Create powerful mixed-media portraits of overlooked heroines. Step into their minds, capture their raw strength, and merge figurative and abstract elements into a personal manifesto on cardboard.  You’ll dive into this creative journey guided by Erika Cotteleer, whose raw and confrontational drawings often feature women unapologetically claiming their space.

Women’s business/Businesswomen – 9 generations of stories in publishing house and home

From September 13th onwards, the Museum Plantin-Moretus will tell the stories of the women who lived and worked in the Plantin-Moretus printing house for 300 years. Stories about daughters who corrected proofs from an early age. Stories about ladies and maids. Stories about women who not only climbed social ladders, but made them themselves.

Up until now, the spotlight has mainly been on the first three male managers of the printing house: founder Christophe Plantin, son-in-law Jan and grandson Balthasar Moretus. However, the early-modern book trade was anything but a man’s business. The printing house was a typical family business filled with industrious businesswomen, master printers, apprentice boys and servant girls. Despite a wealth of information in the museum’s archives about the lives of these women, they have remained largely invisible.