Museum MAS and UCSIA join forces! In 2025 we will explore the concept of compassion and its significance for contemporary society, as an avenue for local and global solidarity.
The programme brings together the intercultural focus on compassion of the temporary exhibition at Museum MAS from 31 January 2025 until 31 August 2025 and the interdisciplinary academic focus on Europe & Solidarity of UCSIA.
Whereas the exhibition highlights, through historical and cultural artefacts, how compassion is interpreted through different ages and cultures, the complementary UCSIA lecture series analyses the concept and investigates its relevance for today through presentations by renown speakers from different research fields.
The expo 'COMPASSION'
is about our need and aspiration to help others. You will see art from past and present and from all over the world that depicts this, as well as ornaments and utensils.
A work by Breughel with the seven works of mercy, a Japanese print showing how to help the sick, a Congolese sculpture of a generous woman, a Tibetan prayer wheel with a compassionate mantra or a Masonic collection box.
You will also be introduced to music and stories about the theme. You will listen to interviews by Lieve Blanquaert and reflect on your own ideas about compassion.
At the same time, contemporary artists invite you to think critically about the how and why of ‘compassion’. The expo includes works by Khaled Barakeh, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Ai Weiwei, Stephan Vanfleteren and Annita Smit.
The lecture series
'Compassion in Context'
The core questions around which the exhibition is built find a contemporary resonance in the lecture series.
Starting from an inquiry into the personal and communal manifestations and expressions of the concept, over the motives and founding ideas, to examples of good practices represented in the collection of exhibits, the lecture series addresses:
Spiritual Sources of Compassion
The inspirational spiritual traditions can offer in building common humanity and how charity can lead to radical societal transformation in the service of the powerless.
Religion experts Karen Armstrong and Manuela Kalsky will talk about the spiritual sources of compassion on 20 February 2025.
Political Implications of Compassion
The appreciation of politics as a rational moral endeavour and trust and forgiveness as philosophical resources for politics.
Political philosophers Nicolas de Warren (Pennsylvania State University) and Allegra Reinalda (KU Leuven) will discuss compassion’s political implications on 20 March 2025.
The Human Capacity for a Compassionate Community
The recognition that peaceful civil society and good public policy rely on the human capacity for empathy to navigate intellectual and ideological diversity.
Neurophysiologist Christian Keysers (University of Amsterdam) and psychologist Stephan Claes (KU Leuven) will talk about the human capacity for a compassionate community on 29 April 2025.
Solidarity in compassionate communities
How does compassion transform groups and organizations? What role does it play in fostering psychological safety? How is compassion connected to wider solidarity? And what contributions can it make toward building safe societies?
Sociologist and theologian Anne Birgitta Pessi (University of Helsinki) and Emmanuel Van Lierde (Curando) will discuss compassion in communities on 22 May 2025.