Soares dos Reis, Porto, June 10, 1974: the history and exhibition of a resurrected museum

CIt was spring. It was a Monday. April 25th was just a month and a half ago. The country was moving from north to south. That June 10, 1974, a national holiday, maintained the remains of a celebration inspired by the ideas of Portuguese fascism and continued to mark the “Day of Portugal, Camões and Race†. In Porto, for a vast group of artists gathered around Cooperativa Írvore, Seiva Trupe, Teatro Experimental and Cineclube, and almost all of them with direct or indirect links to the School of Fine Arts, the time was rupture. Still partying. With humor. In a performative act marked by a calm radicality, staged in front of the Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis (MNSR), with a procession starting at Cooperativa Írvore, they decreed the death of the museum, adorned with the most contradictory and subversive of proclamations: †“Long live the Museum†.