The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Modern Art Centre (CAM), which is celebrating its 40th anniversary, was created according to the idea of Doctor José de Azeredo Perdigão, then president of the institution and committed to its mission, as a centre of art and culture, holding a collection of modern and contemporary art that included the largest representation of Portuguese artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. It fell to Sir Leslie Martin and his team to design a multifunctional building to house the collection, a space of creation and presentation of new artistic forms and the exhibition of works by new artists, which is now reopening after remodelling works. Inaugurated in 1983, the CAM became the base of ACARTE, an innovative multidisciplinary programme launched a year later by Madalena Perdigão (1923-1989), whose centenary of birth is celebrated this year and who played a very important role in the reform of artistic education in Portugal and at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in the areas of music, dance, cultural creation, and artistic innovation.
The new CAM of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation corresponds to the renovation of the original building and the extension to the south of the gardens that originally formed the Santa Gertrudes Park, following the death of the Marquise of Vilalva. The Japanese architect Kengo Kuma was selected through a tender to develop the project for the renovation of the CAM building, in collaboration with the landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic. The new CAM aims to inspire a rich dialogue between building and garden, once its extension is complete. A beautiful new covered area will be created for the remodelled building, which will become a meeting and socialising space for visitors, creating an open link between south and north. Inspired by the Japanese tradition of the Engawa, a covered walkway will be built along the eaves of the roof, in which inside and outside are connected, making it a space of humanised nature, an established practice in Japan, a country with which Portugal has had a long relationship, already evident in the original Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation complex. This is a new face for the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, with a new south entrance and the creation of a true campus of Art and Culture, in which nature, with its diverse paths, establishes new possibilities for public enjoyment of the Museum, which houses the magnificent and unique collection of Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, as well as spaces for music and all artistic and cultural manifestations.
Guilherme d’Oliveira Martins
