The co-founder of Moco Museum on removing barriers, trusting audiences, and why art belongs to anyone curious enough to look.
“Do you have to pay to see this exhibition?” It was a question that, unknown to the asker, would come to reshape the way millions of people experience contemporary art. Behind the question lay an assumption that had been ingrained over decades: that beyond a handful of national museums and galleries, art spaces exist primarily as temples of high culture or commerce, where casual curiosity feels a little like trespassing. The young person wasn’t really asking about admission prices, they were asking for permission to simply come in and look.
Lionel Logchies and wife Kim Prins had been noticing a pattern. Young people were arriving in growing numbers at their Amsterdam art gallery, drawn by a Banksy exhibition in which all of the art was, as usual at a private gallery, primarily there to be sold. These visitors came with genuine excitement, but they weren’t there to buy, they were simply curious.
The encounter crystallised in Lionel and Kim something they had been observing throughout their time in the art world. There was a vast appetite for contemporary art outside the established circuit, but structures increasingly tailored to serving wealthy collectors had inadvertently excluded everyone else.
That realisation led to a radical shift. For years, the couple’s galleries had been immersed in the commercial art world’s rhythms. “I loved finding a beautiful piece of art and bringing it to another home where it would be appreciated by new people,” Lionel says. The hunt itself provided satisfaction: discovering works at art fairs, auctions or collector homes. But the young people coming to look at Banksy represented something that commercial models couldn’t capture: pure engagement without a hefty investment.
It was in a bid to fill that space that, in 2016, Lionel and Kim opened the Modern Contemporary (Moco) Museum on Amsterdam’s Museum Square, positioned between the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum. The choice of location was very deliberate, but rather than competing with these cultural giants, Moco Museum was seeking to occupy different territory entirely.
The model was simple: show contemporary art, but with the intent that people see it rather than buy it. “Our idea was to take art pieces out of houses where nobody would ever see them, and make them publicly accessible, funded through ticket sales rather than art sales,” Lionel explains.
“It was clear from the start that we were talking to a demographic that had felt excluded.”
“We had a thousand visitors on our opening day. It was clear from the beginning that we were suddenly talking to a demographic that had felt excluded.”
For Lionel, accessibility means something specific and measurable. “It’s about lowering the barriers that sometimes exist around contemporary art,” he explains. It means showing artists whose work resonates with current social and cultural trends, and doing so with clear storytelling and thoughtful exhibition design, in environments where visitors feel able to explore, reflect and form their own interpretations.
“The difference lies not in the art itself, but in who feels permitted to have an opinion about it,” he continues. The Keith Haring exhibition currently showing at Moco Museum London exemplifies this approach. Rather than simply displaying Haring’s works, they have created an immersive digital environment that allows audiences to engage with the art in a way that goes far beyond passive observation.
The same principle guided Moco’s Marina Abramović exhibition, where presence and atmosphere became integral to the experience. Some have questioned how Moco can maintain accessibility while presenting complex work with real depth. Lionel rejects this dichotomy.
“I think engagement and depth are not at all mutually exclusive,” he insists. “A deeply thoughtful and well-designed exhibition can be visually engaging while still presenting strong, complex ideas and meaningful artistic narratives. The goal is for visitors to leave with a new idea, a more open mind or simply a conversation sparked by art. If someone leaves with that, then we have done our job well.”
Moco functions around four pillars that together represent what Lionel describes as the “whole art world at once”. Modern masters, some of the most famous artists of the twentieth century, provide recognition and entry points. Contemporary masters such as Banksy and KAWS offer established voices while addressing current concerns. Upcoming artists introduce emerging perspectives. Digital and immersive experiences explore how art evolves with technology.
“The well-known artists act as an entry point. Once visitors are inside, we have the opportunity to introduce them to new perspectives and emerging voices.”
In a traditional museum model, permanent collections tend to stay fixed, focusing on single themes or periods. Moco’s approach is more restless; constantly rotating, constantly evolving, experimenting with formats and responding to cultural developments. Their openness to technological evolution made Moco the first museum to exhibit NFTs as art rather than curiosities.
“It was new and it was digital,” Lionel recalls. “We always try to be innovative. The decision was driven by a belief that new movements, however they might be judged in the future, deserve immediate engagement, rather than waiting for validation from the artistic elites.”
This flexible approach is where Lionel thinks that Moco’s structure as a private museum is a real advantage, freeing it from the five-to-ten-year planning cycles that govern larger institutional structures.
“We can make decisions really fast,” Lionel says. “We can turn around programmes quickly if something exciting emerges.”
Moco’s three locations, Amsterdam, Barcelona and London, function as both individual venues and a networked system. Exhibitions rotate between cities, modified to reflect local contexts and opportunities.
