James Ensor Projects KMSKA: His writings and his paintings

In 2013, the Ensor Research Project was initiated at KMSKA to examine James Ensor's creative process. His writings were analysed to understand his motivation and the theory behind his artistic choices, his paintings reassessed to interpret his works iconographically and historically. In 2019-2024, two digital disclosure projects ran at the museum, one surrounding the Ensor archive and another constructing an Online Scholarly Catalogue (OSC) for material-technical and art-historical research. These initiatives were also part of a KMSKA website optimization project. Both projects further support the museum's ambition to become the centre of expertise par excellence on James Ensor.  

The Ensor archive, (76 manuscripts (speeches and prose), 339 letters and postcards, 150 pieces of photographic material and 52 documents related to Ensor), is now available online in high-resolution via an IIIF viewer. All pieces were registered and digitally enriched with authority records, AAT subject terms and links between records, KMSKA's own artworks and publications. The writings were transcribed and a selection translated from French into Dutch and English.

The OSC was built from scratch and embedded in the KMSKA website. Its purpose is to dynamically disclose the material-technical and art-historical research of the Ensor paintings. Via IIIF, the research images are displayed in different spectra (XR, UV, raking light...), there is a main viewer in each file and detail images in the text. In addition, there is a glossary, footnotes device, general bibliography, search function via filters and citation form per file.