Do not confuse this spectacular collection with the museum in artist René Magritte’s Brussels home. The Magritte Museum opened in 2009 and is now under the umbrella of the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique. Located in the Hôtel Altenloh, a neoclassical mansion dating from 1779, the gallery is connected by underground passageway to the main building of the Musées Royaux next door.

The collection holds more than 230 of Magritte’s eccentric, surreal works and covers all periods of his oeuvre, exhibiting musical scores and photos of his private life as well as signature works such as his series “The Dominion of Light” and “The Domain of Arnheim.” Though you may never have viewed one of his full-scale works, Rene Magritte is already familiar to you, for his powerful images have been shamelessly copied by advertising agencies the world over. His paintings tell of anxiety and isolation in the modern world, of stultifying homogeneity and the inability to communicate, especially in that famous canvas of the group of identical persons staring wordlessly through a window into an open room. Magritte is represented here by his very greatest paintings: “L’Empire des Lumieres” (that night-lit house on a dark canal, under a bright, daytime sky); “Le Mariage de Minuit”; “L’Homme du Large”; “La Saveur des Larmes” (a decaying and corrupted dove); and “La Recherche de la Verite” (a ball, a fish, a scene of infinity).