Brussels’s Place Royal.<br /><br />The artist’s famous candyfloss clouds, green apples and bowler hats will be displayed alongside graphic works and memorabilia, making the gallery the biggest Magritte collection in the world.<br /><br />The museum’s curator, Virginie Devillez, was keen to emphasise the importance of the opening to the city’s tourism. She told the local press: “The opening will have a huge echo in the world and bring a lot of tourists. Magritte is important because he is part of the Belgian landscape — it is because of him we understand the word surreal.”</p>