The Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art (in Dutch: Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst) is a Belgian museum of contemporary art, founded in 1957, located in Ghent.
The current Municipal Art Museum is the successor to the Museum of Contemporary Art (Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst). The latter, founded in 1957, had at first only a few rooms in the building of the Museum of Fine Arts. In 1975, the very active and very influential Jan Hoet became the curator, and in 1999 the museum finally found accommodation in a clean place, namely in the building of the casino (1949), newly renovated, the museum then changing, at the same time, its name in Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (SMAK). Both museums - Museum of Fine Arts and S.M.A.K. - thus found themselves face to face, in the park of the Citadel in Ghent, in a singular museum pair. Jan Hoet retired in 2003 and was replaced by Peter Doroshenko and Philippe Van Cauteren.
The SMAK collection is mainly focused on modern European art from 1950 to the present day. The objects that the museum houses come from many contemporary art trends, such as Cobra, Pop Art, Minimal Art, Conceptual Art and Arte Povera. Of particular note are Joseph Beuys' Wirtschaftswerte and Ilya Kabakov's Die Toilette, and Francis Bacon's Figure Sitting. Also included in the collection are internationally renowned artists such as David Hammons, Thomas Schütte and Juan Muñoz, and some of Belgium's leading names such as Panamarenko, Marcel Broodthaers, Thierry Cordier, Hugo Debaere and Luc Tuymans.
Among the temporary exhibitions, the most noticeable date back to the Jan Hoet era. An unusual type of exhibition, called Chambres d'amis (1986), where artists made and exhibited works in private homes, which visitors to the exhibition would then admire, deserves special mention; it gave Jan Hoet (as well as the S.M.A.K.) international renown and helped him to become artistic director of the 9th edition of Documenta in 1992.
