Autumn and winter exhibitions 2026

The Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art presents its autumn and winter programme, bringing together five artists whose practices challenge established relationships between image, language, sound, materiality and representation. Foregrounding Lee Ufan's first major exhibition in Portugal, alongside forthcoming presentations by Miguel Gomes and Anri Sala and ongoing exhibitions by Jenny Holzer and Alice Neel, the programme reflects Serralves' commitment to artistic experimentation and dialogue across disciplines.

Spanning different generations, geographies and artistic languages, these exhibitions explore how art shapes our perception of the world, engages with historical and political realities, and creates new relationships between works, spaces and audiences.

Jenny Holzer: Wrong Answers
June 18, 2026–January 3, 2027
Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art

Alice Neel: Beautifully Imperfect
July 16, 2026–January 17, 2027
Serralves Álvaro Siza Wing

Lee Ufan: Fragments of Infinity
October 16, 2026–March 7, 2027
Presented at the Serralves Villa and Park

Miguel Gomes
October 31, 2026–May 30, 2027,
Best Director Award, Cannes Film Festival 2024.
Manoel de Oliveira House of Cinema

Anri Sala
November 27, 2026–April 25, 2027
Site-specific presentation conceived for the Serralves Museum
Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art

Lee Ufan: Fragments of Infinity
Serralves Villa and Park

A central figure and leading theorist of the Japanese Mono-ha movement, Lee Ufan (b. 1936) has spent more than six decades investigating the relationships between objects, materials, space and perception.

His first major exhibition in Portugal unfolds across the Serralves Villa and Park, bringing together paintings and sculptures that establish a dialogue between architecture and landscape. Natural stones are juxtaposed with industrial materials, while minimal brushstrokes explore the relationships between gesture, time, presence and emptiness.

Through his concept of Relatum, Lee shifts attention from the autonomous artwork towards the relationships it establishes with its surroundings. At Serralves, these encounters extend beyond individual works, inviting visitors to consider the space between nature and architecture, material and perception.

Miguel Gomes
Opening October 30, 2026

Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes (b. 1972) challenges cinematic conventions, moving between documentary and fiction, preparation and chance.

At the Manoel de Oliveira Cinema House, the first exhibition devoted to Gomes focuses on his filmmaking methods, revealing how writing, shooting and editing inform and transform one another.

Bringing together all his short films, feature-film excerpts, scripts, notebooks, drawings, photographs and unseen footage, the exhibition traces his creative process from Entretanto (1999) to ongoing projects Selvajaria and Cantiga.

In Arabian Nights, journalistic investigations into austerity-era Portugal become the basis for fiction; in Grand Tour, documentary filming in Asia precedes the screenplay. Through simultaneous projections and sequences re-edited for the exhibition, the presentation reveals shifting boundaries between reality and fiction, the creative process and the finished film.

Anri Sala
Opening November 27, 2026

Anri Sala's work explores the relationships between image, sound, music and architectural space, creating environments in which time and perception become central to the experience of art.

For his first major exhibition in Portugal, Sala will occupy the Museum's Left Wing, including the Central Gallery, with a presentation conceived specifically for Serralves. Bringing together significant works from his career and more recent creations, including a series of frescoes associated with his move to Naples, the exhibition proposes a non-linear encounter with his practice.

Through the interplay of sound, moving images and spatial composition, Sala challenges conventional experiences of duration and continuity. His intervention establishes a dialogue with Álvaro Siza's architecture, reflecting the Museum's longstanding interest in artistic practices that respond directly to their spatial context.

Jenny Holzer: Wrong Answers
On view until January 3, 2027

For over four decades, Jenny Holzer (b. 1950) has used language to confront how power, information and ideology shape experience.

Her first solo exhibition in Portugal moves from early Truisms and Inflammatory Essays to works incorporating carved stone, electronic signs, painting and textual erasure.

At a time when the proliferation of images and written information increasingly challenges the distinction between truth, manipulation and censorship, Wrong Answers examines the power of language and the violence of its suppression. Through works incorporating redacted government documents and fragmented sculptural elements, Holzer exposes the tensions between visibility and concealment, expression and control.

Alice Neel: Beautifully Imperfect
On view until January 17, 2027

Alice Neel (1900–1984) pursued uncompromising portraiture, remaining committed to the human figure while abstraction dominated the American art world.

Her first exhibition in Portugal brings together works from 1926 to 1983, organised thematically rather than chronologically.

Through portraits of family members, neighbours, workers, artists, activists and communities often excluded from mainstream representation, Neel captured the psychological complexity of her subjects alongside the social and political transformations of the twentieth century.

Rejecting idealised notions of beauty, her paintings embrace vulnerability, difference and the physical marks of lived experience. Beautifully Imperfect reveals the continued relevance of her work to contemporary discussions of identity, representation, gender and inequality.

About Serralves
Established in Porto, the Serralves Foundation promotes contemporary culture through art, architecture, cinema, landscape and the environment.

Designed by Álvaro Siza and inaugurated in 1999, the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art forms part of an architectural and cultural ensemble encompassing the Serralves Villa, Park and Manoel de Oliveira Cinema House.

Through its multidisciplinary programme, Serralves brings together artistic practices from different generations and geographies, fostering critical dialogue between contemporary creation, architectural space and the wider cultural and social landscape.