CCB Museum celebrates one year this Saturday and Sunday with new exhibitions and free admission
The Museum of Contemporary Art – Centro Cultural de Belém (MAC/CCB), in Lisbon, celebrates one year of existence this weekend with four new exhibitions and free tickets for visits and parallel programming activities.
The four new exhibitions address the experience of architecture and the city through films by Bêka & Lemoine, the trajectory of Portuguese architect Hestnes Ferreira, the transformation of space in the vision of artist Fred Sandback, and a selection of works from the museum’s collections, inspired in the work of American photographer Nan Goldin.
For two days, to mark one year since opening to the public, the MAC/CCB – which came to take the place of the old Museu Coleção Berardo – will have free entry and extended opening hours for the new temporary exhibitions, and a performance by French artist Xavier Le Roy , as well as publication launches, guided tours and workshops for adults and families.
“Hestnes Ferreira – Form | Matter | Light” and “Homo Urbanus. A Cidamatographic Odyssey by Bêka & Lemoine” were the first two exhibitions recently opened in the new season, the first curated by Alexandra Saraiva, Patrícia Bento d’Almeida and Paulo Tormenta Pinto, the second with Justin Jaeckle as curator.
“Form | Matter | Light” presents a reading of the work of architect Raul Hestnes Ferreira (1931–2018), based on his work process, dominated by charcoal drawing and architectural experimentation, in an organization of the Fundação Instituto Marques da Silva.
Visitors will also be able to see 13 films made by architects, artists and directors Bêka & Lemoine in many other very different cities, in a perspective that “puts the specific and the universal into dialogue in order to highlight the relationships of individuals – with space, as each other – that cities not only produce but also reflect”, according to the curators.
In March 2025, MAC/CCB will premiere and introduce a new film about Lisbon, produced by the duo of artists, into this exhibition.
The work of Fred Sandback (1943-2003), in the exhibition “Alinhavando o Espaço”, curated by Lilian Tonle, is another of the four exhibitions, covering lesser-known aspects of the North American artist’s legacy, namely his drawings, engravings, wooden reliefs and conceptual constructions.
“Intimacies on the run. Around Nan Goldin”, curated by the museum’s director, Spanish historian and curator Nuria Enguita, makes up the set of new exhibitions, taking as a starting point the photographer’s work “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” American born in 1953.
Goldin’s work reveals “a visual imaginary that accounts for life, a life that names itself, in a series that gives shape to an intimate space and time, a public diary that undoes the present, shows the thickness of relationships and of the bonds through which life simultaneously passes and is lived”, according to the curators.
With a renewed identity a year ago – after the end of the 15-year agreement between the State and the collector José Berardo, whose collection is still under the custody of the CCB by court decision, as part of a banking process against the Madeiran businessman – the MAC/CCB mostly maintained the previous team of workers and selected a new board through an international competition, which also includes Mariana Pestana.
In addition to the Berardo Collection, the museum brings together works from the State Contemporary Art Collection (CACE), the Ellipse Collection, acquired by the State, and the Teixeira de Freitas Collection, left in storage by the collector.
