CHESTNUT HILL, MASS.- The McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College will present the exclusive exhibition Shadows and Light: Symbolist Art in Belgium; Works from the Hearn Family Trust, on display from September 8 through December 6 in the Daley Family and Monan Galleries.

The exhibition showcases the most significant private collection of Belgian symbolist art in North America, assembled over more than four decades by Charles Hack, a New York-based real estate investor and prominent art collector.

In 2024, Hack donated 36 important Belgian landscapes to the McMullen, making the Museum the holder of one of the foremost collections of nineteenth-century Belgian landscapes in the world. Hack collaborated closely with Shadows and Light curator BC Art History Professor Emeritus Jeffery Howe as the exhibition developed, both on the selection of pieces from his collection and on new acquisitions.

The display features more than 150 major paintings, works on paper, and sculptures by Belgian and other European artists in their orbit. With 46 paintings by Léon Spilliaert, best known for his mysterious, symbolist compositions, the exhibition introduces North American audiences to one of Belgium’s most enigmatic and celebrated artists.

“Shadows and Light crowns a distinguished series of exhibitions the McMullen Museum has devoted to Belgian art,” said Inaugural Robert L. and Judith T. Winston Director of the McMullen Museum Nancy Netzer, a professor of art history at Boston College. “We are profoundly grateful to Charles Hack whose acumen and expertise built the Hearn Family Trust and to Professor Emeritus Jeffery Howe, whose generative partnership with Hack and decades of scholarship made this exhibition possible.





“Drawing on new research, this exhibition probes how Belgian artists explored psychological experience and the visible world, shaping the international symbolist movement during a formative period in the emergence of modern art,” she added.

Shadows and Light: Symbolist Art in Belgium; Works from the Hearn Family Trust

Presenting one of the premier collections of Belgian symbolist art in private hands, the exhibition “encompasses many dualities—the visible contrast of shadows and light suggests a world of dreams and stark realism, of modernism and tradition, of music and silence, and of mystery and revelation—all in the creation of works of uncommon beauty,” according to Howe. “It has been my great pleasure to work with Charles Hack, who has built this world-class collection of symbolist art.”

Together, these works offer a counterpoint to the sun-drenched landscapes of contemporary neo-impressionism, asserting a distinct and rival presence in Belgium.

New research illuminates the complex world of Belgian artists at the vanguard of the international symbolist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—a pivotal moment in the development of modern art.

Composed of 10 “movements,” the exhibition unfolds in the galleries as a visual symphony with artists engaging with vital issues of modern life, including questions of faith, social justice, historical identity, and psychological analysis. Building on the historic tradition of Belgian and Flemish art, the exhibition demonstrates how these artists’ works are innovative in style and personal vision, significantly expanding the language of art.

The final section, organizers note, is devoted to Spilliaert, who contributed to the development of symbolism in the visual arts in Belgium.

Other Belgian artists represented include Cécile Cauterman, William Degouve de Nuncques, Léon Frederic, Fernand Khnopff, Georges Le Brun, Xavier Mellery, Constantin Meunier, George Minne, and Armand Rassenfosse. Paintings by Gustave Moreau, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, František Kupka, and Koloman Moser elucidate the rich context of international symbolist art, in which Belgians played a leading role.

Exhibition loans are drawn from the Hearn Family Trust and Hearn Family Foundation collections, both owned by Charles Hack and his wife, Angella Hearn, complemented by several pieces in the McMullen Museum collection.

Shadows and Light is the sixth McMullen Museum exhibition Howe has curated to feature modern Belgian art, preceded by: Fernand Khnopff: Inner Visions and Landscapes (2004); A New Key: Modern Belgian Art from the Simon Collection (2007); Courbet: Mapping Realism; Paintings from the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium and American Collections (2013); Nature’s Mirror: Reality and Symbol in Belgian Landscape (2017); and A Fresh Vision: Landscape Painting in Belgium after Romanticism; The School of Tervuren in an International Context (2025). The two most recent exhibitions drew extensively from the Hack collection, with A Fresh Vision celebrating the Hearn Family Trust’s gift to the McMullen.

Shadows and Light is accompanied by a catalogue edited by Howe, with essays by American and Belgian scholars Anne Adriaens-Pannier, previously director of the Spillaert Huis and curator at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium; Claude Cernuschi, former BC professor of art history; Edouard Derom, co-director of the Patrick Derom Gallery (Brussels); Alison Hokanson, curator for European painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Howe; and Oliver Wunsch, BC associate professor of art history. They provide contextual background to the time period and the Belgian avant-garde, and offer fresh examinations of Khnopff, Minne, and Spilliaert.