Lisbon, March 17, 2025 (Lusa) - The owner of the Armando Martins Museum of Contemporary Art (MACAM) in Lisbon, which opens on Saturday with 215 works on display, many of them never shown to the public before, said on Monday that he wants to open up the collection to artists from "other geographical horizons" such as Africa, East Asia and Latin America.
The new museum, which shares with a new five-star hotel the Palace of the Counts da Ribeira Grande, on Rua da Junqueira in the Alcântara neighbourhood, will open with around a third of the collection on show - out of a total of more than 600 works - in the form of a permanent exhibition in two galleries in the palace and two temporary exhibitions in a new contemporary building behind it.
"This project is a museum with a five-star hotel and not a hotel with a museum," the collector made a point of clarifying during a visit for journalists to the new cultural space, which includes 64 rooms with works of art inside. "The hotel is to maintain the sustainability of the museum project."
The museum's inauguration will be marked by three days of events and commemorative activities featuring music, poetry and commented works of art, with free admission for the public between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, according to its management.
In this first phase, the hotel is only open to guests invited by the owner; it is to open to the general public around Easter, he explained, expressing his pride in leading an "exclusively private project" unlike other major art collections in Portugal.
"I decided not to be dependent on public support, which is unprecedented in Portugal," he said. "As a private museum, it's solely the result of my own capital."
Martins said that he began by collecting serigraphs at the age of 18 with friends. It was only on his 25th birthday - 22 March 1974 - that he acquired his first painting by a Portuguese artist, Rogério Ribeiro; the rate of his acquisition picked up in the 1980s, particularly of contemporary 20th century Portuguese art, and he then extended it to foreign artists.
"In 1988, I organised the first exhibition with around 90 works by [Portuguese artist] Manuel Cargaleiro, including serigraphs and original paintings, in Penamacor, my hometown, and more than five hundred people came to see it," he recalled. "We had to ask for the intervention of the GNR [National Republican Guard] to manage the traffic."
This, he recalled, brought home to him the degree of public interest in the visual arts.
The Armando Martins collection includes works by renowned Portuguese artists such as Paula Rego, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, José Malhoa, Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, Almada Negreiros, Eduardo Viana, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Julião Sarmento, Rui Chafes, José Pedro Croft and Lourdes Castro, among others.
The oldest work in the collection, exhibited in the first room of the gallery with the permanent exhibition, is by José Malhoa (1855-1953), and is entitled 'A sesta dos ceifeiros' (The reapers' nap).
"This collection was put together over more than fifty years, and there was a desire to share the works of art with the public," commented the museum's director, Adelaide Ginga. "Also to enjoy them, because it had been a long time since the collector himself had seen them."
MACAM consists of four galleries, two of which are located in the historic building, and two in the new building, whose façade is covered in three-dimensional tiles by Portuguese artist and ceramist Maria Ana Vasco Costa, inspired by Portugal's tile tradition.
The permanent exhibition is entitled "Uma coleção a dois tempos" (A collection in two times), curated by Ginga herself, along with Carolina Quintela, and encompasses works by Portuguese and foreign artists such as Júlio Pomar, Helena Almeida, Ernesto Neto, Marina Abramovic, Olafur Eliasson, Isa Genzken, Liam Gillick, Dan Graham and Thomas Struth.
In the palace's chapel, which has been de-sacralised and completely restored, there are three works created by Spanish artist Carlos Aires specifically for the space, inspired by the original patron saint, Our Lady of Carmo, and by Santo António (St Anthony of Padua), the patron saint of Lisbon.
"An extraordinary restoration was carried out, a complete recovery of this space that will be dedicated to the performing arts in addition to the visual arts," said Ginga, adding that the space is to permanently serve as a bar, as well as hosting a programme of poetry, theatre and concerts.
According to Ginga, the 18th century palace, which was built for an aristocratic Portuguese family, was later used for private education and also occupied by public high schools until it was closed and abandoned, and then acquired by Martins.
In the new wing there are two temporary exhibitions, one entitled 'Anthropocene: in search of the new human?' - which explores the impact of human activity on the planet - and the second called 'War: reality, myth and fiction' - about the fragility and complexity of today's world in the face of various geopolitical conflicts on a global scale.
The museum programme also includes the MurMur project, which will invite emerging artists to create specific works for two large walls in the entrance hall of the new wing. The first artist invited is Marion Mounic, with the installation 'Harem'.
Inside works by Rui Toscano, Matt Mulligan, Eugénio Merino and Edgar Martins are on show, as well as by other artists.
The museum and hotel occupy 13,000 square metres, of which 2,000 is dedicated to exhibitions, including a reserve area where the remaining works from the collection are housed. One of the two temporary galleries will in future receive works from other private collectors, under the title 'The House of Private Collections'.
When asked by journalists about the future growth of the collection, Martins said that he would continue to make art acquisitions every year, according to his personal taste, though advised in his decisions by Ginga and Quintela as curators.
One of the wishes expressed by the businessman, who chairs the Fibeira real estate, hotel and services group, is to expand the collection to include artists from less represented regions of the world, namely Africa, East Asia and Latin America.
MACAM also has a team of conservation and restoration specialists who have worked on some of the works that have been in storage for decades, as well as a team of mediators who will organise communication with the school public and the local community.
As for other foreign artists, the collection includes Gilberto Zorio, John Baldessari, Albert Oehlen, Antoni Tàpies, Antonio Ballester Moreno, Juan Muñoz, Santiago Sierra, Pedro Reyes, Carlos Garaicoa, Marepe, Rosângela Rennó, Vik Muniz and Isa Genzken.
When asked by Lusa about the security of the artworks that are to be on display in the hotel's guest rooms - where it will cost around €300 to €400 per night to stay - the museum director said that alarm systems will be in place, while customers "will be made aware of the importance of protecting and caring for" the pieces.
The collection is to be exhibited with the focus on the museum in Lisbon - although it will be prepared to lend works - with the temporary exhibitions to be renewed every six months, with occasional rotation of the permanent exhibitions, organisers said.
The five-star MACAM Hotel is to be run by Vera Cordeiro and will include a restaurant and cafeteria.
AG/ARO // ARO.
Lusa
