During the unofficial opening of Saint, Sinners, Lovers and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks, Huts explains, “We started our art collection as a hobby. The businessman is obviously thrilled with the selection of artwork that his foundation is displaying in America. “I don’t know if this would have been doable in Flanders with the savings on cultural. Future of any town depends on its culture.
In Denver, Colorado, Huts will display about 140 works by Flemish artists through January 2023. There are certain pieces that have never been displayed before, neither in Belgium nor the US. More than three centuries of Flemish art and cultural history are chronicled in the show. Later, the display will go to Texas’s Dallas Museum of Art.
For many years, the Denver Art Museum has been regarded as one of the best cultural destinations in the center of the United States. Hans Memling, Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, and Antoon van Dyck are among the artists whose work is on display. Huts says, “There aren’t many top museums in the greater Denver area. People go from Nevada to Montana, among other places.
The Phoebus Foundation is led by Katharina Van Cauteren. It’s been five years since she first visited the Denver Art Museum. That started the process of setting up an exhibition here, according to the art historian. “In reality, Hollywood in the sixteenth century was in Flanders. And Rubens was the Steven Spielberg of the 17th century.”
Van Cauteren describes how, for more than three hundred years, the artists from the Southern Netherlands dominated the European art market with their shrewdness. “The inventiveness of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth century artists from Flanders is unfathomable without the way in which today, in an age of Instagram and Youtube, the picture is employed throughout the world to communicate stories.”
Katoen Natie desires a billion investment.
Huts, however, does not simply bring art to the United States. The businessman also wants to use plastic to further concrete his American dream. In the upcoming years, Katoen Natie plans to invest $1 billion in North America.
Frank Vingerhoets, the head of Katoen Natie’s American branch, claims that his organization has been operating in this country for twenty years. “In America, we have had exponential growth over the past five years. The market for polymers still has a great deal of space to grow, in our opinion.
Huts goes a step farther, saying, “We want Texas to be greater than Antwerp. The petrochemical market still has a lot of room for growth. The quick issuance of licenses, high degree of labor market flexibility, and profusion of shale gas are only a few of Katoen Natie’s advantages in the United States. In Europe, there isn’t any more land, according to Huts.
In North America, Katoen Natie increased its revenue from less than 150 million dollars in 2012 to more than 300 million dollars in 2013. The company, which employs around a thousand people, mostly packs and ships polymers throughout the United States.