Exhibitions

CHEAT!

Unfair, yet brilliant.

28 november 2025 - 27 september 2026

Do you ever turn over an extra card during a game of Patience? Or make that last Rummikub tile mysteriously disappear? The urge to win runs deep, and sometimes a little slip turns into a dazzling move. What starts as a harmless bit of deception can blossom into a masterful strategy.

According to cultural historian Johan Huizinga, every game creates a magic circle: a temporary world with its own rules and understandings. But that circle is fragile. The instinct to win pushes players to the edge, time and time again – and sometimes over it. Cheaters are not simply spoilsports, but creative deceivers. They preserve the magic of the game while secretly twisting it to their advantage. Rules are there to be bent. To be stretched. To be broken. After all, cheating is also a kind of play.
The exhibition “CHEAT!” explores just how inventive people can be in their search for an unfair advantage. For centuries, artists have used animals to hold up a mirror to human behaviour. Here, you’ll encounter deer, squirrels, dogs and monkeys caught in the act, secretly passing cards to each other to manipulate the game.

You’ll also discover the clever mechanics behind loaded dice and rigged slot machines, and the ingenious devices casinos use to outsmart the cheats. Or learn about the nineteenth-century bonneteurs who prowled train carriages, duping fellow passengers out of their money with a game of cards.

In this exhibition, cheating is not approached as a moral transgression, but as a reflection of human creativity and imagination.
And sometimes you simply have to admit: it may not be fair, but it certainly is clever!
The museum also invites you to put your own detective skills to the test. Follow the clues through the gallery and try to unmask the cheat. Will you expose them, or let them get away with it?

“CHEAT!” takes you to the dark side of card games: a world of excitement, deception and brilliant tricks. The stories are enriched with works of art, intriguing objects and surprising archive material.

The cards have been dealt: now it’s your turn to choose. Will you play fair... or cheat?

De Makerij (The Makershop) - a brand-new museum lab

Transforming a sheet of paper into a fully-fledged playing card involves many steps and painstaking craftsmanship. The Makershop, the new museum display at the Museum of the Playing Card, provides a unique insight into the various processes a playing card-in-the-making undergoes. Besides printing the cards, the finishing is of great importance: cutting, rounding the corners, glossing, gilding and packaging. After all, playing cards are used intensively and have to stand up to a lot of wear and tear during their lifetime. Paper finishing plays a crucial role in the ultimate quality of playing cards. The 19th-century Turnhout paper manufacturers were quite inventive and were constantly looking for ways to make their cards more durable. A typical Turnhout innovation, for example, is the 'overwax’ technique, whereby a protective coat of polish is applied to the cards.

Besides the production of playing cards, The Makershop also focuses on the role of the typesetter or typographer. Working by hand and with extreme precision, they arranged lead letters side by side to print words and sentences. Their choices between capitals, lowercase letters, serifs, margins and interline spacings made typesetters not just seasoned craftsmen but true artists in their own right.

Next to The Makershop, you can enjoy a small, periodically shifting focus exhibition highlighting a particular aspect of the rich museum collection. The first edition 'Turnhout's Triumph' shows that the playing card industry depends on much more than technology alone. Before Turnhout became the playing card capital of Belgium - and far beyond - Brussels boasted that title. However, revolutions, changing borders and a healthy dose of chance caused an upheaval in the period 1750-1850. Sample books, documents and special card games illustrate how the Brussels and Turnhout workshops flourished.

With The Makershop, the Museum of the Playing Card sets the tone for the future. The display takes you through the fascinating history of the paper and playing card industry and encourages children and adults to try hands-on work for themselves.
Come and see, feel, smell and, above all, experience for yourself in this brand-new museum lab.

Former exhibitions

Long live fate!

About the art of playing

Playing cards is of all times, generations and ranks. Everyone has been playing cards, for centuries, and this wasn’t unnoticed by artists. Most people play from childhood. You endure the game alone or in company, just like in real life. You get to know your opponent, weigh up chances, make choices, come up with a strategy, and who knows, spark a flirt or romance.

Yet card players are often not portrayed very flattering: they swear, drink, argue and even fight with each other. The dark side of life. Which path do you take: do you go for the fair, quiet game where you learn skills and insights, or do you lose yourself in gambling, cheating and deceit? And what does the future bring? There are honorable winners and inglorious losers. Is life just a matter of playing your cards right or is there more to it?

With 'Long live fate!' the National Museum of the PLaying Card gives a glimpse of the role of the card game in Western art. For this exhibition the museum draws from its own collection, but also shows works from the collection that it has got on long-term loan from the National Lottery since 2019. It concerns books, game machines, paintings and graphic work by well-known and lesser-known masters, all with the theme: the card game. Part of this collection was already shown in 2019-2020 in the exhibition 'Card Players in the Arts'. The museum reopened the 'treasure room' with a selection that honours the reputation of the card game through the ages.

With works by, among others: James Ensor, Jan Moerman, Marcel Stobbaerts, Ferdinand de Braekeleer, Johan Clarysse

Sub-skin - About people, tattoos and playing cards

Exhibition - 19th of May 2022 until the 26th of February 2023

As a memory or ritual, as a statement or by mistake, as a tribute or by revenge: you take a tattoo for life, and that is often the start of a personal conversation.

Photographer Ans Brys and writer Matthias MR Declercq enter into that conversation. In fifteen portraits they focus on people and go beyond what you see. “Sub-skin” spreads wide, from the symbolism behind Koeken Tien (Ten of Diamonds) and The Ace of Spades, to a tattoo of a tarot card and a king from India.
Nothing is what it seems. A tattoo is not a drawing, it’s a story.