Nathalie Guiot, a former publisher and founder of the Thalie Foundation, has announced that the foundation’s Brussels headquarters will close its doors in 2025 after operating in the Belgian city for ten years.
Since 2014, the foundation, located near Avenue Louise in Brussel’s gallery district, has been an exhibition space for contemporary art, bringing in artists through residencies at its namesake ThalieLab and backing research and publishing projects focused closely on ways that artists and other creative types like writers and curators can interact with ecological issues.
While the physical space may be closing, Guiot is continuing the foundation’s work through other offsite programs. She said in a statement that she plans to open a new gallery that will expand on the work done at ThalieLab.
Named ALEOR Craft & Biodesign, the new space, which does not yet have an opening date, will aim to function as a research center focused on the use environmental materials. One focus of the program will be on work related to organic matter in the early stages of consideration as alternatives for design and manufacturing—things like algae, mycelium, and derivations of living organisms like insects—as structure for bioplastics, textiles, and pigment.
The foundation’s current exhibition “Regenerative Futures,” a show with works from the center’s collection responding to issues of production as they relate to the climate crisis, will be on view until October 26.