HEIST-OP-DEN-BERG, Belgium — It’s a busy Friday night in the culture center in the Flemish town of Heist-op-den-Berg. The mayor is opening a sculpture exhibition; an Irish folk band is playing in the auditorium (this being Belgium, it’s called a “Chips, Chocolate and Beer tour”); there’s a cookery class; a few days earlier, kids dressed as Fireman Sam thronged the foyer for a show.

But for all the jollity, there is anger in the air. Hanging over the festivities is a push by the Flemish nationalist party that runs the region to cut subsidies for culture.

For culture lovers, the move is a vindictive act of fiscal philistinism by the conservative nationalists. For liberals, it's an attempt at reactionary “nation-building” by the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), the dominant party in Flemish and Belgian politics, as it comes under electoral pressure from the far right.

The proposal to cut public subsidies for art and culture by 6 percent — and to slash funds for experimental projects, such as shows by young theater groups, artists or musicians, by 60 percent — is a mistake, argues Luc Vleugels, the mayor of Heist-op-den-Berg.

“We’ve been the battlefield of Europe, but we also enjoy the benefits of being the crossroads of all those cultures," he says. "Among all the countries in Europe, we are aware of the value of culture and art.”

Belgian culture vultures dread a reign of cultural conservativism that confines the definition of true greatness to whatever was written, painted, sculpted or built before the 20th century avant-garde.

The Flemish government may consider culture to be “non-essential,” Vleugels adds, “but when you see what we organize here in Heist-op-den-Berg, and what the local economic benefits are, you would be amazed.”

Across the country, Belgium’s cognoscenti are up in arms. There has been a blizzard of open letters to Flemish state premier Jan Jambon, who doubles up as the culture minister, from hundreds of museum directors, art school deans, theater directors, concert houses, gallery owners, actors and students.

Online, the proposal’s critics have covered up 60 percent of their social media profiles or their most famous works in yellow to protest at the cuts. Hundreds marched on the Flemish parliament when the subsidies were debated last Thursday. The protest group “State of the Arts” denounced what it called “senseless” and “brutal” savings.

Jambon, a former federal interior minister who oversaw Belgium’s response to the 2016 terror attacks, argues that cuts will free up money to be invested elsewhere. “Savings are not fun for anyone, but there are huge social needs,” Jambon told VRT, the Flemish public broadcaster, on the day of the debate.

He said that funding for the arts should focus on heritage that projects “the greatness of Flanders.”

To be sure, the region has a lot to be proud of: Flemish masters like Pieter Bruegel, Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck are big tourist attractions, their works gracing the walls of museums and churches in historic merchant cities like Antwerp, Gent and Bruges.

But the region also has a vibrant modern culture, producing cutting-edge art, music, fashion, dance, theater, film and TV that might not be included in Jambon’s Flemish canon. Belgian culture vultures dread a reign of cultural conservativism that confines the definition of true greatness to whatever was written, painted, sculpted or built before the 20th century avant-garde.

That impression has been reinforced by N-VA politicians criticizing modern art that doesn’t comply with their idea of aesthetics. Peter De Roover, the N-VA’s leader in the Belgian national parliament, lamented on VRT the passing of “a time when our artists … had a keener eye for beauty.”

Jambon’s culture secretary, Joachim Pohlmann, is a former N-VA spokesperson who has attacked the “cultural hegemony” of the left and denounced its reverence for avant-garde works, citing the French Surrealist Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 “Fountain” (a urinal).

Pohlmann makes no secret of his view of culture as a political battleground. He has described the cultural struggle between left and right as a “Gramscian guerrilla war,” referring to the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s theory of culture as a political instrument.

Opponents of the cuts say the problem for Flanders is that today’s avant-garde is tomorrow’s cultural heritage.

He also has a clear stance against subsidies for culture going back at least a couple of years. “This sector is far too dependent on subsidies,” he wrote in 2016.

Critics of the N-VA say the party is swinging to the right as a response to major gains in May's federal and regional elections for the far-right nationalist Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) party, which came second.

Maggie De Block, the Liberal health and migration minister in the caretaker national government, told La Libre Belgique the N-VA is moving “closer and closer” to Vlaams Belang on issues like asylum.

The two parties are using similar language on art subsidies. Like Jambon, Vlaams Belang’s Filip Brusselmans framed the issue as one of fiscal priorities. “Good culture can be self-sufficient,” he said during Thursday’s debate. “The needs in education and health should have a clear priority when it comes to money.”

The far-right party has also been explicit in talking about the cuts as part of a long-standing culture war. “We back the government if it wants to cut back on experimental art that is good at spitting in the face of the Flemish,” was how one Vlaams Belang lawmaker in Flanders, Klaas Slootmans, put it.

Opponents of the cuts say the problem for Flanders is that today’s avant-garde is tomorrow’s cultural heritage — there will be no future Rubens or Van Dyck without some form of financial assistance for budding young talents (or “little lions,” as one group of art students dubbed themselves, trying to reclaim the “Lion of Flanders” that the hard-line nationalists have adopted as their flag).

“Without project funds, Flanders would never have had a ‘Rosas’ or a ‘Les Ballets C de la B,’” says Karin Brouwers, a lawmaker with the Christian Democratic and Flemish party, in the parliamentary debate, citing two renowned Flemish dance companies.

The nationalists might also look further back in history to the case of Hendrik Conscience, the 19th-century author of “The Lion of Flanders,” a book that become a cultural lodestone for early Flemish nationalism.

For much of his career, the father of Flemish literature depended on subsidies and sinecures from King Leopold I.

Barbara Moens and Camille Gijs contributed reporting.