‘In Brussels? First to the Royal Museums of the Cinquantenaire!’ Urban tourism and the marketing of museums in inter-war Belgium, 1919–39

Abstract

During the inter-war years, the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire in Brussels launched a publicity campaign aimed at attracting foreign tourists, Belgian day-trippers and local visitors. Using traditional methods (posters, postcards) alongside innovative techniques (radio interviews, department store exhibitions), the museum tapped into emerging urban tourism marketing trends. Inspired by American practices, director Jean Capart collaborated with travel publishers, railway companies and tourism associations to brand the museum as a must-see destination. While official tourist offices played a minor role, private stakeholders were crucial. These efforts reflected broader societal shifts: a push for more democratic access to culture, economic challenges post-World War I and a growing belief in the power of advertising. Marketing was seen as a solution to financial pressures on the museum, aiming to boost attendance and public support. Although the campaign raised the museum’s visibility and enhanced Brussels’ appeal, visitor numbers remained low, limiting its overall success.

During the inter-war years, Brussels was marketed as Belgium’s premier tourist destination. Local and international guidebooks, including bestsellers such as Baedeker, Murray and Michelin, zeroed in on the city’s myriad attractions. ¹ Visitors were not only invited to gaze upon a range of impressive monuments and buildings, including the Grand Place (the main square) with its gothic city hall and guild houses, the Saint Gudula cathedral, the royal palace and Manneke Pis (the famous bronze statue of a peeing boy), but were also directed to some fashionable shops, theatres and opera houses, luxurious restaurants, parks and other attractions. Museums were also listed. Art buffs could indulge in the paintings of Van Eyck, Rubens and other ‘Flemish masters’ at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts, while devotees of natural history were served by the Belgian Royal Institute for Natural Sciences, where the brand-new gallery of Iguanodon dinosaurs became a real magnet for visitors. Local history and heritage were on show at the Maison du Roi (or the King’s House) on Grand Place, which served as Brussels’ historical museum. Baedeker, Michelin and other guidebooks also directed their readers to the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire in the eastern suburbs of Brussels, where a swathe of spectacular neo-classical buildings housed a large collection of archaeology, ethnography and the decorative arts. ²

Museums were not only branded as a premium tourist attraction by local and international guidebooks, but were also eagerly promoted by the local tourist information office (TIO). Financed by Bruxelles-Attractions, a powerful local lobby group of hotel and restaurant owners, the Brussels TIO spawned an endless stream of posters, brochures, promotional films and other publicity materials to point out the numerous charms of the metropolis, while curious visitors were also given information, by letter or telephone, by friendly hostesses at the local tourist office. ³ Brussels was far from the exception. In the last few years, a growing range of studies has explored how, from the late nineteenth century onwards, policy-makers and entrepreneurs – or local growth coalitions in more neo-liberal terms – tried to ‘sell’ their city as an alluring destination for local and foreign travellers. ⁴ During the twentieth century, professionalization slowly but surely set in. Local TIOs were increasingly manned with properly trained staff. Financed by increasing local, regional or national subsidies, they experimented with a growing variety of media to develop a unique brand for their city. ⁵

Even though research has emphasized that city branding was a collective endeavour – where policy-makers, hotel and restaurant owners, travel agencies, publishers of guidebooks, tourist associations and transport companies pooled their resources – the agency of local cultural institutions has often been overlooked. Too often museums, theatres, opera houses and other institutions are portrayed as passive recipients of a top-down tourism policy that was designed by local TIOs – or even worse, as mere ingredients to brew the perfect brand – whereas they did also actively participate in tourism promotion. ⁶ Especially when museums set up their own educational or promotional services in the pre- and inter-war years, they started to produce an endless stream of posters, brochures and other publicity materials. By emphasizing their cultural treasures, they added to the magnetism of the city. ⁷ However, the agency of cultural institutions – and museums, in particular – has seldom been acknowledged in the expanding field of tourism history. ⁸ Moreover, promotional activities have been almost completely ignored in the more settled field of museum history. ⁹

Drawing new evidence from the barely scrutinized – yet extremely rich – archives of the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire (now the Royal Museums of Art and History), this article aims to fill the gap. ¹⁰ How was the museum marketed as a tourist attraction in its own right in the inter-war years? By what means? And to what end? How effective was the promotion? Although its focus lies on the museum, the article aims to link this promotion of the museum to that of the wider publicity of the city. How did the museum’s promotional activities add to the attraction of Brussels as a premium tourist destination in Belgium, and vice versa? In this article, we also want to link the case of the Cinquantenaire to the burgeoning historiography on branding, marketing and advertising in the past. For the sector, the inter-war years were an important tipping point, as professionalization set in and various experiments with new media were launched. ¹¹ Finally, the article aims to connect the particular story of the Cinquantenaire to wider developments in the museum sector. How did promotional strategies resonate with contemporary demands to democratize the museum, with new ideas about management, financial constraints and so forth? The article will start by outlining the museum’s promotional strategies. Rather than following a strict chronological order, the first two sections are organized thematically. While the first section zeroes in on the collaboration between the museum and various tourist organizations and entrepreneurs, the second focuses on the publicity that was produced by the museum itself. In the third section, we will delve deeper into the motives behind the sudden surge in publicity. In the final section, the efficiency of the policy will be evaluated.

