The Serralves Foundation is a European cultural institution serving the national community, whose mission is to raise the general public’s awareness concerning contemporary art and the environment. The Foundation pursues its mission via the Museum of Contemporary Art as a multi-disciplinary centre, the Park as a natural heritage site ideally suited for environmental education and entertainment activities and the Auditorium as a centre for reflection and debate on issues facing contemporary society.

The Serralves Foundation is now renowned as one of the main Portuguese cultural institutions and the leading body of its kind in the North of Portugal. It has conducted a great effort in order to project contemporary art at the national and international levels and divulge its notable architectural and landscape heritage.

Encompassing the Serralves Villa, Park, Museum of Contemporary Art, Auditorium and Library – managed within the orbit of its mission, the Foundation annually presents a diversified programme of initiatives, aimed at promoting debate and reflection on art, nature and the landscape and provide an innovative form of art education while taking an active part in reflection on contemporary society.

The Contemporary Art Museum–the building of the Serralves Museum was designed by architect, çlvaro Siza, who was invited in the early 1990s to design a museum project that took into consideration the specific characteristics of the physical setting and the need for integration within the surrounding landscape. The project was completed in 1995. The Serralves Villa – in addition to serving as the FoundationÕs head office, constitutes an important extension of the Museum of Contemporary Art, reserved for presentation of temporary exhibitions.

The core objectives of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art are the constitution of a representative collection of Portuguese and international contemporary art; presentation of a programme of temporary, collective and individual exhibitions that reflect a dialogue between national and international artistic contexts; and organisation of pedagogical programmes which will widen public interest in contemporary art, encourage stronger ties with the local community, and strengthen the links between art and nature engendered by the natural conditions of Serralves various spaces.

The symbolic start-date for the Museum’s collection is 1968, but it refers specifically to the socio-cultural events of the second half of the 1960s which, in addition to consecration of pop art, witnessed the launch of the bases of dematerialisation of art works, mingling of formal genres, the use of film, photography and text in order to underpin conceptual projects and investigation into the links between art and life, in the wake of the agitation of new political and social ideas and the rupture with the concept of a fixed frame.

The temporary exhibitions programme presents key artists and trends from recent decades to members of the general public in Portugal and abroad. Commencing with the Portuguese context, the programme attempts to further our understanding of contemporary art and enables Portuguese artists to become involved in a programme that has no geographic limits. The Museum thereby aims to affirm itself as a leading contemporary art institution in Portugal and act as an active force in the international artistic community, either through cultural exchanges or participation in international museum networks that are committed to promoting and developing culture at the worldwide level.

The Museum’s underlying objectives include a long-term programme, wherein Portuguese and foreign artists are invited to conceive interventions for the Park which, without altering the natural spaces and while respecting pre-existing conditions. This enables the general public to discover the different potential uses created by the Park’s intrinsic characteristics, and thus strengthens the symbiosis between art and nature. In this context, art works are camouflaged through revelation and knowledge of their host natural spaces, without being distinguished from them.

The museum also leads a more itinerant exhibition programme, featuring works from the Foundation’s Collection, organised in collaboration with Municipal Councils and other cultural institutions in Portugal.

Most outstanding projects in recent years:

Luc Tuymans, Dusk/Penumbra, 14 July–15 October 2006;

Rui Chafes/Pedro Costa, Fora!, 21 October 2005–15 January 2006;

Gego, Desafiando Estruturas/Defying Structures, 27 July–15 October 2006;

Robert Rauschenberg, Travelling ’70-’76/Em viagem 70-76, 26 October 2007–30 March 2008;

‘Ás Artes, Cidadãos!’, 20 November 2010–13 March 2011.

The Serralves Foundation’s Auditorium hosts events in the fields of Contemporary Music, New Dance, Performance and Colloquia, together with Film and Video Series, that accompany the exhibitions on display. The Auditorium’s events programme has progressively forged a singular approach.

Combining proposals ranging from more seminal generations to the most recent generations, the events programme interweaves different references, that aim to awaken the general public’s interest in the re-encounters and retransmissions observed in contemporary culture.

The programming approach investigates the exhibitions on display, thinking about the public’s intuitive interpretations or possible associations that they may inspire. The programme thereby creates a hybrid space that is crisscrossed by images, movements and sounds, that inspires creativity and discovery.

Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art attempts to serve as a space for dialogue, communication and exchange of creative experiences between artists and their audiences. An inherent component of the Museum’s activities is therefore the definition of educational programmes that will broaden the expectations and knowledge of their target audiences. In this context, the Museum has a Documentation Centre offering access to catalogues, magazines and books that help readers to position themselves in relation to key contemporary art issues from recent decades.

The Foundation also places a special emphasis on environmental education, organising activities for children, young people and adults, that will help foster discovery and valorisation of natural heritage and thereby extend environmental awareness. Educational workshops for younger pupils are also organised, that help them to gain a fuller understanding of the questions raised by the exhibitions programme in course, often in conjunction with the Park’s programme of activities.

Museum Serralves produces catalogues for each individual exhibition. In addition to in-house publications, certain exhibition catalogues are the result of collaborations with leading international art publishers. In other cases, co-editions are produced with international museums or publishers that act as co-producers of the exhibitions, in order to guarantee cost-sharing and more effective distribution of publications.