(PRESS RELEASE) For the past 500 years, Antwerp and diamonds have been inextricably linked. The City and Province of Antwerp announced that the “DIVA. Antwerp Home of Diamonds” museum will open in 2018. To mark the Antwerp “Diamond Year,” DIVA’s museum shop opened its doors on Dec. 7. World-renowned artist Reena Ahluwalia’s hyper-realistic diamond paintings were selected to be housed in the museum and are now available for sale at the museum shop.
“We have known Reena for a long time and always have been great admirers of her jewelry designs and paintings. We were thrilled when we could work with her for her paintings in the museum shop. Her paintings are truly unique, beautiful from a distance and captivating from close by. We are really honored to have them hanging in our shop,” said Stefan Leemans, owner of the DIVA museum shop.
Ahluwalia’s latest painting series is titled “The Diamond Constellation” and pays tribute to the “star-like quality and unlimited potential in each one of us.” The paintings feature highly nuanced, hyper-realistic diamonds with ultra-magnified facets and have taken over 200 hours each to complete. The provenance of Ahluwalia’s diamond paintings is linked to her lifelong work as a diamond artist. Her paintings are known for their imagination and storytelling. Her ties to Antwerp go a long way back as an award-winning diamond jewelry designer, diamond painter and educator. Her work is featured on a special edition Belgian postal stamp, “Antverpia 2010,” that celebrates Antwerp as a world-class diamond center. The stamp is a rare honor for a diamond jewelry piece and a jewelry artist’s work. Besides working with some of the most prestigious diamond companies of Antwerp, Ahluwalia is also the past winner of the HRD Awards and speaker at various Antwerp events. She is an ambassador of “Diamonds & Antwerp.”
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“We want to bring the story of jewels and diamonds back to the Antwerp historic city center, where it all started 500 years ago,” said Luk Lemmens, provincial deputy minister for culture, Antwerp.
The museum will officially open in May 2018.