Riding the waves: passive promotion

In October 1930, Jean Capart, the curator-in-chief of the Musée royaux du Cinquantenaire in Brussels, received a letter from Karl Baedeker, the publisher of the internationally renowned travel book series, informing him that the new version of the Guide de Belgique (Guide to Belgium) was in press and that a German translation was on its way. He also expressed his thanks for the revisions that the director and his staff had suggested to update the pages on the museum. ¹² Baedeker was anything but an exception. During the inter-war years, the curator-in-chief exchanged similar letters with Michelin, Grieben and other internationally renowned publishers of travel books. ¹³ Equally lively was the correspondence with national publishers of travel literature. In the summer of 1927, René Leclercq, the publisher of the Guide des Musées belges (Guide to Belgian Museums) expressed his gratitude that the English version was also on sale in the museum shop where it rubbed shoulders with the original French version. ¹⁴ Finally, local publishers were also involved. The chairman of the Syndicat d’initiative de la ville de Bruxelles (lit. Brussels Initiative Association, a local voluntary association established to promote tourism and cultural activities) proudly trumpeted that the latest version of the Guides officiels illustrés de Bruxelles (The Official, Illustrated Travel Guide for Brussels) was to be published in the spring of 1930. ¹⁵

During the inter-war years, local and foreign guidebooks still played a vital role in determining whether a destination was really vaut-le-voyage (worth the journey), mérite le detour (worth the detour) or simply intéressant (interesting). Using a sophisticated system of asterisks, they could easily make or break the reputation of a tourist attraction. ¹⁶ Capart’s correspondence suggests that he was fully aware that a good review in Murray’s Handbook for Travellers, the Guide Joanne or the Baedeker series was probably one the most successful ways to promote the museum as a must-see tourist attraction. Therefore, new descriptions of the Musée royaux du Cinquantenaire were meticulously perused by the museum manager and his staff in order to identify unfortunate mistakes or outdated information. Georges Macoir, head of the Hallepoort, one of the museum’s annexes where the collection of arms and armoury was stored, complained in a letter to Capart in 1927 that the publishers of the aforementioned Guide to Belgian Museums should be called to account since the museum was grossly neglected. More than 50 pages (and 118 illustrations) had been devoted to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, while the Fine Arts Museum in Antwerp had 40 pages (and 82 illustrations). By contrast, the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire barely received 20 pages (and 29 illustrations), which was only slightly more than a small provincial museum such as the house of the Renaissance publisher Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp. To his mind, the museum was one of the main attractions in the city and thus deserved more attention. Macoir concluded that a rectification was in order. ¹⁷

Letters such as these remind us that the writing and publishing of a travel book was never a one-man show. Michelin, Baedeker or Murray carefully shared their proofs with a wide network of stakeholders to check whether their information was still correct and up to date. Hans Baedeker, one of the heads of the firm, sent a letter to Capart in January 1928 to thank him for sending him some revisions and the detailed plans of the new museum galleries that had been recently finished. Baedeker assured him that the blueprints would be included in the upcoming (re)edition of Belgique et Luxembourg ([Guidebook for] Belgium and Luxembourg). ¹⁸ Interactions such as these were obviously not new. During the nineteenth century, guidebooks had slowly but surely evolved from single-authored booklets – offering only the most basic information on a relatively small set of urban attractions, usually copy-and-pasted from other rival editions – to ever-more complex texts that provided a wealth of data on a wide array of tourist attractions. To keep their ‘database’ up to date, firms such as Baedeker or Michelin had to cultivate a growing network of informants. ¹⁹ During the inter-war years, the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire was drawn into this vortex, as the growing number of letters with publishers in Belgium and abroad shows. Macoir’s letter in particular testifies that their role was not always a passive one, but that museums also had the agency to reach out to publishers if they felt they were being treated unfairly. It was a disgrace that the Hallepoort – Macoir’s stamping ground – only got one-and-a-half pages in the Guide to Belgian Museums, while many regional and local museums of ‘dubious quality’ received considerably more. Even worse was the fact that the cuirass of Archduke Albrecht – one of the museum’s highlights – was not mentioned in the Guide at all. ²⁰

