Image: Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Lisbon
The Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon will reopen on 18 July after a year and a half closed for renovation and requalification, according to the institution’s announcement. The reopening marks a return for one of Portugal’s best-known museum collections and comes with a week of celebration that includes guided visits, conversations and workshops. Admission will be free through 26 July, and the museum will keep extended hours on the weekend of 18 and 19 July.
In its reopening materials, the museum says the intervention was designed to recall the spirit and coherence of the original project while restoring the relationship between architecture, art and nature. The Gulbenkian site describes the renewed museum as a return to the harmony of the original building, with attention to the way galleries, gardens and natural light work together. The reopening also coincides with the 70th anniversary of the Gulbenkian Foundation, which the institution says is reflected in details of the renovation.
The project draws on the museum’s original architectural and museological conception by Ruy Jervis d’Athouguia, Alberto Pessoa and Pedro Cid, with the collaboration of museologist Georges-Henri Rivière and architect Franco Albini. The museum says the renewal was informed by a close study of archive plans and period photographs, allowing it to restore the materials and atmosphere associated with the museum in the 1960s, including silk, carpet, wood, bronze, glass and concrete. The institution also says it has reopened the relationship between the galleries and the gardens, with exhibition spaces once again opening onto interior courtyards and with filtered film replacing old shutters in the mosque lamps area to protect works from sunlight without blocking the garden view.
Among the new features identified by the museum are a new numismatics room created from a former office that had never been open to the public, a restored Assyrian bas-relief given a more central position in the gallery, and the return of a greenish carpet to the European Galleries to create visual continuity between the interior spaces and the vegetation outside. The fully renewed Sala Lalique will also include paintings by Burne-Jones and Sargent.
The reopening is being accompanied by a programme of free and ticketed activities across the first week. On 18 July, the museum begins celebrations with visits, talks and workshops. The programme includes the workshop 'Regresso à gravura. 7 obras para 70 anos', scheduled for 18 and 19 July from 15:00 to 18:00, and the family workshop 'Um cartaz à altura da tua obra!' running from 20 to 24 July from 10:00 to 13:00 in the Sala Polivalente.
Several guided visits and conversations are also listed for the reopening period. 'O olhar lento. 20 minutos com arte' is set for 18 and 19 July, offering 20-minute close-looking sessions focused on a single object from the collection. From 20 July, the cycle '(Re)começar' continues with visits led by conservators, including 'Obras em papel: livros, gravuras e desenhos' with Ana Campino, 'Arte islâmica e arménia' with Jessica Hallett, 'Pintura, escultura e coleção Lalique' with Luísa Sampaio, 'Egito Antigo, Mesopotâmia e Antiguidade Clássica' with Maxence Garde, 'Estampas e lacas japonesas' with Rui Xavier, 'Obra feita' with Xavier Francesco Salomon and Teresa Nunes da Ponte, and 'A criação do Museu' with Vera Mariz.
