Royal Conservatory of Brussels

Starting its activities in 1813, the Royal Conservatory of Brussels received its official name in 1832. Providing performing music and drama courses, the institution became renowned partly because of the international reputation of its successive directors such as François-Joseph Fétis, François-Auguste Gevaert, Edgar Tinel, Joseph Jongen or Marcel Poot, but more because it has been attended by many of the top musicians, actors and artists in Belgium such as Arthur Grumiaux, José Van Dam, Sigiswald Kuijken, Josse De Pauw, Luk van Mello and Luk De Konink. Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone, also studied at the Brussels Conservatory. In 1967, the institution split into two separate entities: the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel, which teaches in Dutch and English, and the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles, which continued teaching in French. The former entity became a School of Arts of Erasmus University College alongside film school RITCS, and associated with Vrije Universiteit Brussel it also offers Ph.D. degrees in the Arts through Art Platform Brussels. Since 2009, the latter entity has been associated with the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels La Cambre and the Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle (INSAS), forming ARTes, an organisation that embraces the three aforementioned art schools of the French Community of Belgium in Brussels.