Capart and his team not only increasingly corresponded with the publishers of travel books but were also contacted by or reached out to national tourist associations such as the Touring Club de Belgique (Belgian Touring Club, TCB) or its Flemish rival, the Vlaamse Toeristenbond (Flemish Tourist Association, VTB). During the 1920s and 1930s, these associations were at their most successful, with hundreds of thousands of middle-class members, who were eager to explore every nook and cranny of their country. Frequent day trips to Belgian cities became their trademark. Both associations also published a monthly magazine not only highlighting the attractions of the Cities of Art (Bruges, but also Brussels, Antwerp or Ghent), the Belgian coast, the Ardennes, the Campine area or any other region, but also provided their members with brochures, guidebooks and other reading material. ²¹ To keep the information about the masterpieces to be seen in the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire, its opening hours and other details up to date, the administrators of the TCB or the VTB worked closely with the museum staff. In Autumn 1936, Raymond Walet, the secretary-general of the TCB enquired whether the information about the museum was still correct, so it could be printed in the TCB yearbook. All was well, according to the museum staff, except for the details about the opening hours of the Japanese tower and the Chinese pavilion in Laken, where the museum had a small outpost. Corrections should be made without further ado. ²² To serve this specific audience, the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire also came up with a reduced fare for members of the TCB or VTB in the inter-war years. ²³

Commercial entrepreneurs also worked together with museum staff to brand its collections as worth the trip. A case in point was the local Brussels branch of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagon-Lits (lit. the International Sleeping-Car Company, CIWL), the renowned railway company that had developed a dense network of luxury trains all over Europe, including the famous Orient Express. Local offices of the CIWL functioned as travel agencies which – following Thomas Cook and others – booked hotel rooms for their guests, sold transport tickets or organized day trips. ²⁴ Together with the local emporium Le Bon Marché, the CIWL-Bruxelles set up a series of voyages en autocars (coach tours) for local and foreign tourists in Brussels. During a half-day coach trip through Brussels, passengers were taken to the Saint Gudula cathedral, the Congress Column, the botanical gardens and other classic highlights. Evidently, the Cinquantenaire was also part of the programme, although day-trippers only had half an hour to race through the collections. ²⁵ The CIWL promoted the trip by distributing an attractive handbill. Tickets could be bought at the information counter of the CIWL headquarters at Place de la Brouckère on the first floor of Le Bon Marché. ²⁶ To rouse even more interest, the emporium organized a pop-up exhibition on the museum’s delftware. Massive reproductions of porcelain vases were installed between the earthenware, the linen and other households goods that were for sale in the department store (Figure 1). ²⁷ It was such an unparalleled publicity stunt that a range of Belgian newspapers covered the story in page-long, illustrated articles that described the event as a masterly example of modern marketing techniques. ²⁸ It is a textbook example of the out-of-the-box creativity and vibrancy of marketing initiatives in the inter-war years, when professional agencies turned their backs on old-school techniques and came up with a range of novel ways to attract customers. ²⁹

Figure 1. Le Bon Marché and the pop-up exhibition featuring the museum’s delftware (1927). RMAH, D 149/3, Grands Magasins Bon Marché (1926–29).

The museum also worked closely with local and national tourism boards to put the Cinquantenaire in the spotlight. For example, Capart and his staff maintained good relations with the Brussels Bureau Officiel de renseignements pour étrangers (lit. Official Tourist Information Office) or the local TIO. Building on the expertise of its predecessors such as Bruxelles-Attractions, a private association founded in 1886 by local hotel and restaurant owners, progressive politicians and other stakeholders who wanted to brand their city as an attractive destination for both foreigners and locals, the local TIO produced a flood of posters, leaflets, maps and guidebooks in the inter-war years to lure Belgian or other European travellers – or from even farther away – to the capital. During the 1920s and 1930s, the office also eagerly experimented with promotional films and magic lantern projections and attended foreign trade fairs. Tourists could also send a letter to the headquarters of the Société when they needed further information or – still pioneering at that time – make a phone call or simply visit the information counter in downtown Brussels. ³⁰ Well aware of the importance of Bureau’s promotional activities, the curator-in-chief of the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire maintained strong ties with the manager of the local TIO. As a national institution, the royal museums were not subsidized by the local Brussels city government, but that did not stop the management from fostering good relationships with the mayor, the aldermen and the other principal rainmakers in the city administration. Proofs of new guidebooks, brochures and other publicity were meticulously scanned and – if need be – corrected. ³¹

