The Collection as a Character will reflect the current priorities of the M-HKA collection: to evaluate the avant-garde tradition of Antwerp, to explore the new multi-polar world order, to discuss the nature of images today, to articulate the importance of the performative and the socialy-engaged in contemporary art. The Collection as a Character is an attempt to review our collection after 25 years of creative contingency: visions articulated by forceful personalities, opportunities presenting themselves, limitations inspiring novel solutions. In other words, it tries to portray the character of the M HKA collection as it has been shaped by the reality of institutional art collecting in our times. The ensemble is key to characterising our collection. It is a coherent group of works that is significant enough, in either qualitative or quantitative terms, to be regarded as more than a presence of works or series of works by this or that artist. M-HKA Ensembles is also the name of our online digital database (ensembles.org). This exhibition and the accompanying book will present some 20 ensembles that help us to understand the M-HKA collection. Among these are ensembles of works by prominent Flemish artists such as Vaast Colson, Luc Deleu, Jan Fabre, Toon Tersas, Luc Tuymans and Panamarenko (who is a special case because of his donation to M-HKA of his former house and studio at Biekorfstraat in Antwerp). M-HKA has important ensembles by artists from other parts of the world, for instance James Lee Byars, Jimmie Durham, C.K. Rajan and a number of artists from the former Soviet Union, India, China and North Africa. There are also ensembles of a different kind, such as the Vrielynck Collection of objects from the prehistory of cinema or the 1970s archive of the International Culture Centre in Antwerp..