On February 21 I attended an interesting dinner conference organized by the Royal Historical Vehicle Club Belgium, where Sebastien de Baere, managing director of Autoworld Museum Brussels presented the impressive turnaround he achieved for this iconic museum, which is now more popular than ever.
Michel Van Eesbeek, president of the Royal Historical Vehicle Club Belgium, introduced the speaker Sebastien de Baere…
This evening conference was of course held in the restaurant of the Autoworld museum.
Sebastien told us at length about the very positive evolution the museum went through since he became its Managing Director in January 2011. His previous professional experience as event organizer (he was Director of SAP Lounge, situated in the historic setting of the ‘Tuchthuis’ in Vilvoorde, which offers a high class meeting and event facility to catalyze business interaction) helped him to revitalize and effectively transform the museum.
“I first started to transform the sleepy, dusty image of this museum in its stately premises at the Cinquantenaire, also literally”, Sébastien starts his conference. I drew up a five year plan, and indeed started with removing unnecessary old artifacts which did not contribute to the essence of the museum and then we began to restructure the collection of exhibits and display areas.
2024 started already magnificently with the end-of-year exhibition “Porsche – Driven By Dreams,” from December 8th 2023 until February 25th 2024. We reported about this outstanding exhibition on our pages…
Then we got to work on improving the image of the museum with a new logo, introduced up to date marketing and last but not least started organizing events, at a very frequent rate. (Not less than 150 annually). These events established close ties between the museum and companies and industry in the automotive sector as well as the whole Belgian and international car world.
The results are there: In 2023, the museum welcomed no less than 235,000 visitors, a spectacular achievement especially if you take into account that this number doubled in a mere five years.
The 2024 events calender will be very busy indeed…
The year started already magnificently with the end-of-year exhibition “Porsche – Driven By Dreams,” from December 8th 2023 until February 25th 2024. We reported about this outstanding exhibition on our pages…
Autoworld further honors 50 years of the Volkswagen Golf from March 1st to April 28th. The most successful European car is now in its 8th generation, having received a facelift again this year.
Many members of the Royal Historical Vehicle Club Belgium attended the conference…
It will be followed from the 60th anniversary of the legendary Ford Mustang, a retrospective on the history of Formula 1, and, of course, a few more surprises that Sebastien de Baere would like to keep secret until further notice…
Soon we will visit the VW Golf exhibition at Autoworld – stay tuned!
Hans Knol ten Bensel
Autoprova - for the Connaisseur 