Finally, the museum tried to capitalize on the expanding promotion of Belgium by the freshly founded national tourism board. For a long time, the Belgian government had shown little, if any, interest in tourism and left its marketing to local associations such as Bruxelles-Attractions. In the 1920s, these grassroots initiatives pooled their resources to launch a national service for tourism promotion, the Association des villes Belges pour attirer les étrangers, which was taken over in 1931 by the Office Belgo-Luxembourgoise du Tourisme (Belgian-Luxembourg Tourist Information Office, OBLUT). Belgium was promoted through a series of official guidebooks, calendars noting festivities and leaflets such as ‘Les Villes d’Art’ (The Cities of Art), ‘Le Littoral’ (The Coast) and ‘L’Ardenne’ (The Ardennes). During the 1930s, numerous other semi-official organizations emerged to sell Belgium abroad. ³² To get a piece of the promotional pie, the museum tried to keep in touch with all these sometimes-rival institutions through frequent correspondence, bombarding them with letters to ensure that Musées du Cinquantenaire received enough coverage. ³³ Finally, in 1939, the Belgian government decided to intervene and swapped the proliferation of institutions for one national tourism office, the Commissariat-Générale au Tourisme (General Commission for Tourism, CGT), which was fully subsidized and controlled by the ministry. ³⁴

Sailing before the wind: switching to active promotion

During the spring of 1931, Capart received a draft proposal from Adolf-Jacques Boigelot to set up a service de propaganda des musées d’art et d’histoire (publicity service). Although Boigelot had been trained as an (art) historian, he did not refrain from giving some commercial advice. In his letter, he argued that the Arts and History Museum (the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire before its renaming in the inter-war years) needed a special department to promote the museum at home and abroad. According to Boigelot, the new service would have to engage in a range of activities to attract a wider public: organizing public lectures and conferences, spreading publicity in newspapers and magazines, producing postcards and other keepsakes and – to top it all – creating blockbuster exhibitions. Boigelot had a clear preference for this last promotional strategy, but also warned against too much optimism: ‘It is one of the best forms of publicity, and yet, apart from its intrinsic goals, it is only effective when it is corroborated by some convincing and methodological advertising.’ ³⁵ Boigelot’s plea did not fall on deaf ears. Capart was completely on board and immediately forwarded the concept to the Minister of Arts and Sciences, Maurice Vauthier. In his letter, he even added a little extra detail by referring to the success of some international institutions: ‘Among others, the Metropolitan Museum created a promotional service many years ago, which has proven its efficacy through the success of particular exhibitions on industrial design…’. ³⁶

According to Capart, a good starting point would be to set up a small pilot project funded by the Ministry of Arts and Sciences. Despite all the arguments in favour of the proposal, the Minister did not budge and the money to set up a promotional service never arrived. The curator-in-chief had to fend for himself. ³⁷

In fact, the failed plan to set up a dedicated promotional service was just one of many attempts to put the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire on the map for local and foreign tourists. When he became head of the museum in 1926, having succeeded Eugène Van Overloop (1847–1926), Capart had come up with a sophisticated – but feasible – promotional strategy. Not only did the museum cleverly ride the waves of publicity that were produced en masse by national and local TIOs, commercial partners, tourist associations, publishers of guidebooks and other stakeholders, but it also launched its own initiatives. A case in point was the 1926 Musées Royaux du Cinquantenaire brochure (Figure 2). Taking the layout and content of the flyer of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bern, Switzerland, as an example, Capart ordered a brochure in four languages (French as well as Dutch, English and German) illustrated with the main masterpieces in the museum. Apart from a brief description of the departments – archaeology, ethnography, decorative arts and moulages (casts) – the leaflet also provided practical details about opening hours, admission fees and accessibility. ³⁸ Later on, the translator – a certain Thompson – came up with the brilliant idea of adding a catchy slogan: ‘To stay in Brussels, without visiting the Musée Royaux du Cinquantenaire would be like going to London without visiting the British Museum’. ³⁹ It struck a note and was added to the later editions. ⁴⁰

Figure 2. Cover of the brochure ‘Musées Royaux du Cinquantenaire’ (1926). RMAH, D 74/3, Musées Royaux du Cinquantenaire (c. 1926).

Perhaps a coincidence, but the Agence Thompson SA (better known as J. Walter Thompson) was one of the first American advertising agencies to open an office in (nearby) Antwerp, where, besides serving local customers, they also designed promotional campaigns for General Motors, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Kodak and other large American brands. Thompson was renowned for its trailblazing marketing techniques that shook the foundations of the European market. ⁴¹ While it remains an open question whether Thompson actually designed the museum’s campaign, it is clear that the Musée royaux du Cinquantenaire tried to brand itself as one of the larger museums in Europe.