“It will always be a little bit different,” Lionel explains. Core artists appear across all three museums, but rarely with identical presentations. The system creates what he calls a synergy between museums, shared programming that remains fresh through variation. They deliberately reserve the same artist in temporary exhibitions at multiple locations simultaneously, maintaining the ability to respond quickly to emerging movements across the globe. This approach allows Moco to build coherent programming across locations without repetition, creating different experiences even for visitors who travel between venues.
London, and Marylebone specifically, offered something Moco really wanted to capture as it expanded out of Amsterdam.
“London and New York are the biggest cities for art, with London having one of the most dynamic cultural ecosystems in the world. It’s international, creative and constantly evolving. Within that ecosystem, Marylebone provided the right scale and atmosphere for creating an intimate museum environment while remaining connected to the city’s broader cultural landscape.”
London’s richness, Lionel believes, comes from its diversity, and Moco contributes to this by offering a slightly different perspective, one focused on making contemporary voices feel approachable without sacrificing intellectual rigour.
The selection process behind the art remains intensely personal, despite the institution’s growth, with decisions about what to show still coming primarily from Lionel and Kim.
“We never show something we don’t like, never,” Lionel insists. “An artist might be saying something important or have a big reputation, but if the work itself doesn’t resonate with at least one of the pair, Moco won’t exhibit it.”
Increasingly, though, they have been looking to their wider team to help with the discovery of emerging voices, suggesting new artists or ideas.
“They’re younger, they see a different world, so we have to listen to them.” Studio visits allow direct engagement with emerging artists in their working environments. “We visit artists’ studios and sometimes invite them to Moco,” Lionel says of the commissioning process. “These encounters maintain personal connection even as our institution grows, ensuring programming emerges from genuine engagement rather than an abstract curatorial theory.”
Ten years in, the results have validated the pair’s initial insights. More than six million visitors have passed through Moco’s three locations. Most strikingly, 65 per cent of these visitors were experiencing an art museum for the first time.
“What has surprised me most is how diverse the audience has become,” Lionel reflects. “We see visitors of all ages, genders and backgrounds.” Theirs is a notably young demographic, audiences traditional museums are struggling to attract.
“I don’t think this is accidental; it comes from our model of using familiar names as entry points to less familiar work.”
Among those visitors have been figures whose attendance carries particular cultural significance. Barack Obama came with Steven Spielberg. Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, described it as “the most innovating museum for decades”. These aren’t merely celebrity endorsements but validation from people who have an acute understanding of audience engagement and recognise the importance of connecting with demographics that traditional institutions struggle to reach.
The compliments matter not for prestige, but for what they confirm: that removing barriers to entry doesn’t dilute art’s power, it amplifies it.
Running three museums, with 150 employees across three countries, brings significant operational demands. What sustains Lionel through the resulting maelstrom is his enduring passion for the art.
“There are many of those,” he admits when asked about days crowded with HR, financial and logistic responsibilities. “The only thing that keeps me going is that I can be with the art. If I could focus only on the art, I would be a really happy, lucky man!”
His passion emerged in his twenties. Lionel, who came from a business family, started by trading in art. It was during that time that he discovered the joy of finding rarely seen works and connecting them with new audiences.
“Maybe 50 to 75 per cent of what Picasso or Basquiat produced has never been seen by the wider community,” Lionel explains. “Finding a piece like this and having the opportunity to bring it to a wider public is a real joy for both Kim and me.”
The same impulse to make the invisible visible applies to seeking out completely unknown artists. At art fairs, this finely honed instinct allows Lionel to operate at remarkable speed.
“I’m rarely there longer than 30 minutes. I move through the exhibitions really quickly because I know what I like and what our audience likes,” Lionel tells me. “My recognition of something interesting is instant rather than analytical. Eighty per cent of what I see isn’t for Moco, the other 20 per cent I recognise immediately.”
Looking to the future, Lionel sees further careful expansion. He has explored spaces in New York, a city he has done business in since his gallery days, as well as other locations, and a fourth museum will likely open, though he is cautious about pace.
“Expansion only makes sense if we can maintain the quality of the programme and the experience we can provide,” he explains. “We don’t want to grow too fast because the quality has to be maintained.”
The basic ambition remains unchanged, even as the scale increases.
“The core mission, presenting modern, contemporary, digital and immersive art in ways that feel accessible, inspiring and relevant, hasn’t changed since our opening day in Amsterdam,” says Lionel. “What has changed is Moco’s ability to reach new audiences, collaborate with more artists, and demonstrate that institutional barriers to contemporary art engagement aren’t inevitable.”
That hesitant inquiry from a young person interested in seeing some Banksy works still drives everything. It represents millions of people who want permission to be curious. Moco’s answer remains unambiguous: the art is here, and you’re very welcome to see it.
MOCO MUSEUM LONDON
1-4 Marble Arch, W1H 7EJ
mocomuseum.com