Halle Gate
Subsequently named the ("Royal Museum of Armour, Antiquities and Ethnology"), the institution transferred its collections to the recently restored Halle Gate, a surviving gate of the old city wall ringing Brussels. The first head curator was Antoine-Guillaume-Bernard Scheyes and the collections expanded rapidly, thanks to important bequests from such persons as Gustave Hegemans (1861) and Emile de Meester de Ravestein (1874). When the Halle Gate became too small to hold the continually expanding number of items, the decision was taken to split the collections, and in 1889, under the new head curator, Eugène Van Overloop, the objects from classical antiquity were moved to the Cinquantenaire Palace, which had been built on the initiative of King Leopold II. In 1906, the ethnographic collection was likewise transferred there, the collection of arms and armour remaining at the Halle Gate. The new museum complex at the Cinquantenaire was named the Royal Museums of Decorative and Industrial Art. That name was changed in 1912 to the Royal Museums of the Cinquantenaire, but, to prevent confusion, had to be changed yet again when the Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History was also established at the Cinquantenaire in 1922. The institution became the Royal Museums of Art and History, a name that was officially confirmed in 1926, and which has remained unchanged to the present day. In 1925, Eugène Van Overloop was succeeded by the Egyptologist Jean Capart, during whose term of office the museums became a leading scientific institution. Indeed, the interwar period proved to be an auspicious period for them: the collections of the Cinquantenaire Museum were expanded, funds increased and various research centres were set up; in addition, various scientific expeditions were organised, one of them to Easter Island in 1936.