To be successful, the brochure had to be distributed as widely as possible. It was sent to the professional network of local, regional and national TIOs, but the curator-in-chief and his staff also decided to go further. Before becoming head of the museum, Jean Capart had been an internationally renowned Egyptologist, so he put his personal network to work. Letters were sent to politicians and civil servants, such as the Brussels burgomaster Adolphe Max and the Belgian consul-general in New York, Johnston Mali, with a plea to distribute the flyers as widely as possible. ⁴² Similar requests were addressed to colleagues at home and abroad, such as the curator-in-chief of the Carnavalet Museum in Paris. ⁴³ Capart also made contact with the travel sector directly. For example, the brochures were locally distributed by the leading Brussels travel agency Voyages Dumoulin, while the American express travel agents in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and other cities were contacted to reach the Dutch market. ⁴⁴

Capart probably decided to take charge because he felt that the promotions by the Brussels and national tourism boards had missed their mark or were not giving enough attention to the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire. During the inter-war years, local TIOs were slow to professionalize, sometimes failing to live up to expectations. In 1926, Capart was told as much by the New York manager of the CIWL, who argued that although the Belgian TIO and the national railway company did their best to sell Belgium as an alluring destination through a variety of posters, brochures and other promotions, it was too little and too sparse compared to other European countries. He advised Capart to take immediate action and to plead for more publicity. A brochure, highlighting some of the museum’s masterpieces, was the first obvious step and could be distributed across the CIWL’s 950 travel agencies in the United States to reach an American public. ⁴⁵ Capart took the advice to heart and ordered an English translation of the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire flyer, which was frequently reprinted. ⁴⁶ Through such handbills, the museum not only tried to tempt foreign tourists to visit the museum, but also actively contributed to marketing Brussels as an appealing destination.

During the inter-war years, brochures were still an extremely popular medium through which Belgian TIOs showcased the charms of their own city, region or country. Particular attractions such as medieval castles, baroque churches, mysterious caves and myriad other destinations were also marketed in this simple – and relatively cheap – way. ⁴⁷ However, the medium with the largest impact was obviously posters. Every tourism hub in Belgium – from Ostend, ‘Queen of the North-Sea’, and the marvellous Grottes de Han-sur-Lesse, to the Chateau Fort in Bouillon, the thermal baths of Spa or Bruges, ‘the Venice of the North’ – invested considerable time and money in designing alluring posters that could be sent to railway stations in Belgium and abroad, distributed to the foreign offices of the CIWL or put up in the Belgian tourist offices in London, Paris, New York and a range of other metropolises. ⁴⁸ In 1927, Capart decided to contract out the printing of a poster to the Etablissement De Rycker, one of the larger publicity printers in Brussels. ⁴⁹ The image, designed by Paul Henri Stroobant, shows two elegantly clad gentlemen and a woman hailing a cab. While one of them is perusing his Murray guidebook, the other exclaims: ‘First to the Royal Museums of the Cinquantenaire!’ (Figure 3). A quarter of the print run – 3,000 copies in total – was in English, another quarter in Dutch and the remainder in French. ⁵⁰ The header refers to the Belgian Railways, as they were responsible for distributing the poster in Belgium and abroad. According to the correspondence, a large batch was to be sent to the main railway stations in Europe. ⁵¹

Figure 3. Poster ‘A Bruxelles? D’abord au Musées Royaux du Cinquantenaire’ (1927). RMAH, D 74/3, Propagande (1926–28).

Even though posters and brochures were the most important media for promoting the museum to local and foreign tourists, Capart and his staff also resorted to more indirect means. Postcards were a tried-and-tested method to reach a new public. From the late nineteenth century onwards, they were illustrated. On the front cover, the tourist attraction was pictured at its best, using the latest photographic techniques, while on the back, there was space for tourists to scribble down their impressions. Stamped and addressed, they could be sent to family members and friends back home, who would be charmed by the text and image and would then feel the urge to visit the same place. ⁵² Capart and his staff were fully aware of the potential of this – once again, relatively cheap – type of publicity. In 1923 Georges Macoir, curator of the collections of arms and armoury, contacted the Brussels printer Desaix, one of the larger Belgian printers, to design a series of postcards picturing the building and its collections. ⁵³ The Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire boasted its own series, which were for sale in the cloakroom. Visitors could choose between images of the impressive building, its collections or particular masterpieces. ⁵⁴ To commemorate their visit, tourists could also order a plaster cast at the moulages workshop. ⁵⁵

During the inter-war years, the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire also organized a series of exhibitions to entice a wider public to visit. Even though this policy actually dated back to the late nineteenth century, it grew in scale and frequency after World War I. ⁵⁶ Press communiqués were sent to local and foreign newspapers, publicizing the latest exhibitions about Pre-Columbian art, Egyptian archaeology or Renaissance decorative arts. ⁵⁷ Articles were also increasingly illustrated, with black-and-white pictures of official opening ceremonies or the collections. ⁵⁸ Newspapers had been a tried-and-tested tool for advertising since the eighteenth century and the museum took every opportunity to get coverage. ⁵⁹ They were especially useful for reaching the local Belgian population. To reach an even wider public, the curator-in-chief also experimented with the relatively new medium of radio. ⁶⁰ During the inter-war period, radio commercials were seen as the apex of modern marketing, although the technology spread slowly in Belgian society. ⁶¹ In the summer of 1931, Capart was invited by the Institut Nationale de Radiodiffusion (the Belgian National Institute for Radio Broadcasting; INR) to give a 15-minute talk about the history and present state of the museum. ⁶² Even though the initiative came from the INR, Capart had given fate a helping hand. In an earlier letter to Van Soust, the manager of Radio Belgique (one of the INR’s predecessors), the curator-in-chief had suggested that he and his fellow curators could give all sorts of talks about new exhibitions, fascinating masterpieces, archaeological excavations and other topics. ⁶³ The idea took root and only a year later was put into practice by the INR. ⁶⁴

