比利时漫画博物馆宣布国际扩张计划

Also celebrating a birthday is Brussels' famous Comic Strip Centre, which is marking its 25th anniversary with two new exhibitions. The comic museum has also announced plans for an international expansion.

Complete with life-size replicas of Belgium's world-famous comic heroes, like ginger haired reporter Tintin and cowboy Lucky Luke, the Comic Strip Centre attracts some 200,000 visitors per year and is one of Brussels' top ten attractions.

Recognising its 25 years of success, the museum announces that it's ready to open new branches in other countries.

"We have now 25 years experience of making comic strip exhibitions, and there are not so many doing this. And it t takes lot of effort to make an exhibition here to do an event, and, in fact, we are now at a point that we can use our know-how for other places outside of Brussels," said Willem Degraeve, communicationas director of Belgium Comic Strip Centre.

To pay tribute to the creator of one of the museum's most popular characters, the venue opened an exhibition solely devoted to Belgian artist Pierre Culliford. Under the pen name Peyo, he created the world-famous Smurfs in the 1950's.

While visiting the new show on her father's career, Culliford's daughter Veronique remembers what it was like to grow up with the blue creatures.

"In fact, I always see the Smurfs in my life because I was born the same year as the Smurf, and I have the big chance (luck) that my father was working at home, and each time when I am going back from school, I am going in the office and saying hello to my father, and from time to time I can sit on his knees, he took my hand, and we would draw a Smurf together," she said.

To also recognise contemporary artists, the museum rewards Flemish cartoonist Pieter De Poortere with his own auditorium for "Dickie," a comic strip that follows the adventures of a moustachioed Belgian farmer.

"Dickie" was crowned the best Dutch-language comic book of the year when it came out in 2001, and De Poortere has recently begun to expand into film and animation.

"When I was 13 years old, I came here with my father. I looked around and I never imagined that I could have, well, I could maybe imagine to have one page in the museum. I was dreaming of that, but now I have a whole room, so it's really incredible for me," said Pieter De Poortere, a comic artist.

The museum says eighty percent of its visitors come from outside Belgium, including around forty percent from France and at least three percent from China.

In honour of the museum's 1989 founding, all visitors born in the same year have received free admission during the anniversary's weekend.