The RE-ORG Belgium program is a national strategy put in place by the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA). The aim is to assist Belgian museums in their project of storage reorganization.
Around the world, billions of artworks are kept in storage. An international survey conducted by ICCROM (International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property) and UNESCO in 2011 highlighted that this common heritage, often kept out of public view, is exposed to serious risks (see the summary of results on the ICCROM website). In Belgium too, cultural institutions face a chronic lack of financial and human resources. Improving storage is often not a priority.
To address this major problem, the Preventive Conservation Unit of KIK-IRPA launched in 2015 in partnership with ICCROM a national strategy – RE-ORG Belgium – to support national museums in their storage reorganization with the help of the RE-ORG Method. Since then, 15 Belgian museums from Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia reorganized their storage and made their collections in storage accessible again to the museum staff and public.