A surging vortex: the incentives behind promoting tourism

From the 1920s onwards, when Capart took office, the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire was increasingly promoted through a variety of media. Publicity came in many forms, including guidebooks, brochures or posters, pop-up exhibitions, newspaper articles and radio interviews, as well as postcards or plaster casts. Quite often, the museum piggybacked on existing promotions of local TIOs, commercial partners, tourist associations and other urban stakeholders, but it also increasingly launched its own promotional campaigns in the inter-war years. Promotions were aimed at local Brussels museum-goers, but gradually also targeted day-trippers from Belgium and international tourists. Indeed, the language and distribution of the publicity suggests that the curator-in-chief and his staff actively tried to lure Dutch, French, German, British and even American tourists to the Cinquantenaire. This raises many questions. Why did the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire invest so much time and money in promoting the museum to tourists? How can we explain the spike in publicity from the late 1920s onwards? And how successful were the efforts to brand the museum as a vaut-le-voyage destination? Did they eventually pay off?

There is no simple answer to these questions, as the demand for more promotion and publicity was triggered by a complex set of causes. First of all, the publicity mirrored some new, trailblazing ideas about the role of museums in society. Traditionally, museums had been predominantly attuned to a bourgeois audience of elite and upper middle-class art buffs, who had the time and money to plunge into the vibrant cultural life of the city by visiting the opera and the theatres, galleries, reading clubs, coffee houses, billiard rooms, botanical gardens and zoos, among other things. ⁶⁵ Initially, lower-class visitors were not welcome in museums. Their presence was restricted through the imposition of a battery of regulations such as limited opening hours, high entrance fees or rules about appropriate clothing. More sophisticated barriers included exhibit labels, for instance, which were very concise in the Cinquantenaire, if they were there at all, and were written in French so they could only be interpreted by upper-class connoisseurs, who, thanks to their classics education, had the cultural capital to make sense of the technical lingo. ⁶⁶ During the late nineteenth century, progressive politicians, such as Liberal member of parliament and mayor of Brussels, Karel Buls, started to campaign to open up museums for middle- and working-class visitors. Fuelled by the rise of socialist parties such as the Belgische Werkliedenpartij (Belgian Workers’ Party, BWP), the demand for more democratic museums grew ever louder around 1900. ⁶⁷

It took some time before the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire followed suit, but eventually the strict opening hours were (somewhat) relaxed and entrance fees were phased out. Moreover, the staff started to experiment with new ways to present the collections – introducing period rooms, scale models, dioramas, mannequins and other novelties – to entice a wider, non-specialist public. ⁶⁸ Labels were rewritten, and in some cases even translated into Flemish, while wall-texts appeared that introduced readers to the (art-) historical, archaeological or ethnographical context that was needed to make sense of the collections. In 1922, the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire even installed a proper educational service, which, among other activities, organized numerous workshops in archaeology and lantern-slide lectures on all sorts of subjects for a wider public. Even though such activities had already been launched by Eugène Van Overloop, the service was one of Capart’s pet projects. It was inspired by the leading example of the Metropolitan Museum in New York where a similar service had been founded some years before. ⁶⁹ Despite these initiatives to reach a larger public, the publicity discussed above was primarily targeted at the more moneyed upper- and middle-class tourists from Belgium and abroad. Promotional material seemed to provide an opportunity for the museum to go beyond its local service area – Brussels and its hinterland – to entice a new body of Belgian day-trippers and international tourists from France, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands or even the United States. By launching an unprecedented publicity campaign, the museum tried to capitalize on the growing popularity of urban tourism. Even though Capart had some sympathy for the socialist cause to democratize the museum, he was a conservative to the core. Upper-class tourists, looking neat and tidy in their tailor-made suits or their evening gowns, as they were portrayed on the 1927 poster, remained the preferred public (Figure 3).

New visitors – and especially the more moneyed ones – were also particularly welcome in inter-war Belgium, since the budgets for the cultural sector as a whole, and for museums in particular, were under pressure due to the economic slump. It was years before the Belgian economy fully recovered from the ravages of World War I, and when the country finally climbed out of the red in the late 1920s, it was hit hard by the Wall Street Crash. Frequent budget cuts made it difficult to hire new staff, acquire new masterpieces or renovate the buildings. ⁷⁰ Promotion was seen quite simply by Capart and his team as a viable survival strategy. When the Boigelot project failed to set up a new marketing department in the early 1930s, Capart was annoyed that his plea to the minister had fallen on deaf ears. This was unreasonable, he wrote, because in times of bitter economic crisis one should not cut back on promotion. In support of his view, Capart referred to a recent article in the New York Times which argued that publicity was superfluous in times of plenty, but vital in order to survive the lean years. ⁷¹ In fact, the same strategy was used by various city councils and administrations in Belgium. To weather the crisis, the mayor and aldermen of Bruges, Ghent, Brussels and other Cities of Art launched promotional campaigns to attract foreign and local tourists. Tourism, it was hoped, was a strategy that would secure some hard currency. ⁷²

Capart’s publicity campaign also illustrates the growing belief in the power of marketing and advertising in the 1920s and 1930s. ⁷³ Following the American example, the curator-in-chief and his staff truly believed that posters, flyers and other advertising methods could make all the difference. In an interview with the Catholic newspaper Le XX-ième siècle (The Twentieth Century) in 1927, Capart outlined the challenge. Although, at least in his opinion, the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire had a word-class collection, it was barely visited by Belgians and international tourists. Even on peak days, only a handful of visitors were to be found in the vast halls and galleries of the museum. Capart explained that a lack of publicity was the core of the problem, since the museum was not well known among locals and foreigners. Moreover, its remote location, in the eastern suburbs of Brussels and thus (relatively) far away from the city centre, meant that tourists and day-trippers were less likely to stumble upon the museum by accident. Initially, the museum had been located in the Hallepoort (a former medieval city gate), near downtown Brussels. However, due to the massive accumulation of collections, the museum had been forced to move to the site of Cinquantenaire in the late 1880s, where the festivities for Belgium’s half-centenary were held. From the start, the museum management complained bitterly to the government about the new location ‘in the middle of nowhere’. New train and tram connections did not stop the management from pushing for a move to the city centre in the 1920s and 1930s. ⁷⁴ Publicity was badly needed to turn the tide. Therefore, Capart ordered 3,000 copies of a tourist poster to be printed. ⁷⁵ A similar idea emerged in the interview that Capart gave to the INR, in which he referred to the establishment of a marketing department in several American museums, as well as in the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin. ⁷⁶

Failure or success – measuring the impact of marketing

According to Capart, modern museums could not thrive without publicity. In his opinion promotion would lead to more visitors, and this spike in the statistics would silence the pedants and faultfinders, who tried to portray the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire as an obsolete – and ultimately superfluous – institution. In November 1936, when the effects of the economic meltdown could still be felt, the socialist Gazette de Charleroi wrote:

Despite the publicity of the National Office for Museums, each day barely 30 visitors march past the casts, mummies, and other objects from Egypt and other distant countries and this is even the best-case scenario. ⁷⁷

Caustically, the journalist wondered if the government had actually calculated how much a visit to the museum cost. Estimates hovered around a staggering 1,000 Belgian Francs per visitor. Dumbfounded by this figure, the journalist concluded that it was better to give priority to the actual needs of the time than to squander the money on useless museums. ⁷⁸ Capart, however, strongly believed that he could turn around the fortunes of the museum with modern management. Promotion and publicity were essential to ‘sell’ the product. Flyers, posters and other advertising would tip the balance and bring in more people. Museums were in this sense not very different from other commercial enterprises, as he explained in his vision statement L’Utilité des musées (The Usefulness of Museums):

What is a great museum? Is it a department store where none of the objects are for sale? What is a department store? It’s a large museum where all the collections can be bought by the visitors. ⁷⁹

This was the hallmark of the man. Capart was probably one of the first curators-in-chief in Belgian history with a keen interest in the commercial and administrative management of his museum. Ultimately, the figures had to be correct. New strategies had to be explored to turn the museum into a profitable – or at least, break-even – enterprise. During the economic depression, Capart’s talent for numbers was further taxed, since the government slashed the budgets for staff, acquisitions and renovations. ⁸⁰ Promotion was one of the potential strategies that would enable it to become more financially independent, since international tourists and Belgian day-trippers would bring in more cash. It showed the liberal ideology in Capart’s actions and his unwavering belief in modern marketing techniques, although he also occasionally flirted with Keynesian arguments to convince the minister in charge of his position. When the Boigelot plan to set up a service de propaganda (publicity service) in the museum emerged in the early 1930s, Capart argued that the government would quickly recoup this investment, as every Belgian Franc spent on posters, handbills, postcards and other publicity materials would lead to a greater return on investment through a multiplier effect. ⁸¹

Unfortunately, there is no knowing whether the strategy was successful or not, since detailed lists of actual admission figures have not survived the ravages of time. However, the constant complaints about the empty galleries of the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire in the newspapers of the late 1920s and 1930s seem to suggest that Capart’s promotional campaign was not very successful. Further proof appeared in the monthly magazine Les Beaux-Arts (The Fine Arts), which presented the ‘museum without visitors’ to its readers in a fictional conversation between Timon and an anonymous lady:

Lady: My friend and I wandered from 2.30 pm to 4pm through the vast, cool halls of the Cinquantenaire and admired the collection without seeing a cat. [Metaphorically speaking ‘il n’y avait pas un chat’ means there was not a soul about.]

Timon: Which does great credit, madam, to the vigilance of the guards. Cats could wreak havoc in the porcelain section, for example […] That said, I agree that the case of Cinquantenaire is a mystery. It is airy, pleasant, and in a decent location. It is free. The collections are magnificent. The curator makes all the propaganda desirable […] There is an enigma here. ⁸²

Maybe Capart backed the wrong horse. While publicity had the potential to reach large swathes of the population in the United States (70 per cent in the most positive estimates), it only spoke to the tiny upper crust of consumers in Europe (30 per cent in Britain and even less in France, Germany or Belgium), where living standards were much lower. Things went from bad to worse when the Great Depression set in. ⁸³ Moreover, (urban) tourism was still largely a niche for the more moneyed middle class and elites in the inter-war years, when social democratic legislation – the introduction of the congé payé (holidays with pay) in Belgium in 1936 – was slow to turn the tide. ⁸⁴ The museum’s publicity campaign was probably a shot in the dark. In hindsight, instead of luring moneyed tourists from far and wide to the Cinquantenaire, a more focused policy to bring the Brussels working classes to the museum might have been more successful. Yet, even then, the hurdle of the museum’s remote location at the outskirts of Brussels might have been difficult to overcome.

Conclusion

During the inter-war years, the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire launched an impressive publicity campaign to reach foreign tourists, Belgian day-trippers and local visitors. In a bid to tap new markets, various media were deployed. These included classics such as posters, flyers and postcards, but also more innovative techniques such as radio interviews, press communiqués or pop-up exhibitions in large department stores. In their promotional strategies, the museum followed the visible trends in the marketing of (urban) tourism – or any other product – since advertising not only gained momentum very quickly during the inter-war years, but also increasingly used a range of trailblazing techniques. Inspiring examples from the United States were eagerly copied. To put the museum in the spotlight, Capart and his staff worked with various stakeholders, including publishers of guidebooks, commercial travel agencies, tourist associations and local (or national) tourist information offices. It is striking that the latter played a relatively modest role in the tourist marketing of Brussels and its main attractions, although much of the historiography on urban tourism is focused on these institutions. Capart’s correspondence makes clear that other stakeholders – publishers such as Baedeker, Murray or Michelin; railways companies such as the Compagnie Internationale des Wagon-Lits; associations such as the Touring Club de Belgique or the Vlaamse Toeristenbond – were at least as important in (urban) tourism marketing. Moreover, the agency of cultural institutions such as the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire should not be underestimated: its staff developed all sorts of strategies to ‘brand’ the museum as vaut-le-voyage. By doing so, they also contributed to the attraction of the city of Brussels as a whole.

It was no coincidence that the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire invested so much time and energy in promotion and publicity in the inter-war years. There were some important societal changes going on. First of all, there was the new demand for more democratic museums, which forced the Cinquantenaire to swap its traditionally upper-class clientèle for a more middle-class and even lower-class target audience. Although Capart and his staff launched some important initiatives to democratize the museum, the change in course was slow. Upper- and middle-class museum-goers remained the preferred target public in the publicity campaigns of the Cinquantenaire. Second, there was the effect of the economic slump. For the museum, the lean years after World War I and the Wall Street Crash resulted in severe budget cuts. Marketing was seen as a promising strategy to counter this challenge. More promotion would lead to more visitors. More visitors would bring in more cash, whether directly through entrance fees or indirectly, since the government would perhaps be more willing to invest money in a successful and popular museum. A similar line of reasoning emerged in the sector of (urban) tourism in Belgian, where the mayors and aldermen of Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent and other Cities of Art increasingly saw urban tourism as a potential tool to revive their local economies. Last but not least, the rise of promotional strategies in the Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire and beyond was a sign of the growing liberal faith in the power of publicity and advertising. In the 1920s and 1930s, the idea took hold that every product – even a museum – could be sold through a well-designed marketing campaign. Capart was a true believer, although he did not hesitate to use Keynesian arguments when he saw fit. Through a multiplier effect, the government budget spend on posters, leaflets and other marketing materials would lead to a large return. At least, that was what Capart and his staff – and a lot of other managers working in the tourism sector – hoped for.